Intimidation

1

August 18, 2261

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

A flashing warning light came on in the security station, indicating that a motion sensor in the surrounding forest had just been tripped. It was an outer line segment, more than a kilometer away from the Clan Ninja Monkey mining complex, and it quickly registered a second hit, making the guard on night surveillance duty jerk back in his chair reflexively. Nathan hadn’t thought the motion sensors were worth the effort. The alien raiders had been hitting them from the air for the past month, stealing or destroying what they could, but so far they hadn’t mounted any ground offensives other than dropping their people directly inside one of the many mining outposts on the planet.

Then again, most of those outposts didn’t have an anti-air tower sticking up over the forest canopy either. To date, none of the Clan mining complexes had been hit since they tried to assault a Clan Samus facility with an identical tower. The lizard ship had been heavily damaged and forced to retreat immediately…so maybe this time around they were trying another tactic.

That, or maybe a tree branch had fallen across the laser grid.

A third and fourth contact registered on the same motion sensor, making that possibility slim indeed.

Nathan tripped the complex-wide silent alarm, sending a signal out to all on duty patrols and stations to expect trouble.

“Target spotted,” a whispered voice reported in over Jenna-732’s helmet speaker. “Definitely lizard and moving fast.”

 The Archon stood next to a crevice in one of the building walls, eclipsed by shadow from the heavy moonlight. “Just one?”

“Yes…hold up. There’s a trailing group, moving much slower. First one must be a skirmisher. I count at least four, all wearing backpacks.”

“You want me to take them?” another voice asked over the team comm.

“Negative,” Jenna answered. “They’d see you coming a mile away.”

“Some camo armor would help with that,” the Knight pointed out.

“Yes it would,” Jenna admitted. “Put that on our to-do list for later. Snipers, any more contacts?”

She got a host of negative replies, save for the one who’d reported in initially. “Two trailing guards, keeping pace with the backpacks.”

“Seven sounds low. There may be others in the area. Knights, stay within the complex. Anything gets through, it’s yours. Priority defense goes to the tower. Everyone else, stay sharp. I’m going to poke the bee hive and see what happens. Just don’t shoot me. I’ll signal when I want cover fire, but if they get within line 2 don’t wait.”

“Copy,” the sniper said, continuing to track the lizards from his perch high up in the trees on the edge of the complex. He was located just below the canopy so the only visual hazards were the numerous tree trunks clogging the underside of the forest. This gave him lines of sight for quite a distance, but those lines were constantly being broken as the lizards moved in and out of his scope.

He lifted his head from his lachar rifle and glanced back at the mining complex. From the 38 buildings clumped together in a rough circle a tiny blur broke from one on the edge and sprinted across the clearing. Her red armor looked almost black in the moonlight, but it was still far brighter than the camouflaged flex armor the snipers wore to match the tree trunks. From his stand he tracked Jenna’s sprint, dialing back his scope with a free hand as he kept his eyes on her. With the Archon’s superhuman speed and agility it would be easy to lose her, and he nearly did twice as she ran an evasive zigzag course between the trees.

“Directions please?”

“Bear left,” the sniper said through his earpiece in a whisper. “Follow the rise 50 meters then hard right. They’ll be there in about 20 seconds. Don’t know where the skirmisher is.”

There was no answer from Jenna, but he could see her dart to the left and sprint halfway down the bit of elevation in the otherwise flat geography. There were just enough waves in the ground to provide cover from point to point, but from his position he could see and fire down on anyone not hiding behind a tree, giving him both the eyes for surveillance and fire support.

When Jenna turned suddenly he lost track of her position, now having to use his scope to keep watch. A slight breeze was ruffling the leaves in the trees, dampening any sounds of movement, so the sniper was going to have to rely on his scope and the motion sensors at the base of his tree for warning if anyone came up underneath him.

“Skirmisher is down,” Jenna reported. “Status on the backpacks?”

The sniper flipped his rifle around to the approximate area where he expected them to be, zoomed out and caught sight of a bit of movement. He realigned and zoomed back in, seeing them hiking in a row just as they had been before, lurching with each step as if they had springs in their shoes…had they been wearing shoes.

“Oblivious.”

“Where are they now?”

“I lost you.”

“How deep?”

“Just crossing line 4.”

There was a long pause. “Got them. When I take the first feel free to join in.”

“Copy that,” he said, sliding his finger over the trigger and tightening his grip ever so slightly on the barrel. He didn’t have a tripod up in his tree stand, but then again he couldn’t get a lot of distance in the forest anyway. Freehand would have to do, and it was something he’d practiced extensively.

“Contact,” another sniper reported. “Northeast. Group of six. No backpacks and moving fast.”

Jenna didn’t answer, and the sniper kept his nerve and sights on his group of targets. He had the second in line centered when it twitched its head to the right just as a blur of Archon armor jumped out of the woods and knocked the one behind it off the path they were following and dragged it from sight. A pair of shots flashed bright green from the trailing guards, breaking up the darkness as the sniper saw his target back up and away from where the other lizard had been taken. It retreated behind two tree trunks before half pausing, looking every which way, seemingly scared out of its wits.

He pulled the trigger and sent a yellow lachar burst straight into its chest armor, then followed it up with three quick subsequent trigger pulls, landing two more shots of laser/charged particles on target and dropping it to the ground.

Moving his scope around he dialed it back slightly, looking for more targets just as he caught a glimpse of Jenna tackling another one, this time one of the guards, and snapping its neck like it was a toy. The lizard stood only a few centimeters shorter than the Archon, but its thin physique couldn’t stand up to her physical strength. She dumped the body aside and sprinted off, choosing not to use the rifle slung across her back for some reason.

The sniper caught sight of the lead backpack, now running off wildly. Its run/hop made it easy to spot, but a bit more difficult to target. He had to line up a shot through the trees and time it to the cadence of the hop, but the lizard was getting closer and closer to his position, skewing left, which increased his odds of a hit with each meter it traveled.

He pulled the trigger and sent a yellow flash across the dim forest, traveling so fast it was gone before it began, that hit the lizard low of where he had aimed, impacting it in the left shoulder. The creature spun about, rotating its shoulder back out of shock or pain. Two more lachar blasts hit its torso as it twisted, bringing its pack around into the firing line. The second of the torso shots hit the upper corner, chewing through the thin casing and into the explosives beneath.

Suddenly a huge chunk of forest shredded in a fireball. The concussion wave knocked the sniper out of his stand and over the edge towards the forest floor several meters down. His rifle flew from his hand as his safety strap caught him at the waist then pulled him against the tree trunk as it snapped taught, banging his helmeted head against the hard bark.

He tasted blood as he hung upside down, his head ringing, as a cacophony of voices lit up his comm as engagements began to break out all around the mining complex as the explosion eradicated any hope of a surprise attack by either side.

Reaching ‘up’ to his face as he hung upside down, he felt several tears in his cheeks and one deep one across his nose. He pulled a small piece of wood out of his chin then felt around for more. His hand came away bloody but without any more debris so he reached up to the line hanging him from the tree and pulled himself into a sit-up position, getting his head right side up as he felt a lot of resistance to the movement in his gut.

He looked down at the flexible body armor he wore, seeing his abdominals looking like a porcupine with splinters covering his body. With his other hand he began pulling them out, thankful that most of them hadn’t made it all the way through.

A few blood-soaked patches attested to some penetration, but none of it was serious enough to register past the ringing in his head. He was so dazed that he didn’t even feel the splinters imbedding themselves in his ungloved hands as he pulled the wood shrapnel out of his armor. Once his abs were clear of debris he pulled himself all the way up and kicked off the side of the tree trunk to set himself swinging clear.

With his legs now beneath him he pulled up enough to slacken the rope then disconnected the latch at his waist with one hand as he swung back in gently towards the tree trunk. He got his feet squarely on it and walked down until his hands ran out of rope. Grabbing the latch at the bottom he swung his feet free and beneath him, then let go and dropped another two meters to the soft forest floor.

He collapsed to his knees, banging one on a root, but otherwise landed more or less how he’d hoped. Pressing a hand against his pained forehead he looked around, trying to get his bearings as well as locate his weapon.

Where the lizard had exploded was now a smoking crater. Several trees were missing, blasted into pieces and throw out so far and wide that a large hole was now present in the otherwise opaque canopy. The sniper pulled his nightvision goggles off, whisked a few drops of blood off them and wiped them clean against the backside of his pants where there wasn’t any splinter debris. He swiped away some of the blood on his face with the back of his hand, finally noticing the splinters in his fingers. He slipped the goggles back on and worked on his hands, pulling out the tiny pieces of wood as he spotted his rifle a few meters away.

Kneeling down next to it and scanning the immediate area he saw no lizards, nor did he see Jenna. Fighting past the pain in his head he grabbed his weapon and began walking back towards the sounds of the ongoing firefight at the complex, hoping to get at least one good shot off to help the rest of his Clan.

Jenna had just taken out the last of the guards when the det pack blew. The blast wave knocked her back against a tree, but she stayed on her feet and used the distraction to catch up to and kill the other backpack carrier with a fist to the face then a quick snap of its neck as it lay on the ground, stunned. Three backpacks down, one obviously exploded.

With this group taken care of Jenna sprinted back towards the complex as the comm lit up with reports of new fighting breaking out. With their stealth approach now toast the lizards were pressing their attack…and there appeared to be more of them than they’d realized.

“Any more reports of backpacks?” she asked as she ran, hopping over part of one of the destroyed trees. Her armor was heavy, as was the gravity, but she’d been training in this environment for so long she no longer felt the difference.

“Affirmative,” someone answered. “Coming in from the west.”

“Do not let the backpacks get inside the complex. Snipe them if you have to, but do not let them get within blast range!”

Any confirmations were lost in the overlapping voices and the sounds of battle. Apparently at least one person had left their comm on, so any and all noises were being transmitted.

Jenna didn’t worry about it as she sprinted into the clearing around the complex, seeing plasma blasts to the north. Hugging the tree line then darting back inside it she flanked a group of lizard snipers blasting away at security guards in a small outpost on the perimeter. They were hunkered down in a small enclosure with inch think armor plates and gun slots, but the incoming plasma was eating through the armor…and if the lizards kept up their pounding they’d soon get through, either hitting the men or forcing them to retreat.

Seeing a group of 8 or more clustered together, Jenna pulled her plasma rifle off the back of her armor and charged them from the flank, coming in slightly behind them. She fired a bright blue plasma lance into the side of one that was hunkered down behind a tree trunk for cover, briefly bathing the forest around her in blue light. The lizard turned towards her just as she hit it, with Jenna quickly delivered another pair of shots as she ran to make sure it was down before targeting the next one a few meters to its right.

She hit that one in the leg then jumped to the side, rolling on the ground across her shoulders and coming up behind a thick tree as the others noticed her presence and turned their fire towards her. Dozens of plasma blasts flew past her position, some hitting the tree and setting it on fire. The Archon reached her rifle-bearing right hand around behind her and triggered off a shot one handed from the right side of the tree, then moved left, whipping her weapon around into a two handed grip and shooting the closest lizard she could find before sprinting to new cover.

She made it there cleanly, then caught a bit of plasma as she danced to the next one. The green ionized gas melted a small rivulet out of her left pectoral plate but it didn’t get all the way through.

As if in repayment for the hit, the lizard that had shot her took a hit to the head from a sniper’s lachar blast. It dropped dead to the ground as the others suddenly remembered to duck for cover, having exposed themselves to fire coming from the complex in order to track the threat at their back.

Jenna moved instantly, jumping out of cover and charging directly at them, trusting her men not to shoot her, with her speed in making it difficult for them to even if they made a mistake and shot at the first sign of movement they saw. The armored superhuman leapt between the trees, making for a shallow zigzag that disguised her true approach line and target until she got within a few meters of the lizards and started blasting away at nearly point blank range.

Not stopping to give them a better target, she fired on the run, juking this way and that while taking another plasma hit to the right leg. This one landed squarely and cut a huge crater into her red armor, showing a bit of black padding underneath as it got all the way through the plate but fell short of hitting her flesh. The impact threw her movements off only slightly, but it did spook her enough to cause a sudden rush for cover…only to have her pop out from the other side of the tree and keep firing.

Another sniper shot took down a lizard in front of her, leaving her just one remaining. She lit it up with three burn marks down the center torso then ran on by before it even had time to hit the ground. From there she turned hard right and sprinted across the clearing towards the complex, seeing green flashes from inside, meaning that the lizards had already broken through the perimeter.

2

A group of six lizards darted along the long wall of a processing building using it to block the view of the defenders as they tried to flank them and get further into the interior. Two of the group had backpacks and all six moved quickly, hop/running close to the wall as the sounds of battle competed with the silence of the night. The long, low building buffeted most of the sounds, causing the lizards to creep in as silently as they could.

When they got to the other end the first one poked its head around the corner, saw the walkways between the closely packed buildings were clear, and led the others out. They stayed single file but spread laterally to give themselves better lines of fire as they pressed towards the interior and the anti-air turret at the center of the little mining city.

The backpack carriers brought up the rear, carrying their own weapons but moving more slowly due to the extra weight. They lagged a few meters back as the first of their skirmishers passed the edge of the building and poked its head around the corner to the left to scout out the area before advancing. Another wide building stopped their forward progress, forcing them to turn either right or left. As the one skirmisher poked around to the left another one ran off to the right side of the paved road and checked the opposite direction.

It came back flying through the air, landing on its tail halfway out into the middle of the road as a huge, white armored Knight stepped into view, bringing its gigantic shield up in front of its face while keeping only the top of its armored head visible as it charged forward with the top half of its equally white sword sticking out ominously from its left flank.

The lizards fired at it instantly, barely meters away, but the plasma didn’t penetrate the armored shield. The first of the attackers leapt to the side to avoid being run over but the long sword stretched out and tagged the creature in the chest with a none too gentle poke, stunning it unconscious as the Knight continued to move forward, bashing into the next skirmisher with the plasma-heated and smoking shield. It fell backwards, then the bottom of the shield passed over its chest and came crushing down on top of it.

The other 3 lizards scattered, firing as they retreated. Two backed up the way they came, while the third tried to run around the Knight and get further inside the perimeter. Showing surprising speed the gigantic Knight crossed over and nearly cleaved the lizard in two with a slash from his sword, knocking the alien half his height back three meters before sprinting forward behind his shield after the other two.

One of them froze, hunkering down against the base of the building wall and firing at the giant shield, putting more and more smoking craters in it. When the Knight came after it the lizard dropped its weapon and reached down to the strap holding its backpack on, fumbling for the detonator switch. Its hand brushed the trigger guard, but the tip of the Knight’s sword impaled it in the chest, rendering it unconscious before it could pull the safety device off.

With one more lizard to go the Knight ran off, chasing it around the outside corner of the building they’d approached by and saw it slunking next to the wall, trying to appear as small as possible as it ran on all fours. Its head turned around impossibly far, looking back as it fled with its eyes widening when it saw the behemoth closing on it. Without the pack it might have been able to outrun the monster, but with it there was no way it could escape.

Ducking its head and rolling up in a ball it reached for the trigger guard, flipped it off and wedged the pack as close to the base of the processing factory as it could then hit the detonator a split second before the Knight’s sword could get to it.

The explosives within the pack detonated in a flash, reducing the center of the building to rubble and throwing the debris high up into the midnight air in a fountain-like plume that reflected off the moonlight, then fell back to the ground in a hail of deadly, solid rain.

Jenna’s armor took several debris hits halfway across the complex, knocking her off balance and into a side wall. Reorienting herself she ran out into one of the walkway/roads and looked up at the defense tower, seeing with relief that it was still intact. Her eye line darted to the north where she saw the debris cloud lingering over the destroyed building on the outside edge of the complex, then movement to her left caught her attention and she fired a pair of plasma blasts at a lizard trying to sneak by her position in the confusion.

It wasn’t wearing a det pack, so she didn’t have to be careful with her shots, one of which clipped the creature in the unarmored shoulder, spinning it around and to the ground in pain. She ran up to it in a flash and put another shot into its scaly head before moving on. Groups of lizards were everywhere, and they weren’t doing her the courtesy of sticking together. Clan security had defensive positions scattered around the complex, but there were so many irregular roads ending in T’s and L’s that it made for shorter lines of sight than preferable. They had gotten some snipers up on the roofs, but the mining complex was large enough that it was difficult to defend without more troops…and they hadn’t expected the lizards to deploy this many of their number on a raid.

Jenna ran down a short road, keeping close to the right wall as green plasma blasts leapt across the gap ahead. It was a four-way intersection with what appeared to be a defense outpost out of view on the left while the attackers were out of view on the right. Knowing that running out into the middle of the firefight was a good way to get hit, Jenna slowed as she approached the junction and knelt down next to the wall just shy of the crossroad.

Carefully she popped her head out and back in, catching a brief glimpse of the scene. Getting her rifle up in front of her chest she stretched out into the free fire zone, landing on her left shoulder with her legs still hidden behind the wall and started firing from the ground up at the four lizards skulking inside building doorjambs.

Her blue plasma took out one of the green firing weapon positions, then made another go dark when the lizard jumped out away from the wall as it exploded into its face with a near miss. A dimmer yellow flash took it down as one of their snipers got a chest shot from further inside the complex. It didn’t kill the lizard, hitting it in the armored body stocking it wore, but Jenna finished it off with a pair of plasma shots as it sat on the ground then shifted her aim to the next target.

After taking it down she pulled back behind the wall, got to her feet, then charged back into sight and ran forward, rooting out the remaining opposition from their wall niches and clearing the section of street a moment before the anti-air tower opened fire on an unseen target.

Jenna’s head immediately angled up, searching the nighttime sky while her peripherals remained wary of the surrounding streets. Bright white flashes of heavy lachars cast a strobe-light effect over the complex as the energy blasts moved too fast for the eye to see, traveling at near light speed towards some distant target. Without the ability to track the enemy ships on sensors Jenna knew the gunners had to be relying on visuals only, meaning while the targets were at range they were going to be very difficult to manually hit.

Jenna had thought the lizards’ aim was to get the tower knocked out so they could bring their ships in for fire support…why then would they be closing now? Unless they thought that blast had been the tower going up.

Right now it didn’t matter. Other than dodging aerial fire there wasn’t anything for her to do if their ships came in. She had lizards on the ground to deal with.

“Report heavy resistance,” she said into her comm.

For a moment there were no replies. Whoever had left their teamcomm on earlier had since corrected the problem and the earlier panicked responses had cut out, now that the security teams had gotten a feel for the fight they had on their hands.

“Building 13,” someone responded. “Rooftop outpost overrun.”

“I’m on it,” Jenna said, running back towards the defenders at the opposite end of the street from where she had just taken down the most recent group of lizards. She needed to cut across the interior of the complex to get to building 13.

As she ran she jumped over a low barricade security had set up, bypassing two lightly armored guards, one with a plasma rifle, the other with a lachar sniper rifle. Both wore half helmets exposing their faces, which looked surprised to see her red armor jumping over and past their position. Jenna ran around a corner then zigzagged between buildings until she got to the small circular plaza that held the base of the defense turret. Looking like a very old grain tower from farms back on Earth, the vertical cylinder had a small open zone surrounding it, offering good fields of fire to the anti-personnel turrets covering the approach should any lizards get past the security forces.

The gunners inside let her pass as she ran across and around the big turret as its peak lachars continued to flash in bursts whenever one of the lurking lizard ships came a little too close. Jenna disappeared on the other side, back into the cityscape, firing at and killing a lone lizard that had managed to break through their lines…not a good sign.

The little twerp, standing only as tall as her shoulder, managed to nick her in the left knee before she shot it down. The armor melted and rehardened within half a second, giving her a little click every time she moved the joint. It didn’t appear to slow her movement any, but the sound was annoying and would make it difficult for her to sneak up on anyone.

That wasn’t going to be an issue at the moment, given the sounds of plasma and the heavy lachars from the tower. The lachars had a distinctive high pitched whine, while the plasma was a bit lower in tone. Audially, one was a bee sting while the other felt like a heavy slap to the face.

When Jenna got close to building 13 a couple lances of green plasma hit the ground behind her, having overshot as they came down from elevation. She spotted the lizard on the edge of the roof ahead and to the right of her, then ducked to the side as another one came into view and fired on her as she approached an intersection.

Her shoulder hit the wall, then she rebounded back off it, sprinting ahead and crossing the side street until she was up next to the wall of building 13 and underneath their firing range. She ran ahead towards an open door, seeing the charred bodies of three of their Clan security guards in the street nearby.

Barging through the door, Jenna ran in and up a nearby stairwell, not finding any resistance inside. The building was a standard model, meaning the interior makeup was the same as others in use by Clan Ninja Monkey and Star Force. Jenna had memorized the layouts for all their facilities so it took her little time to get to the roof, whereupon she ran up against three lizards spread out to various points on the building’s perimeter.

Suddenly a hotspot formed in the middle of her back, pitching her forward and into a somersault…which she rounded off and came up on her feet facing the opposite way. She shot the lizard behind her, then the one beside it a few meters down covering the back wall.

Jenna ignored the heat and jumped up into a run to the side, twisting around and firing on the forward facing three lizards as they turned around and attacked her. She got the first one easy enough, but the other two went evasive, running sideways as they fired back, making her next pair of shots miss. She did likewise, juking right and left until she got one of them, then she ran directly towards the last of them, jerking at the last moment to avoid a pointblank shot before jump-kicking into the ugly thing’s chest, knocking it off the two story building and down onto the street below.

The Archon brought her rifle up and fired down at it as it lay dazed, killing it with a shot to the neck. Wasting no time she slid off the side of the roof, grabbing the edge with her free hand so she hung for a split second, decreasing the height of her fall, then let go and dropped to the paved ground below.

Her feet hit hard and she wisely rolled out of the fall down onto her knees, shoulder, and then back, feeling the damaged spot just above her waist as it pivoted unevenly. Her somersault stalled out as her feet came back up under her, dumping her back on her butt. Jenna recovered quickly, getting up and running off before someone could make an easy target of her.

Suddenly the high pitched whines of the turret’s lachars were overshadowed by the crush of green plasma hitting the energy shield on the lower sections of the tower just below the weaponry. The thin shields held up against the first two shots, but the third and fourth hit the armor plating before the Clan turret returned its own plasma fire.

Two heavy booms sounded as gigantic light blue plasma spurts leapt out from the top. A secondary explosion happened elsewhere, past buildings that were blocking Jenna’s view. The incoming green plasma stopped and a moment later she saw the energy shield reform over the turret’s middle in a sparkle of a renewed matrix coming to life, then disappearing back to invisibility.

The mechanics at the turret top swiveled and the two lachar batteries began tracking opposite targets, firing off flashes constantly with the occasional plasma lance thrown in, making Jenna twitch in response to the slight concussion wave being thrown off each time.

The Archon caught and killed two more lizards as she worked her way out to the perimeter of the complex, then flanked to the left towards the nearest sounds of a firefight. She assisted another Knight in finishing off a group of snipers, coming up from behind and catching them off guard before a loud whistle/shriek sounded. A moment later most of the plasma rifle fire ceased as the remaining lizards began retreating.

“Like hell they are,” Jenna said, seeing several running across the grassy field surrounding the mining complex, making for the tree line. The Archon sprinted after them, finding herself only slightly faster. She held her fire, hoping to catch up to some of them before they realized it.

They got to the trees before she did, but Jenna didn’t slow. She continued to run after them, but they were good at being evasive and ran through the forest with ease. Undaunted, she continued to pursue a group of three for more than a kilometer before she got close enough to shoot at the rearmost of them.

Her blue plasma lance missed, hitting a tree trunk and spraying bark out like a concussion grenade. A few chips hit the lizard, which jerked to the side so fast it was almost comical. The other two immediately turned around, offering suppression fire as Jenna took cover behind a thick tree. When their return fire ceased she broke cover, seeing that the lizards were on the move again.

A twitch of movement to her left caused her head to twist…nearly running her into a low, leafless tree branch, which she ducked under at the last moment. A fourth lizard was coming up from behind, one that she had a chance of intercepting, so she took off after it, letting the other three go.

She got within ten meters of the lizard then opened fire, mowing it down as it seemed more intent on running than fighting. Standing over its corpse she held still and listened. A few moments later she spotted another bit of movement, then another as more lizards were passing through this section of forest in retreat.

Jenna realized she must have been near their rendezvous point, otherwise they wouldn’t have been congregating so close together, having presumably retreated from the complex in varying directions. Holding her fire, she took off through the trees and followed their movement and general direction.

Several kilometers later she nearly bumped into one of them coming up around a large boulder imbedded in the soil at the end of a low hill. Out of reflex she jumped towards it and wrapped her free arm around its neck, dropping her rifle along the way. With her other hand she reached up and jerked, snapping its neck and dropping the body to the ground.

Looking around and seeing nothing within the immediate area, Jenna reached down and retrieved her rifle. Guessing as to the direction they were headed she ran off as fast as she could in pursuit.

A few minutes later the sound of engines caused her to slow. Following the sound to a small clearing with a few recently felled trees she saw the underside of one of their ships hovering about five meters above the ground, tucked in neatly beneath the tall canopy. A couple of the lizards were climbing a rope up into the ship while more were appearing from the left and right.

Crouching next to the base of a dead stump, Jenna noticed three more ships nearby in similar artificially created niches as they picked up their retreating troops. The one nearest to her suddenly retracted its rope and closed its access bay, then drifted up through the canopy and into the sky where she couldn’t see it.

Her head darted between the others, picking the one she thought was the least loaded, then she jumped up out of her cover and ran towards it. When she got close she took a long range shot at the last three lizards milling about the base of the rope. It missed high, passing over the thing’s head, but it succeeded in getting their attention.

Instead of standing their ground and fighting the lizards scurried up the rope even faster. Jenna managed to shoot one off, but the others got inside and the ship lifted up before she could get to the clearing.

A blast of plasma came back down near the edge, knocking her aside with the blast wave. She rolled back up onto her feet and squeezed off three quick shots against the underside of the ship, trying to slide one in the closing door. All three hit the armored hull, making small indents but doing no real damage. The ship disappeared into the dark sky along with the others, leaving Jenna alone in the forest with the few corpses she’d managed to rack up.

A twitch to her left brought her rifle back up and she put another shot into the lizard that had fallen off the rope. Cautiously she walked up to it, then put another one in its head, making sure it was truly down, then picked up its weapon and began a slow run back towards the mining complex to see how hard they’d been hit.

3

October 8, 2261

Epsilon Eridani System

Inner Zone

Paul watched from the bridge of the Excalibur as the jumpship Moya decelerated against Epsilon Eridani’s gravity well, coming out of the jump in between the orbits of the system’s 2nd and 3rd planets which were both currently on the other side of the star. After a few moments the first data feeds from the sensor relay grid began to flow through into the holographic chamber that Paul stood within, looking down on a map of the system as tracking data for their ships began to update.

He noticed several warship icons nearby, ostensibly guarding the jump line, which he took as both a good and bad sign. Good in that they still held their position, but bad given that they felt the need to place ships here on a constant basis.

“Begin decouple,” Paul ordered.

The Excalibur’s bridge crew snapped into action and within a minute the kilometer-long battleship was free floating within the inertial dampening field of the jumpship. As a pair of destroyers moved out laterally from the niches that the triangular hull had left in the docking portion of the Moya, the Excalibur began to sink ‘down’ and exit the carrier’s hull from the underside. Carefully using thrusters only, the battleship emerged from the jumpship and flew clear of the jumpline as the destroyers moved into flanking positions.

The Moya also moved off the jumpline, heading in towards Corneria as the waiting escort ships picked it up, forming a defensive halo around it, but the jumpship only moved forward at a crawl as it waited for its twin to arrive an hour later.

The Tardis emerged on the same jumpline, exiting at a slightly higher jumppoint due to its lesser mass. Unlike the Moya, the Tardis wasn’t carrying a battleship, but rather a host of smaller drone warships which it quickly released and the Excalibur took control of, forming a second defensive halo as both jumpships smoothly accelerated in an arc around the star’s gravity well towards the 5th planet in the system.

They arrived at Corneria two days later, settling into low orbit with a host of dropships rising up from the surface to begin unloading cargo and personnel. In addition to traditional supplies, Paul had brought with him an arsenal of combat gear and a small army of Archons, Knights, and Star Force security personnel.

Leaving control of the Excalibur in Captain Evinson’s command, Paul transferred down to the main Star Force colony on the planet where he met up with Duke Hightower for a brief confab before joining an Archon-only briefing session along with Greg, Morgan, and Rafa.

“The attack on the mining outpost also brought with it our first Knight death,” San explained. “One was taken out with a det pack we think was intended for the tower, but it never made it that far. It did blow the hell out of one of our outer buildings but none of the lizards ever made it to the tower courtyard. After several attempts to do so they issued a recall order and retreated.”

“How do you know that?” Greg asked.

“The order? It’s a shrill whistle, artificially created. We haven’t discovered the source yet, but they all turn tail and run when hearing it. We’ve documented six separate incidents.”

“Did they take anything?” Morgan asked.

“In this raid, no, but they did grab some palladium from Clan Star Fox a couple weeks later.”

“They hit a Mantis flight,” Mara explained, “and forced it down into the forest. We recovered a few survivors and half the cargo after our skeets drove off their ships, but they did get several large crates of palladium and iron ingots. Some of their attacks seem to be resource driven, others are just hit and runs. The only major engagements have been defensive ones when we’ve trapped them. I don’t know what they’re up to, but I’m fairly sure we haven’t seen their full strength yet.”

“They have limited resources,” Paul said, his voice low and even as if half his mind was elsewhere as he spoke. “They’re facing an unknown enemy and don’t want to overplay their hand.”

“Because they’re scrounging?” Harrison asked.

Paul shook his head. “No, because they came by jumpship. Even if they have more than one insystem, which I doubt, they’re probing our defensive capabilities without serious depleting their own resources.”

“Why are they taking cargo then?” Greg asked.

Paul shrugged. “I don’t know, but with the naval firepower they appear to have they could overrun any of our defenses with a massed attacked. The fact that they haven’t means they’re waiting and watching…or have some other agenda.”

“Which brings us back to the question of what we’re going to do about it?” Anders pointed out.

“Paul’s going to kick their asses in space,” Morgan answered pithily, “and we’re going to kick their asses on the surface.”

“How?” Harrison asked, curious what the four trailblazers that’d been sent out to deal with the lizards would come up with.

“I won’t speak to Paul’s plans, even though I already have some guesses,” the level 4 Archon Ranger said, “but as for down here we’re going to be doing a lot of redecorating. I’ve developed sort of a fetish for concrete infrastructure, and over the next year we’re hardening up our outposts to make the enemy either hit us with overwhelming firepower or face us in close quarters. They’re smaller than us, so if we can box them in we should own them. Meanwhile he gets to play with the major installations,” Morgan said, pointing a thumb towards Greg.

“We brought some heavier weapons with us, as well as the factory pieces to make more onsite. Those cruisers they’ve got could walk right up to the front door and pound their way in if they wanted to, so we need to increase our ability to pound back. Up until now we’ve counted on our early warning systems to be able to give our fleet the ability to intercept possible threats before they got to ground, but since that is no longer the case we’re going to have to start writing a new playbook…to that end, tell me, have you seen any use of their fighter craft in atmosphere?”

Harrison glanced at Jaime, but the Sangheili shook his head. “Nothing that I know of aside from when we got near their jumpship.”

“And were your sensors able to pick them up?” Greg pressed, already having sorted through their records on the trip across the system.

“Yes.”

“At what range?”

“As soon as they left the jumpship. I don’t think they were equipped with the same sensor camouflage their larger ships are.”

“But their raiders are?”

“The ships they’re using to ferry troops to the surface and use as air support, what we’ve decided to call ‘Kirbies,’ are virtually invisible to sensors unless they get inside a kilometer, and even then they barely register as thick vapor cloud. There’s almost no reflectivity at all.”

“But they’re not invisible?”

“No, not to visual wavelengths.”

“Why is that?”

“No clue, you?” Harrison asked.

“I think it’s their hull armor, based off of how the damage you did to their cruiser made them pop up on sensors. The question is, why don’t they equip their fighters with the same material?”

“Do you know something,” Anders asked, “or are you just running through a summation?”

Greg raised an eyebrow at the younger Archon, but took no other offense to the impertinent question. “The difference in design suggests an answer. The fighters are meant for defense, or perhaps even standard offensives, while the cruisers, the kirbies, and even the jumpship have been designed for a special purpose. I’d bet other races’ sensors are better than ours, but they’ll still have a limited range against the lizards’ ships. If that is the case, what does their design suggest to you?” he asked, glancing around the table to open the question up to all of the local Archons.

“It’s not an assault force,” San said after an awkward few seconds.

“Good,” Greg said, pointing at the Ninja Monkey, with Morgan nodding her agreement as well. “Keep going.”

“The timing suggests they only recently discovered us,” Jaime added. “Which means they’re probably not from this star system.”

“A bit obvious, but a valid point,” Greg offered.

Mara held up a finger as a thought came to her. “They hammered us when we fought back effectively, which means they’re not used to losing. They expect to come in, take what they want, and leave.”

“Getting warmer,” Greg prompted.

“They’re space thugs?” Anders asked.

“If we’re lucky,” Greg said, finally getting them to the point he wanted. “Paul was right in saying they haven’t hit us very hard yet, despite our casualties. They’re toying with us. The reason for which I can’t say, but that toying has given us time to get here and hopefully some more to get us better prepared. Up until now Star Force has had a technological edge in all of our engagements, now we’re seeing the reverse. We’re playing on the big boys’ playground and the local bully has just come up and punched us in the face. So what do we do?”

“Hit him back,” Harrison said without hesitation, which drew an imperceptible smile from Paul.

“We can’t find him,” Greg reminded the second generation Archons. “We’re being picked on, made fun of, and robbed. What can we do?”

“Tell the teacher,” San sarcastically offered.

“Star Force has been the teacher,” Morgan corrected him. “Now we’re on our own.”

“And we’re the little guy,” Greg continued, “so we’re going to have to start thinking like one.”

“Run away?” Mara asked, unsure.

“Last resort. We need to expand, and there’s no guarantee they won’t follow us back to Sol. Keep with the bully metaphor. How do you stop one?”

“Gang up on him,” Jaime said.

“The only other little guys are the nations, and they’re too weak to matter,” Greg explained. “What else?”

“Duck and cover,” Harrison said, not able to think of anything else. Bullies were trouble because there wasn’t a sure fire way to deal with them other than growing stronger than they were and then flattening their nose the next time they came around.

“Exactly,” Greg said, no pleasure evident in his voice.

“You’re saying there’s no way to win?” Mara asked, not believing what she was hearing.

“Unlike you, we’ve been faced with the dilemma of how to deal with the V’kit’no’sat if and when they come back. No matter what strategy we try, in every single simulation based on even the minimal assault force profiles generated from the pyramid database we get annihilated. Our only viable course for victory is to stay alive, which is why we’re developing evacuation protocols for the entire system, subsurface hideaways, pirate jumppoints…anything we can think of to help us duck and cover when the hammer blow falls.”

“Now, these lizards aren’t the V’kit’no’sat, fortunately, but they still outclass us technologically. Until we can develop at least a minimally effective sensor array to detect their approach, all we can do is duck and cover. This is going to be a grinding fight, because we’re not giving up the system. We may take a lot of casualties, but this is a fight we have to make. All of the troops we brought with us are volunteers, and anyone that wants out can leave the system on the jumpships we came in on.”

Harrison frowned. “What’s the end goal?”

“We learn, we adapt, we grow stronger, and we keep them busy here so they don’t look towards Earth. Every year that passes we unlock more of the V’kit’no’sat technical knowledge, so our research curve is going to dwarf that of the lizards. They’ve got a sizeable edge, but given time it will dwindle, especially if we start making better use of our current technology as we start learning more about our new enemy. There’s nothing in the database about them, we checked before we came, so this one is completely fresh. We don’t know what we’re going up against, and we could very well lose. Is that something you want to stick around for?”

“Dumb question,” San said, sitting up a bit straighter.

“No it’s not,” Morgan differed. “Most of the Archons have never seen real combat. You’ve lived off of challenges and trials where you get to come back and try again later. This conflict is going to be for keeps, where even a lucky shot puts an end to 100 years of tedious training. Is that something you want to risk now, or wait until we get a better idea of what we’re facing before you jump into the fray?”

“We’re already in the fray,” Harrison pointed out. “You guys just got here.”

“We’re used to dealing with unknowns,” Greg said evenly. “The rest of you have always followed our lead. This is brand new to you. We’re here to take the lead on this one, but the difference is you’re not following us up a year or two later, you’re dealing with the same uncertainty as we are, and to be blunt you’re newbs at it.”

“Only one way to fix that,” Mara said, resting her elbows on the table. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Greg held up a hand to forestall the bravado. “Think it over. You’ve got a few days before the jumpships leave. Some of you we are sending back whether you like it or not. The rest of you, present company all included, will be allowed to volunteer if you choose.”

“If I may say so,” Anders said respectfully, “you sound scared.”

Greg stared him down for a moment. “What part of ‘they’re toying with us’ don’t you understand?”

4

May 1, 2262

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Harrison ran through the underbrush along the creek/river’s edge, busting out into the water and sinking in to the knees in his red armor. Spinning about he let himself sink down, kicking his legs out to the side while keeping his plasma rifle above water, then fired as fast as he could at the hoard of lizards chasing him.

Several return shots hit in his general vicinity, generating plumes of vaporized water shooting up and out like grenades going off, covering Harrison’s helmet, but the nonstick coating wicked the water away a  moment later clearing his vision. He downed six of the aliens before one of them shot him in the shoulder, which was depressed about two inches below the waterline that was fluctuating with the steady current. The moisture plume blinded the Archon, obscuring both his vision and that of the lizards for a moment…then he was gone.

Thanks to the muddy waters Harrison was able to slide downstream unseen, pulling his head up out of the water more than a minute later. His armor’s internal oxygen supply sustained him so that he didn’t have to hold his breath, but he still kept a tight control of his breathing out of habit. He was a fair swimmer, but like their Clan leader his airways always seemed too wide for underwater ventures, filling up instantly no matter what angle he kept his head at.

Harrison caught his foot on an underwater rock and used the leverage to stop his advance. Feeling the current tugging at his armor, he flipped over face down and got a knee under his chest before pushing his helmeted head up into the air. His wide faceplate cleared instantly, but he saw no lizards chasing him. A quick glance left then right confirmed that he’d escaped the combat zone, leaving Clan Saber’s colony well back upstream and putting him near the end of the valley it sat in, just ahead of the intersection of another river, this one twice as large in comparison.

As he walked with most of his body underwater towards shore he saw that he was barely 20 meters away from the outflow into the larger river, meaning he had traveled further downstream than he had anticipated. The recent downpour they’d gotten had swollen the waterways and increased the speed of the flow, causing him to misjudge his position greatly.

He pulled himself up on the muddy bank, tipping his rifle down so as to clear the barrel of water as he ran up through the riverside brush. The sharp spines and sticks bounced off his armor harmlessly as he punched through into the underside of the thick forest canopy where little sunlight fell and the underbrush transitioned over into the bluish moss that seemed to coat most of the planet.

Harrison took off at a run back through the woods and up towards the colony. The lizards had opted to bypass their exterior mining facilities and hit the main colony directly with what appeared to be hundreds of ground troops. Clan security was holding positions within the colony while the Archons had flanked the lizards in the woods, trying to sow as much confusion and damage as possible while the Knights held the entrances with a vengeance.

A skeet zoomed past over his head, obscured by the canopy but clearly audible. A pair of throaty whines indicated the aerofighter was firing on surface targets, but Harrison couldn’t see where. Unlike previous engagements, the Clan Saber colony had air support on site, making it seem all the more unlikely that the lizards would attack here…but they were, and that worried Harrison more than the waves of the ground troops hammering the outer defenses.

The sound of return fire ahead prompted Harrison to change his direction and climb up the shallow valley incline at the base. Following the sounds to their approximate location he came up upon a small bowl-like indentation in the valley just shy of the steeper gradient that climbed up towards the border-like ridgeline. Inside that bowl were a number of downed trees obscuring a direct line of sight, but the light streaming down from the breach in the canopy and the smoke rising up from recent plasma strikes told him there was a kirby here.

Flanking around near to the ridge he came up quietly on the downed trees, seeing the yellow/tan hull of the alien transport reflecting the sunlight from high above as another flash of plasma dropped down and impacted the force field covering the ship…then Harrison suddenly realized there wasn’t one kirby here, there were several backed in under the canopy, having come down in through the hole and knocking aside what trees they needed to carve out their little landing zone niche.

One of the kirbies drifted in under the sunlight and rose up out of the hole, firing its own plasma cannons at the strafing skeets then flew off in a hurry, drawing immediate pursuit. Harrison advanced towards the three kirbies that were still on the ground, running up to cover behind one of the toppled tree trunks, looking for any troops on the ground or landing zone defenses.

He saw none, then decided to make another run in closer, hopping from one bit of woody debris to another until he was less than 50 meters away from the closest of the landing craft. That was when he heard the engines of another kirby approaching, soon to drop in through the opening and land where the other had just departed from. As soon as it ‘touched down’ it opened its boarding hatch and little lizards began dropping out in bunches, falling a couple of meters to the ground before scurrying off towards the colony to join in the fight.

“Control, this is Harrison, copy?”

“Copy,” one of the non-Archon Clan staff answered over his helmet comm.

“Mark my position,” he said, activating a tiny beacon in his suit via a set of hidden controls beneath a flap in his forearm armor. “Enemy landing zone. Four kirbies on the deck, one of which just brought in fresh troops. I’m heading in pursuit. Consider the LZ open to heavy fire within 60 seconds.”

“Coordinates confirmed. Get the hell out of there, Archon.”

“Already on my way,” Harrison said, skirting around the edge of the camp and following the trail of the newly deployed ground troops. They were fast, but not running at full speed so he was able to make up some ground on them. About halfway up the valley to the colony he caught the trailing trio and opened fire, nailing one in the back and a second in the tail, both of which fell to the ground, wriggling in pain. The third ran on a few more steps before realizing what was happening, then it turned and fired back as Harrison ran over and across the others, finishing them off with point blank shots then diving to the side to avoid the green plasma blast coming his way.

The Archon rolled across his shoulders and up into a crouched position, firing back on the lizard with two fast shots, one of which hit the enemy’s weapon, melting it on contact along with its trigger finger. Harrison jumped forward and ran up to it, killing it with two shots to the chest, the first of which melted through its body armor. The second expanded on the damage, blowing apart the thing’s small pair of hearts.

As Harrison jumped over it he noticed more lizards further ahead turning around at the sounds of battle behind them but he didn’t hesitate. Firing as he ran he charged the lot of them, spread out as they were, downing one after another while having to go evasive occasionally. Fortunately for him they were getting stretched out, and in ones and twos they weren’t hard to take down when he had armor that could absorb a few shots.

He nailed two more as he ran up the trail, realizing that most of them were getting too far ahead of him to catch before they got to the colony…where they would then be bunched up and far more dangerous to confront, even if he was coming in at them from behind. He took aim at another that saw him coming and decided to run ahead instead of fight. He aimed at its back, adjusting for the zigzag the creature was executing to throw off his targeting, then pulled the trigger…with no plasma forthcoming.

He pulled it again to be sure, then tossed the rifle aside, its ammo gone. Backstepping a few meters, he grabbed one of the dead lizards’ weapons and took off in pursuit. The trigger assembly barely held his gloved finger, but fortunately he and the other Archons had gotten in some practice with the enemy’s weapons that they’d recovered from earlier engagements. The plasma was more powerful than their own, but the firing rate was slower and the internal magazine only appeared to carry about 120 shots. With this one coming directly off the ship Harrison assumed it would be full, but there was no way to tell short of disassembling it on the run and checking the illuminated internal counter…something he didn’t have time for.

Suddenly there was a series of large booms behind him followed by a blast of air that he felt hit the back of his armor and propel him forward a few steps, but it didn’t topple him. Without even needing to look he knew the kirbies had just been targeted from orbit and probably destroyed. He’d expected Control to send skeets after them, but apparently Paul had kept a warship or two in a nearby orbit just in case.

He knew those couldn’t have been the only landing ships, given the angle the attack was coming from. This was probably a secondary assault vector designed to hit the south side of the colony while the others fought on the north. The lizards he’d been running from had been coming in from the northwest over the ridgeline and descending down the ravine. At that time there had been no reports on assaults from the southern half of the complex, meaning these were probably new additions that the other Archons wouldn’t be in position to hit.

“Control, any activity on the south side?”

“Negative. Attack vectors from the northwest around to the east.”

“Well, we’ve got incoming south of the creek. I’m trailing them about a kilometer off. Expect an assault at any time.”

“Copy…damn, perimeter sensors just went off,” the man said to someone else before he got the mic turned off.

Running a bit harder Harrison followed the footprints of the lizards left behind in such numbers as to make a distinctive trail through the mossy forest floor as a large explosion boomed from ahead, but this wasn’t orbital bombardment. This was explosives and it was coming from the colony.

Harrison only had a moment to think about what might have been hit when he came across a backguard of lizards, their weapons rising up into firing position before releasing several plasma blasts that flew over his head as the Archon jumped forward onto his belly. He fired one equally green lance back in midair, then let himself hit the ground and stabilize his aim before he fired again.

He punched the trigger rapidly, often having it not fire at all while the internal capacitor recharged. Lying flat on his gut he presented a much smaller silhouette for the lizards to target, but he was also immobile, which wasn’t a good thing. A blinding flash of plasma crossed over his right shoulder but Harrison focused only on the four lizards ahead of him. He took down two of them before taking a hit to his helmet, which then forced him to roll aside and claw for cover.

The top portion of his visor was now distorted, but most of his vision was still clear. He felt a hot spot on his head but no pain, meaning the plasma hadn’t eaten all the way through. Back on his feet again he made like a rock and froze, listening intently trying to figure out which way they were moving. After a long pause he jumped back out onto the trail and took aim…only to find that they had retreated after the others.

“Damn,” he said, chasing after them. He stooped down to pick up one of the dead alien’s weapons, grasping it with one hand. It was heavy, but his arms were strong enough to wield the pair of rifles one handed for a short period of time before fatigue would skew his aim.

Another explosion rocked the muted sounds of battle echoing through the ravine, this one also coming from the direction of the colony. Whatever was going on up there wasn’t good, and the extra lizards coming in weren’t going to help matters.

Harrison chased off after them but didn’t catch up to any more until he got to the small clearing around the colony. Barely more than ten meters of forest cut back to allow for work crews to move along the perimeter, the open air and sunlight displayed in great detail where one of the explosions had occurred. Further down towards the creek, off to Harrison’s left, was one of the surface entrances to the colony. He could see several Knights still there, fighting it out with some of the lizards that appeared to be coming in from the north and crossing over the creek/river, but much closer to his position there were several trees that showed damage from a blast on the partially constructed exterior of the colony.

A big, gaping hole now led into the colony, with the lizard footprints heading directly into the breach. They must have used a det pack to blast into the construction zone…for since this part of the colony was continuing to expand it had no armor over the exterior, only basic temporary wall plates to keep the weather out.

“Perimeter breach,” Harrison said over the comm and he ran inside after them. “We have lizards inside the colony, south side.”

5

As two of his fellow Archons fired their plasma rifles at a wave of new lizard reinforcements coming out of the forest towards the northeast entrance, Paul followed a pair of Knights, protected by their overlapped shields and hiding between their towering bodies, as they charged up and over a small hill that the lizards were congregating in before circling around and attacking the entrance directly. As they broke over the top edge Paul could see the inside of the Knights’ shields heating from the plasma hits, then suddenly they were gone as the Knights parted and left Paul exposed.

He sprinted forward into a cluster of the lizards, kicking one back off his feet and throwing the alien two meters away into another of its kin as the trailblazer spun around, flinging his large stun sword in an arc and catching three more lizards in the head or arms. With the charge set high, all three went down on contact then Paul jumped to the side and forearmed another in the face, not hesitating to take stock of the situation, but rather moving from one target to the next so fast that they had trouble predicting where he would go next and lining up a shot to take them down.

To make matters worse, the two giant white Knights were bashing the others with sword, shield, and fist, taking many plasma strikes to their shields and armor, but covered as they were they were almost impossible to take down unless you could flank them…and between the two of them they kept each other’s back covered, making the pair even harder to kill.

Given time the lizards could have maybe managed the takedown with enough numbers and a good strategy, but with Paul jumping to and fro as a wildcard they didn’t stand a chance. A couple of near misses singed his armor, but beyond that they couldn’t hit him with so much tree cover available. He used it better than they did, ambushing them when their backs were turned or catching them on the run…for as many that were fighting them, even more were simply rushing past trying to get at the entrance using hoard tactics.

This more than anything kept Paul virtually unscathed and he pressed his advantage, knowing he had to take down as many as possible before they circled around the edge of the hill and assaulted the entrance. The two Archons and three Knights he had guarding it would soak up most of them, but hammer them enough and they’d be forced to retreat inside else face plasma blasts at point blank range. As good as their armor was, it couldn’t stand up to much of that.

Paul wacked another lizard in the face as it ran past so hard that he heard its neck snap, never mind the stun charge being delivered. He then brought the hilt of the sword forward and punched another with it before snapping the blade back down on the third as he ran between them, making himself as much of a moving target as possible all the while staying within a loose radius around the Knights. If they got separated they would be more vulnerable, and they’d already lost enough people by now that he didn’t want to risk any more by getting sloppy with his battle spacing.

He tripped another lizard with his booted foot then brought his sword down on top of its chest, knocking the wind out of it while rendering it unconscious as a large explosion on the other side of the colony shot a plume of smoke and debris in the air. Paul saw it in his peripheral vision but couldn’t slow down to take a proper look, knowing that it meant trouble and that he had enough enemies in front of him right now to deal with.

A group of a dozen or so lizards ran past his position, heading for the Knights a few meters back with one of them taking a shot at Paul. He saw the rifle being raised at him and flicked his sword out to redirect the blast…which hit another lizard in the back as Paul stepped forward and downed the shooter with a quick kick to the chest. Another two steps forward and he jabbed it with his sword as he saw a backpack wearing lizard slip past him.

He punched another with his free hand then ran backwards, looking for the pack and finding it three lizards ahead of him in the flow. He chased it around the hill, knocking down all those in his path with either fist or sword and got to it just as he was entering the entrance kill zone.

Paul jumped at it and grabbed it by the shoulders, pulling it to the ground as blue plasma flashed by, hitting other lizards. As they hit the ground he reached an arm up around its neck, felt the familiar tension and jerked, killing it before the lizard could find the detonation button. He’d have to thank Jason for insisting that they implement the training dummies in all the sanctums so they could practice the unarmed killing blow that his friend had taught himself after running out of ammo against the Chinese back on Luna two centuries ago.

A gout of green plasma hit Paul in the left calf as he extricated himself from the lizard corpse. Before he could get to his feet he threw his sword at the shooter, taking it down as the tip hit the creature in the chest and soaked the stun charge right through its armor. Another lizard fired at him, missing a half meter to the left as Paul clawed his way to his feet, getting tripped up in the backpack wearer’s tail momentarily.

Before the lizards could shoot him again one of the Knights from the entrance ran out and implanted his shield in the soft ground in front of Paul, then began punching the nearby lizards, breaking bones on impact or delivering a stun charge through his armor’s gloves as all Knights were capable of doing.

Paul kicked the tail aside and stood up behind the shield, pulling his rifle off the clasp on his back and firing on the nearest lizards as he walked out to where his sword lay. Without a word of thanks he and the Knight both kept on fighting, the latter of which quickly retrieved his shield and used it as a weapon in its own right, crushing alien after alien with its narrow, armor-hard edge as he fought his way back towards the entrance.

Paul pushed up to the edge of the hill, taking down six more lizards on the way to bring himself out of the firing line. As soon as he did the blue plasma fire behind him increased, mowing down more of the lizards as they swung around the corner, often tripping over the bodies of their comrades. Paul spied another backpack wearer and took it down with a sword blow across the knees, not wanting to hit the pack even with stun energy for fear of it going off. He didn’t know what kind of explosives it contained, but from earlier reports one had vaporized most of the armor off a Knight, so he knew that him being anywhere close to the point of detonation would be lethal.

Paul hopped over one of the bodies he’d downed earlier and fought his way upstream, bashing everything that came within range of his sword until he got into a comfortable position to use as a killing zone. With the pair of Knights behind him, picking up some of what got by, Paul took the brunt of the attack and broke it up expertly.

Juking left and right, jumping out from behind trees at random, and never staying in the same spot, the Archon staked out a nice little patch of ground through which the somewhat orderly enemy formation totally crumbled. Most of the lizards still got by him, but they got to the Knights with gaps in their spacing and their attention focused back on him, sometimes allowing them to be taken by surprise. He took some more plasma hits in the process, but he was breaking them up sufficiently that the guards at the entrance had begun to advance with another Archon coming up to assist the Knights.

A few hundred bodies later the reinforcements ran out. Paul didn’t know where they’d all come from, but he was glad for at least a little respite…not that he was going to take more than a few seconds of it.

“Control, report,” he asked over the comm.

“Paul, we’ve got a security breach, south side. It’s contained at the moment, but there’s a big entry hole blasted in the side of the building that they can pour reinforcements in at their leisure. All entrances are currently engaged and holding, but I don’t have anyone to cover the new one they made.”

“We’re clear here. Where exactly is the hole?”

“High side on the west, off the warehouse. That’s where we’ve got them pinned for now.”

“Copy. Redeploying now.”

“You, with me,” Paul said, pointing to the Archon. “You two, stay here and deal with the bodies. Weapons go over to the exit and stay sharp.”

Paul glanced at Kali-1388 and tilted his head, indicating that she should follow as he ran off around the perimeter of the colony through the narrow, treeless gap that allowed them good footing and a chance to get up to speed. He glanced back over his shoulder to see that she was keeping up, then accelerated a bit further, seeing how fast she could go.

He found out sooner rather than later, having to cut his speed back a bit so he didn’t lose her as they came out around the northwest corner of the roughly rectangular complex. He pulled a tight left and began running downhill towards the creek as he saw another assault taking place 100 meters or so below them.

Paul found her comm tag on his heads up display and isolated the comm from him to her. “Blow through, hit what you can on the way. We’re going up the far side.”

“Copy, boss,” she said, her breathing heavy as she struggled to keep up with the lightning fast Archon. The stories of his speed hadn’t been exaggerated in the least.

Paul reached back and pulled his rifle off his back as he ran, then at the last moment he ducked off into the trees, disappearing from Kali’s view. She followed him in, then saw him shoot three lizards that hadn’t yet reached the entrance fight. He got a fourth before he ran past, drawing several more after him and away from the entrance defenders.

Kali got one on the way in, then killed the four that had veered off to follow Paul. She lost sight of the Archon so she decided to move back over to the perimeter clearing. When she did she saw him way on up ahead, sprinting faster than she thought possible and launching himself across the creek/river.

He fell in 3/4 of the way across, sinking in up to his knees but remaining upright as he trudged the rest of the way out then began to climb the shallow hill on the other side up towards the smoking entrance where Kali could see a line of lizards entering their home.

She pushed back at her fatigue and launched herself towards the water with as much speed as she could muster, but she only made it halfway out through the air, sinking below the waterline at the deeper center and having to swim/walk her way up to the opposite shore fighting the strong, muddy current. When she got out the Archon saw Paul already up this side of the ravine and tossing lizards left and right as he broke through the fighting at a lower entryway, bypassing the trio of Knights holding this attack at bay and sprinting up the hillside towards the others.

Kali followed as quickly as she could, taking the time to shoot half a dozen of the lizards assaulting the Knights as that attacking line began to thin out. She saw there was just a handful left, so she continued up the hillside towards Paul who was swinging away with his sword at the blast site, surrounded by a sea of the shorter creatures. Several flashes of plasma were visible, then Paul cut off into the woods where she couldn’t see him.

Climbing the muddy terrain wasn’t easy, but she made it up the hillside quickly enough with one of the Knights trailing her now that their previous battle was over. She shot two of the lizards at range as she ran, but the numbers still pouring in made her sick to her stomach. Their security forces were average and competent, but throw too many numbers at them and they’d crack…especially when they didn’t have strongpoints to work out of. This breach point was behind their internal lines, meaning they’d probably been caught off guard by the first wave. She only hoped that they’d recovered their cohesion and were now holding the lizards at bay from running around and shooting everyone in sight…or worse.

 When she got to the blast zone she shot another two, then stepped up next to a thick tree that had half its trunk blown out and hid behind it, shooting the next lizard that came past in the back. She did the same to several more who were so focused on getting into the colony that they didn’t bother to look behind them.

One must have seen her plasma fire as it approached, because as soon as it cleared the tree it turned on her and fired. It was close enough that she was able to knock its weapon aside with a reflexive punch to the barrel, then she brought her knee up into its chest and knocked it back to the ground where she shot it dead before turning and killing another one approaching with three well placed shots to its center of mass.

Kali took up her ambush position behind the blasted tree and worked to increase her kill count, wondering how many had gotten inside and where Paul had gone off to.

His sword now empty of any stun charge, Paul resolved to use it as a bludgeon as he ambushed wave after wave of the lizards. There were so many coming in he really wanted to know where they were coming from but couldn’t take the time to look around. He had to kill or disable as many as he could to stem the tide, otherwise the defenders inside would be in a world of hurt, if they weren’t already.

He reattached his sword to the latch on his armor’s beltline and pulled his rifle back into his grasp, firing off a few more shots at range to thin the numbers he was taking hand to hand. His ammo was running dangerously low, but without any stun left in his sword he couldn’t take the lizards down fast enough so he had to risk it. Once the plasma ammo was gone, he’d be completely unarmed and unable to do any considerable damage.

Before his rifle ran out, though, Kali appeared behind him, fighting back up the stream of incoming lizards as Harrison ran up behind her and tossed him a spare ammo pack. Paul caught the narrow container and quickly knocked the butt off his own rifle, slamming the new pack back in its place and dropping the empty one to the ground. The rifle was designed to use the rear ammo first, and he didn’t know how much remained in the forward compartment, but now that didn’t matter. With three of them forcing their way up the lizard wave the creatures didn’t stand much of a chance.

This hoard was considerably thinner than those attacking at other points on the perimeter, making him wonder how late to the party he’d gotten here.

“Inside?” he asked Harrison.

“All clear, Knight at the entrance,” the Archon said, firing away rapidly as the seemingly suicidal lizards continued to try and run past them with only 1 in 3 actually firing back.

“Kali, hang back,” Paul ordered as he ran up ahead, shooting wildly and letting a few slip past in order to gain ground. “Harrison, on my left. Let’s backtrack these bastards and see where they’re coming from.”

“Already found their LZ,” Harrison said, jogging forward to his Clan leader’s left firing at every lizard that came within range, two shots minimum on each with him often cycling back around to add fire on the downed ones. “Four kirbies on the ground. Called in an airstrike and it got hammered from orbit. They either brought in more or picked another LZ.”

“All these from kirbies?” Paul asked, gunning down one and smashing the face of another with his left fist as he ran past. In his peripheral vision he could see Kali following them several dozen meters back cleaning up the stragglers with impunity.

“All that I…saw,” Harrison said as he got knocked aside by a lizard that, focused on Paul, ran right into the Archon’s legs. He shot it in the head as it bounced off, but it caused him to veer into a tree in the process.

Three dozen lizards later and the stream ended, but the tracks in the ground didn’t so Paul sped up and followed them back through the forest more than a kilometer before they saw a pair of kirbies lifting off from another makeshift landing zone with the trees having been knocked over by either the descending craft or close in weapons fire.

Behind them they saw four more kirbies on the ground, each taking their turn to rise up through the hole that’d been punched in the canopy. This wasn’t the same LZ that Harrison had tagged, but it was eerily similar. Knowing they couldn’t be detected on sensors, the lizards were using the trees as cover, having stashed at least 9 transports here by Paul’s count as they lifted off.

No more came in to land, but by the time the Archon trio actually set foot in the clearing it became obvious that they’d had more than nine landed at one time. Paul ran around the area, taking a basic survey of the site and, based off the smaller trees that had been felled underneath the larger ones, he guessed that there’d been at least 20 here.

That explained their number of ground troops in play, but where on Earth were they hiding all the cruisers.

“Control, do we have skeets in the air?”

“We lost two, but the rest are in pursuit of a flock of kirbies leaving the engagement.”

“Ground status?”

“We’re clear, for now.”

“Have the det packs recovered from the corpses.”

“What about the survivors?”

“Do we have the claw restraints ready?”

“Some of them.”

“Have them rounded up then. Makeshift prison in the surrounding woods. I don’t want them inside again.”

“Copy that. Lead skeets are reporting a pair of cruisers on the ground to the northeast, range 220 kilometers.”

“Are they running?”

“Not yet.”

“Order the skeets to shoot down as many kirbies as they can, but to stay clear of the cruisers. We can tackle those beehives later if they don’t run.”

“We’ve got help coming from the Star Foxes. You want me to tell them to turn back?”

“Yes. If we can keep those cruisers on the ground then at least we will know where they are. Mark their location and we’ll send in a reconnaissance unit later.”

“Copy.”

Paul turned to the other Archons. “Head on back. If it twitches, it dies. We’ll round up any unconscious ones when security teams get out here, until then we can’t take any chances. Grab as many of their weapons as you can and work your way back to base.”

6

May 6, 2262

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Paul was in the Clan Saber sanctum when the attack began, holding a handstand pose in the otherwise quiet training chamber. It was one of his meditative drills, forcing calm against sustained effort, and unlike most Archon workouts totally silent.

He heard the faint rumbles all the way inside the colony, and after two seconds of running through all the possible sources for the sound he bent his knees and came down out of his handstand and took off running out of the chamber and the sanctum, headed for the armory.

“Paul, you there?” a voice asked through his earpiece, which he now wore nearly round the clock.

“Where are we getting hit?” he asked back, running down a staircase and taking the opportunity to double step it down at the end of each section as he descended four flights.

“No kirbies this time. We’ve got a cruiser on our front door and it’s pounding the prisoner camp.”

“And our turrets?”

“We’re hitting it with everything in range, but they don’t seem to care.”

“Target the kirbies coming down to the surface,” he said, jumping off the last four steps and running down towards the room where his armor was kept. “Don’t let those bastards get their people back…and hit the detach points when they come off the ship, their shields will be temporarily weakened or lowered  at those points enough to get a few shots on the hull.”

“No, Paul, you don’t get it. They’re not freeing the captives, they’re targeting the captives.”

For a second Paul didn’t respond, a sick feeling creeping up into his stomach. The few prisoners they’d captured earlier, first with a downed kirby before he arrived insystem, then a scattering of others left behind after other raids, had tried to kill their captors every chance they got. The few that escaped into the forest but were left behind by their transports would wait and watch for an opportunity to strike, meaning they had to clean out the forest after each attack to make sure there were no more lurking about.

Those that were captured and failed to find a way to strike back at them had committed suicide, slicing their own throats with their retractable claws. Paul didn’t like to be burdened by prisoners he couldn’t even communicate with, but they weren’t just going to go out and smoke all the ones they’d stun during combat. Recently they’d developed a lock-like hand guard that would cover each of the lizard’s claw extraction points like gloves but otherwise wouldn’t inhibit their movement. Most of the prisoners they’d taken in the assault on the colony had been contained in this manner in a confinement area to the west, hacked out of the forest just days ago.

They’d installed prefabricated walls in a large square, floor plates covering the dirt so they couldn’t dig their way out, and set prefab buildings on top of them. One third of the large square, along the near side, was sectioned off by an inner wall that separated guards from prisoners…as well as holding several concealed turrets. Paul had expected the lizard’s to come back to pound the Sabers again for their recent success in defending the colony and had sought to deflect that attack by putting their prisoners in a somewhat vulnerable position that they could be rescued from so they could ambush the rescuers.

He hadn’t expected them to come to kill their own…but then again the fact that the lizards wouldn’t eat or drink anything in their captivity and their willingness to kill themselves should have told him that ‘prisoner’ wasn’t in their lexicon.

“The guards?” Paul asked, quickly punching the access code into the console on the doorjamb to gain entry.

“They got a lot of rockets off, but the cruiser’s cannons are ripping the entire place apart. Our defense turrets and skeets just took part of their shield down but they’re not moving off. They’re razing the prison to the ground.”

“Keep hitting it,” Paul said as he ran over to his locker and pulled out the pieces of his silver armor, some of which had to be replaced after suffering plasma damage in the recent battle.

“Should we try an orbital strike?”

“No. If someone is holed up in the prison or escaped into the forest we’re not going to risk killing them. If the cruiser moves off more than a kilometer fire away, but shoot wide,” he said, snapping on his forearm gauntlets. “Is it just the one cruiser?”

“As far as we can see, yes.”

“Does it have docked kirbies?”

“No…not on the underside anyway.”

“Damn it. Stay sharp, there may be more in play,” Paul said, pulling on his chest piece and snapping it tight over the light training uniform he was wearing. He continued to suit up as fast as he could, listening to updates as Control provided them. By the time his acolyte armor was completely on he received word that the cruiser, badly damaged and smoking from a severe hull breach thanks to the colony’s defense turrets, was retreating back the way it’d come.

“Keep an eye on the perimeter,” Paul said, walking into the colony’s control room in full armor, helmet and all. “Do we have orbital tracking on the target?”

“Yes,” a woman dressed in Clan Saber security force blues said, looking down at her terminal.

“Standby orbital bombardment…what’s its current track?”

“It’s on a direct line to alpha point.”

Paul nodded. “Let it go.”

“Sir?”

“A hunch,” he said, pulling his helmet off. “Find out where those kirbies got off to.”

“Lookout says all clear, no movement.”

“They’re playing us,” he said, looking across the main holographic map. Several pinpricks out in the forest were spread around a ground zone claimed by the lizards. They had at least 3 grounded cruisers there and had been staging raids out of them for weeks. Paul had expected them to run when they were discovered but they hadn’t, which he expected was some type of a goad. In response they’d ignored the lizards’ base, not firing so much as a missile against it, but quietly setting up surveillance posts kilometers away to keep an eye on them.

They’d gotten a few heads ups before attacks thanks to the intel, but they still couldn’t track where the ships were going unless they predictably flew a straight line. Sometimes they did, other times they didn’t. Paul had a feeling that the enemy commander was feeling them out, giving them various looks to see how they responded, and he wanted to thwart that effort as much as possible.

The lizards killing their own troops this way struck him as wrong, but it also made a bit of sense. They’d deliberately walked their cruiser into their field of fire to get at the prisoners. Maybe they didn’t know how bad they were going to get hit…which might also have been a test of the colony’s defenses…but they didn’t retreat or attack the towers once their shields had been breached. They arrogantly held their position, blasting away at the prison until they were satisfied then turned to leave without so much as firing a single shot back at the towers.

It was arrogant, cruel, and a demonstration of their strength to show that they could walk right up to their door, do what they wanted, then leave as if the damage done to their ship was inconsequential. But it also suggested one other thing to Paul.

The lizards didn’t take to failure.

The more he thought it through the more he began to feel that this prison razing wasn’t about hurting them, but rather an internal matter. The assault force had failed, with a good number of them captured. It almost seemed like they were ashamed of having to come out here and clean up the mess, taking the licks for destroying those who should either have been victorious or died fighting.

Paul couldn’t be sure, but he was starting to get a feel for their psychological profile. It could very well be that all of these raids and attacks were training missions to assess their own people, which would explain why they weren’t hitting them in force, though the raids had been gradually increasing in scope.

Then again, it could be that the enemy was just cautious, not wanting to waste resources against an opponent they knew nothing about. If they were testing Star Force, then a larger assault could be right around the corner…which was all the more reason to keep them guessing.

“Confirm coordinates of alpha point and how many ships are on target.”

It took a moment for the control room staff to contact their scouts and retrieve the information, but when they did Paul saw that nothing had changed since the last report.

“Dac…power up the cruiser’s rail gun,” he said to one of the remote pilots for Clan Saber’s orbiting fleet.

“Target?” the man asked, eagerly working the controls of his ship, which had been hovering over the colony out beyond the atmosphere on gravity drives for the better part of 2 days. It and a destroyer were on station, with one ship rotating out each day for another fully fueled and armed warship, keeping close range orbital bombardment capability available over the Clan Saber colony and adjacent areas, including alpha point and the Clan Star Fox colony.

“Poke the bee hive…single round. Then stand by. Inform the spotters. If we miss I want calibrations.”

“Heavy or light?” Dac asked, referring to the two different rail gun mounts on their cruiser.

“Heavy. I want this to sting.”

“Lookout reports ready.”

“Firing,” Dac said, hitting a button to target the designated coordinates…though from his console there was nothing on sensors down there to shoot at.

Paul waited a few heartbeats, then the report came through. It was a miss.

“Again,” Paul prompted.

The rectangular cube that was the Clan Saber cruiser in low ‘orbit’ readjusted its firing reticle to the left about 250 meters on the surface, using the internal alignment modification that the weapon possessed for less than 2 degrees of firing arc rather than adjusting the entire ship’s attitude. Gyrostabilizers kept the ship locked into place for the micro-realignment then another metallic slug fell to the surface like rain, kicking the cruiser back upwards slightly from the recoil, which required a slight puff of thrusters to correct for as it set up for a third shot.

“Shield impact. No penetration.”

Paul nodded, but said nothing, merely waiting for more than a minute.

“Movement?”

The woman shook her head.

“Another round.”

Paul waited as it fell to the ground, seeing the sensor track of the slug but not its targets. The wounded cruiser was still registering, but it was still far away from alpha point making a lazy return to those surface coordinates.

“Still no response.”

“Shield penetration?”

“Negative, but Lookout reports they’re overstressed.”

“Two rounds this time,” Paul ordered.

On the hologram he saw the first one fired and fall down towards the surface, then a second launched a few seconds later. When it hit the ground a small contact took its place, telling Paul they’d hit and damaged the hull on one of the ships enough for sensors to pick it up.

“Tagged it,” Dac reported.

“Good work. Movement?”

The woman conferred with Outlook on the other end of a private comm line then shook her head. Paul studied the map for a moment, admiring the lizards’ resolve. Were they just going to sit there and keep getting hit? If they were he could bring down enough firepower to destroy them all…

His eyes glanced to the orbital tracks around the planet, seeing what other ships he had nearby.

“Dac, ten more rounds as fast as you can send them, then pull back. Nate, you too. Head to these coordinates,” Paul said, tagging a rendezvous point in orbit a few hundred miles higher in altitude via the map controls. “Everyone else with a ship nearby get there ASAP.”

On the map the first of the cruiser’s additional ten slugs began to fall on the target while the destroyer icon began to creep up in altitude. All across the moving orbital tracks ships began to redeploy, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

Paul walked over to another section of the control room, this one was an adjunct that held an open doorway between them, but otherwise was self-contained. He walked inside and stepped up to the podium, powering up the command nexus. Suddenly the room’s walls and doorway were overshadowed by a holographic display, blocking out everything save for a few silhouettes behind him.

The glowing images represented a tactical map of the star system, with Paul located somewhere inside the orbit of the third planet. He zoomed in to Corneria, seeing the tracking data for all their ships popping up as the size of the holographic planet increased. Star Force had dozens of orbital facilities, including three shipyards, which the bulk of their fleet was protecting.

Taking off his armored gloves he input his designator code, which would give his identification tag along with any orders issued from this terminal, then assumed priority command over all naval assets within planetary orbit, giving those within range orders to transfer to the rendezvous point as quickly as possible.

All across the map Star Force and Clan ships responded almost instantly, readjusting from their current orbits and beginning to make the fuel expensive trek on plasma engines alone for most of them, given that they were descending towards the planet’s gravity well rather than repelling from it.

The Excalibur, however, was stationed in orbit around Dxun, giving it something to push off against as it raced towards the curve of the planet. The moon wasn’t directly overhead, but it was near enough that if this engagement lasted very long the battleship would be able to join in the attack. Regardless, the closer it was to the battle the less lag time there would be for the remote pilots to deal with.

After giving the orders Paul waited and watched. Either the lizards would break from the surface, let his bombarding ships go, or launch the attack they’d been planning for more than a week.

At first it seemed as if they’d successfully gotten away after delivering significant hull damage to one of the cruisers on the surface. On a side monitor that floated in space off his right shoulder he could see a faint trail of smoke rising from alpha point, courtesy of the spotters, visually marking the position of the damaged ship mostly hidden by the tall trees. It didn’t move, even after taking 8 of the 10 additional slugs, making Paul worry a bit more.

During the Saber cruiser’s retreat up to the rendezvous point the icon for the ship began to flash red, indicating that it had come under attack, but no enemy targets were visible on sensors. Paul’s jaw clenched as he realized he’d guessed right and he quickly typed up a ‘fighting retreat’ order to the pilot in the next room and sent it via the console rather than yelling it out or walking over to him.

Paul pulled up another holographic panel containing the cruiser’s sensor data and visuals. He flipped through the various camera angles as the ship began firing every weapon it possessed at the lizard cruiser trailing it. The Archon could clearly make out its tiny figure at range as it fired gouts of plasma that impacted the aft shields of the remote-controlled warship, but they didn’t go down as quickly as the others had in previous engagements, for this was a much larger ship with stronger shield generators.

An order to the destroyer came next and it reversed its course, or rather slowed its ascent so the cruiser could catch up, then picked up the laser lock the cruiser had on the enemy and added a long range missile salvo of its own as the gap narrowed.

The Saber cruiser was hammering away with missiles as well, thanks to the painting lasers that had been recalibrated to pick up the disruption in the enemy’s shields on contact. That little upgrade had been due to the Star Force scientists on planet and a little quality time with a captured kirby from early on in the fighting. The laser wouldn’t show up against the hull armor, which sucked up most of the excessive reflectability needed for range finding, but the slight disruption it caused in the shields had been amplified enough that they could track the enemy when their defenses were raised…if they knew where to point the laser.

The destroyer’s missiles didn’t pick up the lock until they were already halfway to target, traveling on a predetermined flight path until they came within range. Most of them were shot down by the lizard’s anti-missile defenses but some did get through, along with some from the Clan cruiser and peppered the enemy’s shields enough that the ship momentarily showed up on conventional sensors.

When it did the destroyer fired a rail gun slug at it, passing by the friendly cruiser at less than a kilometer to starboard. The slug hit a few moments before the incoming green plasma orbs were countered by the light blue streaks now firing back from the Saber cruiser as the enemy closed its range, accelerating faster than the Clan ship was capable of.

Finally the lizard plasma broke through the cruiser’s shields, beginning to eat into the hull armor as the destroyer fired more rail gun rounds down on the pair of equally massed ships from range, doing what it could to counter the mismatch. The Clan cruiser was much more compact, thus needing a smaller shield area for cover, but the lizard’s tech was so far ahead of Star Force’s that that little caveat didn’t matter. The lizard cruiser kept closing in, its plasma blasts becoming more deadly with every meter it approached, and hammered the cruiser as flight after flight of short range missiles began pouring in from the destroyer, too many for the lizards to shoot down.

The Clan cruiser also emptied its missile bays, sensing its impending death. The lizard ship was overwhelmed with explosions, forming a visible sheath around its hull that eventually was penetrated when its shields fell shortly before it delivered a fatal blow to the Clan cruiser with a nearly point blank salvo of plasma…three specifically placed orbs that expanded upon a breach in the Herculium armor and gutted the internal workings of the ship aft of the midline.

Its gravity drive cut out and the lizard cruiser had to go evasive to avoid being hit as its engines were still forcing it to climb up the orbital track. One plasma cannon remained operational on the Clan cruiser and took the opportunity to hit the unshielded portion of the lizard’s hull as it passed by, then the battery was targeted and taken out, leaving the cruiser no more than floating debris in space.

With the destroyer approaching within plasma range and still firing off rail gun slugs, targeting the small hull breaches in the lizards’ hull, a second wave of green plasma orbs came at it from a different angle as another lizard cruiser made its appearance.

Paul ground his teeth together, seeing the trap for what it was. The lizards wanted a ground base and were prepared to defend it, having stationed ships within striking capability of his orbiting fleet should they come low enough for bombardment…but they hadn’t struck until the rail guns had opened fire, though they’d been in position to do so for some time.

A quick order via his console told the destroyer to break off and run for the rendezvous point, which it did but the speed of the enemy cruisers were nearly its equal, leaving it within the enemy’s plasma range while still being out of its own…and with no more missiles left to fire all it had to work with was its rail gun against their two cruisers worth of plasma cannons.

Paul knew they were going to lose it, but the idea was to get the enemy up to his other ships which were now starting to assemble. Seeing some of their positions he began typing out new orders on the terminal to get them into the exact alignment he wanted…wandering as he did how many more enemy cruisers were lurking in wait.

7

The lizards didn’t take the bait. After the destroyer pulled them sufficiently far out away from the planet they turned off, leaving the wounded ship be and disappeared from Paul’s view again. The destroyer’s functioning camera saw them returning back down into the atmosphere, shrinking into tiny dots too small to track with the laser rangefinders. The slightly wounded cruiser remained on sensors for a while then it too disappeared as the range increased.

That told Paul a bit more about their battle strategy. Whereas some of their raids might have appeared to be reckless, he was beginning to suspect that they were indeed all calculated attacks. These two lizard cruisers had driven off the orbital bombardment, destroyed one of his cruisers, then retreated back into anonymity. They were sticking to a scripted battle plan, which meant they were more organized than ruthlessly aggressive.

With a whisk of keystrokes he sent out new orders. All those ships within his assembling armada with gravity drives capable of hover mode were directed to resume orbital bombardment position. The others were instructed to rendezvous with the Excalibur in a higher orbit, using the orbital drift to offset their engine limitations while holding position over the surface well in from the geosync point.

Positioning the ships took time, but the lizards didn’t interfere. Wherever their ambushing ships were positioned he didn’t know, but this resumed attack was either going to draw them out again or allow them to dislodge the surface ships, one way or another.

Once all 12 of his ships were aligned appropriately he issued the command to fire, first a ranging shot coordinating with the spotters on the ground, then a full hailstorm of metallic slugs coming down on the three grounded ships. Their shields didn’t hold up long, with multiple hull breaches appearing that tagged the ships on sensors, allowing for even more precise targeting.

Paul waited for the ambushers to arrive, and he wasn’t disappointed. In less than a minute one of the destroyers spotted one on approach and tagged it with a laser. As per his previously issued orders all bombardment ceased and the ships began to gain altitude while holding formation and gaining lateral speed using their ‘forward’ engines so as to keep all rail guns pointed behind them. The movement also forced the pursuing lizard ships to come at them from the same general direction, that being aft, rather than face an assault from multiple sides.

Meanwhile the waiting fleet above began diving down towards the lower orbit that the bombardment fleet was rising up to. In half an hour or so the two would meet up, battleship included after a short delay. Paul knew the lizards could track their approach and he wondered how far they would press the attack before retreating again…in which case he would have his fleet move back in and restart the surface bombardment.

Watching the position of his ships carefully he issued a few additional orders, mostly establishing lines of fire to the approaching ships. Three lizard cruisers were tagged before the first one came within plasma range, but Paul had the rail guns in his fleet all targeted on the first one’s approach, peppering its approach vector with slugs, most of which missed, but those that didn’t damaged its forward shields enough that they were in serious jeopardy by the time the cruiser launched its first plasma salvo.

Another data point for Paul. The lizard’s plasma orbs had a longer range than his fleet’s plasma lances, but it seemed that the enemy didn’t possess any long range weaponry, meaning that their rail guns gave the Humans a tactical advantage. That was crucial, but Paul was also looking to see if the aliens had any weaponry other than plasma variants. So far they hadn’t shown any, and if that was the case it meant their orbital bombardment would go unchallenged, given that the ships on the surface couldn’t fire plasma up through 80 miles of atmosphere.

As he watched, more and more rail gun slugs hit the approaching cruiser, given that its silhouette was increasing in size as it approached. A second cruiser opened fire as it came in range, but Paul kept all his ships targeting the first. They needed a kill in this engagement, otherwise the repeated assaults would work to the enemy’s advantage, costing the Humans ships each rotation while the lizards took hull damage only.

By the time one of the Clan Samus destroyers had its shields battered down the rail gun slugs targeting the cruiser were doing significant damage, so much so that the forward edge was throwing off three separate plumes of smoke from where sections of the hull had been torn off. Paul kept fire on it, even as the other cruisers began to pound his ships, killing a corvette with little effort then moving on to another destroyer.

The damaged lizard cruiser didn’t veer off and try to retreat, instead it charged directly into the Star Force formation, cutting across the firing lines and taking several of the rail guns out of position, for the ships would have had to maneuver to reposition their guns. New orders were coming into them to reposition for an attack on another cruiser anyway, so the hail of metallic shards suddenly ceased as the blocky ships rotated around slightly and began launching on another ship, the fourth coming in and the most distant away, making for the best firing lines.

The first cruiser wasn’t let be, however. The plasma cannons on the drone warships had a much greater firing angle and every ship within the small armada pounded the shieldless cruiser. Several of the docked kirbies detached and began attacking on their own, but the gunners kept their aim on the knife-like cruiser, hammering it until all return fire ceased and the ship drifted out the back of the formation, its engines no longer functioning.

Paul stared at the holographic display, tagging the ship’s location and dispatching another ship, far out of range of the battle, to intercept the debris and ensure that it was truly dead. Based on the calculated trajectory it had a dozen or so orbits until it fell into the atmosphere, but Paul wanted to ensure that their first capital ship kill remained dead. He didn’t know what their repair rate was, nor how many of them were still alive on the fractured ship, and he didn’t want to take chances.

With two more lizard cruisers now coming straight in towards the formation Paul diverted two frigates off rail gun duty and had them fly across the top of the formation…which was still accelerating up to a higher orbit…and gain some additional altitude. From this upper vantage point out and away from the bigger ships the frigates could target the topsides of the cruisers, offering a much better angle and giving the lizards a choice…let them pick at their broadsides or chase them up, momentarily leaving the rest of the ships alone.

The lizards chose the former, heading straight in towards the larger ships, offering Paul yet another data point. He ordered the frigates to fall even further back and target the ships with their rail guns, minimizing the effective range of the enemy’s plasma while insuring good target profiles as the rest of the fleet continued to hammer the more distant cruiser.

Paul lost another destroyer before they succeeded in breaching the shields on their current target, further diminishing his fleet’s kill power. The remaining 6 ships kept their firing lines on the distant cruiser while their plasma guns targeted one of the nearer ships, hammering away at its shields while the pair of frigates hit it with rail guns from above. The intercept with their reinforcements was minutes away, and Paul wondered how long the lizards were going to keep this up before retreating.

Smoke began billowing out of the 4th cruiser as the slugs began hitting more frequently as it approached and added its intact plasma batteries to the fight, targeting the leading destroyer with several long range bolts of green that splashed over the Star Force warship’s shields, having been partially dispersed by the range involved. Meanwhile that destroyer was pouring all of its plasma fire and missile barrages into the nearest cruiser along with the other ships, bringing its shields down and allowing one of the rail gun slugs from above to blast a new crater in the top, knocking free one of the docked kirbies while the others suddenly broke off from the mothership and joined the others flying around the engagement zone picking at Paul’s ships’ shields or hull armor where it’d been exposed.

The Archon input a new command into the terminal and waited intently, wondering how the lizards would respond. From above one of the two frigates cut out its gravity drives and hammered its plasma engines, building up speed as it crossed the few kilometers between itself and the cruiser with its forward shields down. Aiming for that section of the enemy ship, the frigate fired its rail gun, plasma cannons, and missiles absentmindedly as the pilot on the surface of Corneria paid close attention to its flight path.

From his vantage point mid fleet, looking out at the battle from a conglomeration of sensor data from all the ships involved, he saw his frigate come down nose first on top of the cruiser. Its speed wasn’t what he’d consider ballistic, but that much mass couldn’t be ignored and the two ships deformed around the impact point. The blunt end of the frigate cut into the prow of the cruiser, crumpling the rest of the box-like ship as it sank into the yellow/tan hull…with debris blowing out the bottom side.

The cruiser tilted down, having been knocked askew by the impact with what was left of the frigate now lodged firmly into its hull and protruding out of both sides. All weapons fire against the ship immediately shifted to the other cruiser, while the lizard’s own batteries stopped firing save for two along the aft end.

Now outgunned, with Star Force reinforcements less than thirty seconds away from reliable rail gun range, the lizard cruiser accelerated hard against the planet’s gravity well, pushing it up into an even higher altitude, bringing it ironically closer to the approaching ships for a few seconds before its acceleration made any rail gun shots untenable. It continued the panicked acceleration up and away from the battle while the surviving five ships turned their attention on the damaged cruiser as it also tried to turn and run.

The other frigate, however, moved in close and blocked its path, firing away at point blank range with its plasma cannons and missiles while taking a return salvo right in the face. Its shields didn’t last long, but it kept the high altitude escape route blocked, forcing the ship to instead try and head back down to the surface.

Suddenly an impact on the top of the cruisers hull blew a narrow hole in the hull with daylight visible on the opposite side. One of the remaining plasma cannon batteries suddenly cut out, having lost power, as did the ship’s engines. Its attempted retreat stalled before it could gain much momentum, leaving the ship to drift as another superheavy rail gun slug hit it from above, courtesy of the Excalibur.

Plasma blasts from the armada finished off the cruiser before the reinforcements could close within plasma range, with Paul quickly informing them to stop firing rail guns to conserve ammunition. They were to use only their plasma cannons on arrival to help sweep up the kirbies still buzzing around his ships like flies, doing what damage they could with their small weapons.  

Thinking ahead, he sent out a recovery order for their warship debris, which the local SRs would get to quickly enough. He assigned a warship escort along with the order, then began pulling in more ships from elsewhere in planetary orbit, needing to reset the playing board before the lizards took advantage of the situation.

He’d hoped to get 1 kill out of the engagement, in addition to valuable data on how the enemy fought. Instead he’d gotten 3, along with their first sizeable victory. Proud as he was for that, he knew from past records that the lizards didn’t take defeat lightly and the possibility of a reprisal was high.

In the meantime he had an orbital bombardment to resume and three damage ships on the surface to kill, if they hadn’t already gotten wise and retreated.

8

May 8, 2262

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Rafa stepped over another charred piece of lizard ship armor, only to hear his boot crunch on some type of solidified goo. It looked like glass, but he was unsure of what it actually was. What had once been the forest floor at alpha point was now a junkyard. The lizards had removed all the trees in the area before Paul had finished pounding them from orbit, driving off two and destroying one of the grounded cruisers. That one lay in pieces everywhere, but now that they were on the ground searching for and eradicating any survivors, they saw there was more than just the ship remains on site.

Rafa, like the other three trailblazers, had been hesitant to put out hunt to kill orders on lizard survivors, but after their brief experience with their previous captives they’d decided they were too intractable to try and contain. If and when they were ever able to communicate with them they would try again. They would not hold all members of their race to stereotypes, but until then if the lizards wanted to attack without mercy then they were going to return the favor.

There had been several who’d attempted to ambush them just after the first Mantis landed. The skeet squadrons circling above and around alpha point couldn’t spot individuals in the forest or make out much from the debris field, so when the first transport unloaded a scattering of lizards came out of whatever holes they’d been hiding in and flung themselves at the Humans.

Fortunately the first Mantis on ground had an Archon team aboard, otherwise there would have been casualties. They took a few plasma blasts to their armor but quickly eliminated the ambushers. Rafa had come in with a later team of security force snipers, who set up on site for both fire support and surveillance in the trees and some of the higher debris. More of the lizards, apparently having retreated into the tree line after the bombardment, moved back in to engage the Humans seemingly at random, attacking in such a way as to do whatever damage they could rather than try and preserve their own lives.

Rafa got the feeling that the lizards preferred death to defeat, which meant they were going to be far more dangerous than the any Human foe they’d faced previously.

If they had been Star Force personnel a group of Mantises would have flown in under the cover of night and extracted the survivors…but the lizards had had more than a day to come pick up their people and hadn’t. Rafa was also getting the feeling that the lizards considered their own people expendable, an attitude that Star Force would never reciprocate.

Rafa ducked under an upside down ‘V’ shaped piece of debris as he approached the remains of the destroyed cruiser. It had been broken into pieces by the orbital rail guns, then dropped to the ground beneath it, crushing part of a structure the lizards had apparently been constructing. That explained why they had been so reluctant to retreat from the location, but after Paul had kicked their ass in space they had no way to blunt the orbital bombardment so they’d been forced to pull back.

The two wounded cruisers were now visible on sensors, albeit dim contacts. They had stuck to the atmosphere for their initial escape, then one of them had headed up into space and broke orbit, heading elsewhere in the system. The other had remained on Corneria, bouncing around from point to point on the surface while Star Force watched to see if their movements led to any other lizard forces.

Rafa looked up as he stepped underneath a high ledge of broken hull, wondering just how stable it all was before sliding down on his heels into a gash in the ground that had begun accumulating ground water. His silver acolyte armor punched through the tiny pond without effort, muddying the otherwise clear liquid with a tint of brownish blue as he circuitously followed the route others had made leading to the half crushed remains of the construction site directly underneath the downed cruiser.

“Over here,” Mara said, waving him forward as she picked at a lizard control board made up of various nubs. They were dimly glowing in the dark shadows created by the overhead debris, but Rafa couldn’t make out any sort of markings on the oddly shaped buttons.

“Is this it?” Rafa asked as she and two other Archons picked through what looked like half a command post.

Mara pointed to another of the red-clad Archons.

Rafa walked over to the helmeted figure, seeing the identification tag on his helmet’s heads up display read ‘Pryce-1361.’ Just under the ID floated the Arwing symbol of Clan Star Fox.

“What have you got, Pryce?” Rafa asked, kneeling down next to the Archon as he sorted through various pieces of technological rubble, arranged into neat rows on a bit of tan bulkhead that lay stretched out on the ground.

“I think it’s a communication device, or what’s left of it. Mobile. Something they could wear in their backpacks,” he said, pointing to one of the shoulder strapped containers off to his left. “I found this one mostly intact and got a bit of use out of it before it conked out. I’m disassembling it and a few others, trying to swap out functional pieces for the damaged ones.”

He held up a half melted chunk for emphasis.

“What kind of use?” Rafa asked, sensing an opportunity as his own comm unit activated.

“Ground team heads up, incoming kirbies,” one of the skeet pilots reported. “Make out at least two dozen on a direct line to alpha point. They’re not stopping to engage us.”

“Pack it up,” Rafa said, slipping his rifle off his back and heading outside but keeping under enough of the debris that he wouldn’t be target practice from the air. He flicked on his comm to Star Force broadcast. “Mantises get the hell out of here, don’t wait for us. Coordinate with the skeets for cover.”

Pryce walked up beside him as the trailblazer searched the part of the sky visible to him. “Teamcomm, I think. It was picking up the locations of the other packs, a pair of which looked to be out in the forest.”

“We missed a few?”

“Far out.”

“Outposts?”

“That’d be my guess, but it looks like we’ve got more important things to worry about at the moment,” he said as a pair of the Mantises rose up into the air and spread out their retractable wings as they angled off over the edge of the forest and away from the approaching transports.

“Mara, get your Clan to the forest. Targets of opportunity,” Rafa ordered.

“What about you?” she asked, coming up behind the pair.

“Meet and greet.”

“Keeping all the fun for yourself,” she said, tagging Pryce on the shoulder to get him to follow her off through the rubble. Rafa stuck to cover but repositioned to give himself a better view of the incoming threat.

“Skeets, report direction of incoming kirbies.”

“North northwest,” one of the Saber pilots replied.

Rafa glanced around, looking for a good ambush position and guessing where the kirbies would set down to offload. He really wished he had more than just his plasma rifle to fight with, but he’d have to make do.

Running across the busted up landscape, he veered around the base of the building the lizards had been constructing, which had been crushed as the cruiser fell down atop it. Further away there were more buildings that had been protected by the other two cruisers that had fled. Most of those had taken rail gun rounds, but enough of the structures were left to offer good firing positions.

Rafa headed to the one nearest the forest, offering him an escape route should things get too hot. As he did he saw Saber and Star Fox security forces scrambling for cover. The latter were heading for the forest edge some distance away while the Sabers were splitting up, some heading for the edges while others were digging into cover under rubble and setting up to ambush the kirbies when they landed.

Some of them had heavy weapons, which would be useful against the incoming transports in the air, but Rafa was going to have to wait for their troops to hit the ground before getting into the fight so he chose an overhang within the broken walls of a cluster of three buildings and waited.

Several minutes later the first sounds of the approaching kirbies could be heard, then suddenly two of them buzzed the site without attempting to drop off any troops. They passed by quickly, disappearing over the forest edge before circling around out of sight and coming back in at half speed. They immediately opened fire into the rubble field, throwing tiny orbs of green plasma down at unseen targets.

Rafa frowned. They were targeting the downed cruiser, and he didn’t think they’d left any troops there.

“Who are they shooting at?” he asked on broadcast.

Silence answered him before Mara finally responded. “All my men are clear.”

“Any Sabers getting shot at?” Rafa asked again. “Anyone with eyes on what they’re hitting?”

“Something in the wreckage under the cruiser,” a Saber sniper reported from the forest edge, positioned high up in one of the trees.

“Not here for us then,” Rafa said to himself as he watched the two kirbies slow to a hover and pound at something from high up in the air. Soon more of the transports arrived, some joining the aerial assault while others circled around to the landing ‘zone’ in front of Rafa where there was the least rubble and began setting down.

When the side door of one of them opened and lizards began spilling out a streak of smoke stretched out from a piece of rubble and tracked directly to it, entering the open bay and detonating inside. A dozen or more lizards were blown out of the hold and the kirby was knocked askew, but it didn’t go down. Its gun ports opened up and a return salvo of plasma bolts tracked towards the forest edge where the smoke trail from the missile led.

Two more kirbies zoomed across the debris field, tracking the source of the missile and lit up that section of forest, cutting down two of the larger trees with repeated plasma hits to the trunks while the rest shredded the local vegetation, some setting off small fires in pockets of dry underbrush.

A pair of missiles arced up from another location and hit one of the transports, exploding against the shields with the first hit and penetrating with the second, leaving a nasty black smear on the yellow/tan ship. Three more missiles came at it from varying positions inside the perimeter, one of which hit the bridge bump on the bottom of the nose, cracking the glass and probably killing the pilot. Rafa couldn’t tell for sure because the ship started spinning wildly as its rear end dipped when the gravity drive in that portion was blown off by another missile.

The kirby spun about erratically, gradually coming down to the ground while another hastily pulled out of its path. It hit tail first and flipped over, whacking the nose down into the ground and spraying dirt up like a water fountain, a few bits of which made it all the way over to Rafa’s position, bouncing harmlessly off his armor. He watched the crashed ship settle in, then saw a previously unidentified hatch pop open and start spilling out troops who slid across the smooth hull before dropping off the edge down to the ground.

Eight more kirbies zoomed in to track down the missile launchers, blasting at every bit of movement they saw while the rest continued to destroy strategic components of rubble, as if uninterested in the Human presence. Half of the hunters set down and began spilling out more troops, with several of the lizards falling to the ground from sniper fire the moment they left the transport.

One set down less than 150 meters from Rafa, its main door on the far side. He could see under it from his crouched position as dozens of tiny legs emerged and spread out. Guessing as to how many were there Rafa took off sprinting towards the ship, hoping its pilots were too busy looking at the battle happening on the far side to see the lone Archon approaching them from behind.

He got halfway up to it before one of the gun ports rotated about to track him, with Rafa immediately beginning a zigzag, which made him run further to get to his destination while making it harder for the ship to track him.

A large gout of soil and metallic debris blew out to his left as the ship fired on him. Bits bounced off his armor as he was buffeted to the right by the blast, then he cut back left for three steps before jerking back again to the right. The ship got one more shot off before Rafa slid up next to the hull and began running around the aft end, cautious to  keep his head below the gun ports and as close to the ship as possible to stay below their firing arcs.

When he came around the far side the lizards were already dispersing. He held fire and sprinted up to the door behind them, reattached his rifle on his back, and jumped up, catching his waist on the elevated foot of the door and pulled himself in.

The dimly lit hold was large and empty, with a forklift and several other pieces of equipment jammed into wall niches. Rafa rolled up onto his feet and drew his weapon, then glanced out the door. The other lizards still had their attention on the fighting and hadn’t seen him slip behind them.

Smiling inside his helmet, he ran ahead and slipped into the bridge, finding three pilots on their curious seats. Their tails were sticking out of a section of the backrest that was deliberately missing so they wouldn’t have to sit on them. While that offered him a decent target he knew a tail shot alone wouldn’t kill them so he walked forward and kicked one of the chairs around on its swivel and shot the surprised lizard in the head.

The other two immediately turned and Rafa hit them both with head shots…the second of which took three tries to connect as the creature ducked to the side and tried to draw a sidearm. With them dead he retreated back into the hold and made a quick search of the area, insuring there were no other lizards. The lavatory and engine compartment in the back were clear, so Rafa ran back out to the open bay door and took up a sniper position along the edge and began shooting the departing lizards in the back that were still in range.

He nailed four, but the rest had already gotten out of his effective range. He could have tried for the longer shots but instead chose to drop out of the hold and run off towards the nearest cover on the right, content with taking one of the kirbies out of action.    

As he did he saw a streak flash by overhead as a skeet made a strafing run on one of the kirbies still in the air bombarding the debris. A flash of blue plasma, barely visible long enough to be recognized hit one of their shields and broke through as three other kirbies attempted return fire that missed badly. By the time Rafa ducked behind half a wall some 200 meters away another skeet flew over and targeted the same ship, followed by a third. The Archon knew that given enough time their aircraft would pick the slower transports apart, so he wasn’t sure what their end game was…unless they had a cruiser en route.

Rafa couldn’t do anything about that now, so he focused on following the group of lizards that had come off the kirby. He had to take an evasive route through the rubble to keep from making too good a target for the orbiting kirbies overhead firing down on any resistance they detected. As he got close to a group of three of the lizards taking cover he noticed others picking through some of the rubble.

He frowned and redirected their way, watching them as he snuck up and opened fire on the closest one.

The others all jumped into action when the first one fell, hefting their plasma rifles and covering the piece of lizard concrete that Rafa jumped behind with holes as the plasma blew out tiny craters. The bits of rubble acted like fragmentation grenades, stalling the lizards from advancing on his position.

Suddenly he poked out at a random position some 20 meters down to their right firing, hitting one in the armored vest before disappearing again. The lizard dropped to a knee, inspecting the damage and breathing heavily but still alive. Another shot appeared from a different angle and hit a second lizard in the unarmored arm, making it jump around in pain for a few seconds as Rafa repositioned again.

He kept up the hit and run movements until the lizards decided to come into the heavier rubble after him…which was a mistake. At close range the Archon’s shots became more accurate and his fists and feet allowed him extra weapons. He took down the lizards in twos and threes, using the terrain to his advantage before the stragglers finally got wise and retreated. Rafa got two in the back on the way out then had to duck for cover as a kirby flew overhead and started blasting his position.

Rafa held close to a wall with a bit of roof remaining in the corner to keep out of sight, but he quickly discovered he wasn’t the target…or at least not the only target. When he jumped across to another section of cover one of the kirbies’ gun ports fired on him, but the others were blasting away at something on the ground, probably whatever the lizards had been searching for.

There was no way he was going to take down a kirby in the air, even if the shields weren’t up, so he crisscrossed his way between cover over to where the lizards were fighting his people holed up underneath a piece of the downed cruiser. He jumped three from behind and scared four more out of cover, then a sniper took them apart as Rafa dove under a small lean-to of rubble when two plasma blasts came his way.

He helped the Sabers fight off the lizard assault until another shrill, mechanical whistle blistered the air and the creatures began to retreat en mass as more skeet strafing runs flew by overhead. Rafa hesitated for a moment to let them get moving and their backs turned away before he broke from cover and ran down as many of them as he could. He got four before a grounded kirby made him veer away as it covered its retreating troops, some of which Rafa noticed were carrying small bits of wreckage with them.

Before he could find anyone else to shoot at the kirby lifted off in a hurry and vanished across the tree line with the others. Several downed transports remained behind, but 16 flew off intact with whatever it was they were here to recover, the skeets hounding them as they left until they gained enough speed to make strafing runs impossible. The pilots still nibbled at their heels a bit then let them go, coming up against too concentrated fire coming out of their combined aft arc to continue with the assault and their plasma fuel charges running low.

Rafa picked his way out of the rubble and helped the others police the downed lizards, killing any who weren’t completely dead and recovering their weapons. Afterwards, after getting assurances from the orbiting skeets that there were no more contacts incoming, he toured the debris fields and examined the areas that the lizards had targeted, hoping to find something valuable remaining.

He didn’t, but after a couple of hours another Archon did, discovering some of the collected debris in one of the last downed kirbies. He brought Rafa four small pieces of tech, the purpose of which neither Archon could discern, but if it was worth it to the lizards to launch an attack to recover them it had to hold some significance.

A few hours later more Mantises arrived, along with a couple of dropships carrying prefab buildings which Rafa’s team set up to house both a defensive garrison and a Star Force research team. Over the next few days parts of a defense tower would start arriving, and once it was erected it would give the site more of a defense against a similar attack, though one wouldn’t come. Whatever the lizards had wanted they’d gotten, because from that day forward they didn’t seem to care about the debris field.

Star Force did, however, especially wanting to analyze the cruiser’s hull armor. The more they knew about the enemy’s tech the better, and there was no way they were going to waste a find like this…even if the lizards had succeeded in smashing the most sensitive components.

9

October 29, 2262

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

“Confirm visual locks,” Brad-912 ordered his fellow Star Foxes. A flurry of vocal confirmations washed over his skeet’s comm as he lined his aerofighter up on an attack profile on the lizard base. It had a deployed energy shield up at an altitude of 1055 meters, warding off continued attempts at orbital bombardment. It was sufficiently strong enough to defend against a single ship’s rail guns indefinitely, but couldn’t hold up against a sustained fleet action. That said, it offered enough protection for the lizard cruisers to have time to intercept and harass any attacking fleet, forcing them to direct their fire away from the base or be destroyed.

The lizards hadn’t made the mistake of directly tangling with Paul twice, reserving their strikes to hit and run efforts designed at disrupting orbital bombardment rather than wiping out the Human fleets…which also allowed them to preserve their own ships, how many of which the lizards’ had no one knew, but with Star Force receiving additional ships from Sol every couple months attrition seemed to be on their side.

The lizards had at least three cruisers left, as evidenced by the runs to orbit to disrupt the orbital bombardment. The location of their jumpship was unknown, but they’d managed to establish a surface base several thousand kilometers to the south of their previous attempt before they were discovered. No cruisers were beneath the powerful shield, but scores of kirbies continually struck out on light raids hitting multiple targets simultaneously…a new trick the lizards had thrown in to disrupt the Humans’ reinforcement capabilities.

Without the ability to sit in low orbit and blast the hell out of the shield Paul had sent one of his Clan Saber corvettes equipped with a small rail gun down into the atmosphere on its powerful gravity drives, of which only a fraction of the available fleet was capable of doing. Its thin shields held the atmosphere at bay as its unaerodynamic shape sank down into the atmosphere without the reentry speeds coming from an orbital descent. The ship got all the way down to the surface and was slowly skimming over the treetops towards the lizard base, intent on shooting beneath the shield, before one of their cruisers appeared and blew it to pieces.

That had been a costly experiment, but it had defined another tactical defense the lizards could employ…which brought them to this most recent attack.

Brad’s sensor board, which couldn’t see the shield or the tower that produced it, suddenly lit up with contacts as a beehive of lizard fighters suddenly appeared from within the base and began scurrying to intercept the incoming Clan fighters.

“Oh shit,” Brad whispered before triggering his comm. “Stay on target and fire through, then go evasive. We don’t want to engage them anywhere near that shield.” The Archon adjusted frequencies. “Head’s up people, the enemy’s got fighters in play. We could use some assistance ASAP.”

“Sabers have your back,” Harrison said, kicking his skeet into overdrive to close the gap with the Star Foxes.

“We’ll hit the backside in 3 minutes,” Kervet-1505 said, leading his Ninja Monkey squadron in from the west so low that some of their shields were clipping tree branches. “They’ll either have to break off from you or leave us clear to attack.”

“Hurry up,” Brad urged. “Looks like we’re outnumbered at least 3 to 1,” he said as more and more fighters emerged on sensors, stretching out in a thin line as they sped to intercept the Star Foxes.

The Archon pilot watched his rangefinder and saw that they weren’t going to get as close as he hoped to launch. “Stand by,” he ordered, triggering the release of the large belly missile his skeet was carrying.

The missile dropped away, flipping out small fins as it activated its burn and rocketed ahead on a straight line. Brad rose his skeet up 100 meters or so then triggered the targeting laser that had been added to the front right wing of the T-shaped hull. He had to focus to keep the tracking dot on the distant tower, unable to aim other than with a steady hand on the stick.

“Launch!” he ordered the rest of his squadron. “Then get ahead and cover me.”

17 other fat missiles leapt out towards the distant tower from below him, tracking in towards his laser point as tiny pinpricks of incoming fighters flew over the forest to intercept them. Having to keep a straight and precise trajectory to maintain the laser, Brad was a sitting duck to their approach, but his fellow Star Foxes jumped out in front and sped ahead to engage the fighters while he held the target.

The fast missiles mostly got through the fighters…3 of them were shot down by tiny plasma streaks, more reminiscent of their handheld weapons than their warship batteries. As soon as the missiles passed the lizard fighters half of them broke off from the Star Foxes and angled towards the incoming Sabers, giving Brad a bit of relief as he painstakingly kept the laser point on target.

Suddenly the tracking icons for their missiles began winking out as they hit the shield perimeter…or where they guessed it to be. At least one got through though, because there was a massive explosion visible where Brad had been holding the laser target.

“Did we get it?” he asked, holding the laser steady for a moment then breaking off up high as his squadron began to engage the enemy fighters just in front of him. With the altitude he tipped his nose over and dove down towards a cluster of the tiny fighters and swung around on one’s tail.

As if in response to his question a light caliber rail gun round fired from higher up in orbit flashed down to impact the top of the shield, confirming it was still in place.

“Negative skeets,” Paul’s voice came in over the comm. “Shield is still active.”

“Damn it,” Brad shouted inside his tiny cockpit, both at the negative report and the fact that his plasma shots missed the fighter as it arced to the right faster than his skeet could turn. He responded by circling off the opposite direction and taking a shot at another fighter that was doing its best to shoot down Ally.

Either it didn’t see him coming or didn’t care, because it continued to fire off small lances at the skeet, matching it move for move as Ally did a good job of being evasive, though he did see a few shield strikes. He glanced at his sensors, making sure no one was on his tail at the moment, then opened fired as he got a partial angle on the fighter. One lance per trigger pull rather than the normal two, he kept firing shots at the yellow/tan wisp of a ship until he finally got an impact…which poked a smoky crater in the port hull.

No shields? he wondered, continuing to fire as both the lizard and Ally kept flying erratic courses.

He had to be careful not to shoot when Ally flashed by his sights, but Brad’s persistence paid off in that he scored another three hits, the last of which sent the fighter down into the trees, tearing out a short ravine in the greenery.

A quick check of his sensors confirmed that they’d lost a skeet…Gary…and that they were still outnumbered despite the group that had pulled off to engage the Sabers.

“Thanks, boss,” Ally said over their private comm.

“Time to get smart,” he replied. “They’ve got better maneuverability so we group up. Follow my wing.”

“Just a second,” she said, flying around to get in position as the sky was a mix of blue and green plasma flashes.

“Star Foxes pull back, these coordinates,” Brad said, setting a crude waypoint in the forest ahead. “Try and get them to follow you away from the base,” he said, throttling up and heading for another of his squadron that had two fighters on her tail. He and Ally both opened fire, causing one to veer off, but the first one blew apart the skeet’s port anti-grav engine, causing the fighter to flip down and hang on the two remaining drives, making it a sitting duck, unable to maneuver effectively.

In a desperation maneuver the pilot cut power to the other two engines, dropping her damaged ship down toward the trees. Brad fired across her aft, trying to discourage the lizard fighter from pursuing and finishing her off. It didn’t work, though Brad scored a hit on the tri-form fighter’s upper fin, taking out one of its three plasma cannons.

Ally’s shots came in from a different angle, with Brad realizing she’d temporarily broke formation with him to swing around on the fighter’s aft. A double shot from her skeet broke through the fighter’s hull and detonated something inside, blowing the ship apart before it ever had a chance to hit the ground.

Brad saw Irene’s skeet slowly hit the trees and sink down inside them, hoping that she was still alive and recoverable later, but he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about that now. He dropped a virtual nav point over the approximate location for use later then curved off, heading towards his previous nav point with the rest of his surviving squadron, some of which were already using the now linear battlefield to their advantage picking away at the interspaced lizard fighters, either shooting them down or forcing them to go evasive…which put more distance between them and the leading fighters.

Brad and Ally shot another down in such a manner before the lot of enemy fighters suddenly broke off and headed back to their base.

“Pursuit course!” Brad yelled into his comm, knowing they had a brief moment of opportunity. “Snipe and retreat. Get what you can,” he said, suiting action to words and wheeling about, firing on three fighters as they flashed by. As he came around he quickly discovered that their speed was superior to the skeets, but he still managed a few shots at the trailing fighters, all but one of which missed.

In the distance he saw another massive explosion at the base from the far side, but the thick tower that supported the shield remained visible this side of the detonation…and it didn’t fall.

“Foxes, swing north to assist the Sabers in retreat,” Paul said over the comm. “Everyone break off, they’ve got anti-air defenses in close and the tower has its own defense shield.”

“Damn it,” Brad swore, swinging his skeet around and speeding off towards the Sabers who were in closer to the base and now pulling out, dragging a line of lizard fighters with them.

“Blow through firing,” he ordered. “Make them choose targets. If they don’t follow double back for a second run, but keep linear. They’re too mobile to take out alone in close quarters, so stay in at least pairs. Two runs maximum, then break away.”

“Copy that,” Ally said along with similar sentiments from the others as the Star Foxes veered off to come to the Sabers’ aid.

Irene Darrington’s skeet hit the ground tail down, sticking in the soil and leaning against the nook in one of the gigantic trees, leaving her facing nearly straight up at the gash in the canopy her crash landing had just tore. Her head hit the side of the canopy on the way down, dazing her for several minutes before she finally woke up, half fallen off the skeet’s pommel and leaning back against the top of the canopy.

She blinked away the haze and remembered where she was when the front end of her skeet solidified in her sight. What had been a ‘T’ was now a crumpled mess. Both engine pods were gone and the front end had a branch the thickness of her waist impaled through what had been the nose. A quick check of the skeet’s control board confirmed that the computer hadn’t survived the impact with the trees, nor had her comm.

“Wonderful,” the pilot said, slipping the loose belt off her waist, regretting she hadn’t snugged it tighter. She hit the manual release on the canopy and heard it crack open, but the springs didn’t raise it up above her head. Using an arm she shoved it up an inch, hearing the sound of branches on the other side.

Irene let it back down and twisted around, putting her back upright against the pommel and pushing her feet up against the top, snugging them up with a modicum of force then pushing out with as much strength as she could. The canopy cracked open half a foot, then retracted a few inches, leaving a larger gap than there had been before. With several subsequent pushes she enlarged the gap enough to crawl out, but first she retrieved the survival supplies underneath the pommel, having to learn to become a contortionist on the spot to get the cushioned belly seat up with her still in the cockpit.

She dragged the contents out, then pushed them through the gap between the canopy and what was left of the hull out into the branches. The vest and containers stuck in the foliage rather than dropping to the ground, which Irene was thankful for, because she didn’t want to lose track of them.

Slithering through the gap she pulled her head and shoulders out, seeing that she was mired in a glob of branches her skeet had torn off from above and dragged down with the crippled fighter. Half sticking out of the vertical canopy she pushed, broke, and bent herself a pathway through the mess, dragging herself out of the fighter and into the daylight coming down through the breach in the trees. She tossed her supplies down to the ground then began to pull herself out, catching her foot on a snag and pitching her forward into the 2 meter fall.

Her leg caught firm and held her upside down, leaving her hair the only thing actually touching the dirt. Her head pounding as the inversion tickled her mild concussion, she pulled up into a sit-up and unlatched her boot, which let her fall the rest of the way to the ground.

Irene rolled up to her feet, getting her sock wet with mud, and looked around before she extricated her boot from the mess of branches nearly hiding the skeet from view. She couldn’t hear any fighters or sounds of weaponsfire, meaning the combat zone had either moved off or she’d been unconscious for some time. It was still daylight, so she couldn’t have been out for too long, but without the comm she wasn’t going to be able to coordinate an extraction.

On that thought she pulled on her survival vest and found the short range communicator. Wondering about the wisdom of potentially giving away her position, Irene opted to try the pulse rather than issue any sort of verbal distress call. She hit a button on the small squarish device which sent out a short, powerful signal with a single code.

A return blip registered, logged by a tiny green button that indicated that her position had been picked up and registered by some Star Force craft in the area. Breathing a sigh of relief she picked up the other containers she’d pulled from the skeet and attached them to the various latches on the vest, filling up the expandable backpack and leaving her more or less hands free mobile. Knowing she needed to get away from the skeet but keep to the immediate area waiting for rescue, Irene hiked off into the surrounding, dimly lit woods in search of some place to lay low, given that below the canopy there was little underbrush to obscure her position.

She found a deadfall about half a klick away and dug in for the night, but she couldn’t sleep, constantly worried that the lizards would track her down. Sitting with her back against the log and nibbling on ration bars she waited through a very long night until her portable comm unit beeped.

Pulling it up and reading the request for verification she sent back a response ping, her pulse elevating. A minute later another ping came, which she answered back immediately. The sound of an approaching Mantis filtered through the forest as she got a third ping, and when she answered it the craft came to a hover overhead, blocked from view by the trees. A fourth ping confirmed her location, followed shortly by a pair of descending Archons breaking through the canopy on rope-like descenders.

“Got her,” Brad reported, dressed in full armor as he stepped off the foot hook and ran over to her position. “Are you injured?”

“Bumped my head, nothing more,” she said, a tear of joy visible in her eye as the second Archon stepped up, rifle in hand.

“Any trouble?” he asked, scanning the nighttime forest with his armor’s enhanced vision.

“Not yet,” Irene said as Brad directed her towards the rope. He pointed the pilot’s feet to the hooks then attached a belt around her waist before stepping on the opposite side. There were four foot hooks spaced around the solid base of what looked like a thin anchor, which Brad stood on grabbing the rope leading up through branches. He touched a button near his waist and the wench back up in the Mantis began dragging them skyward.

“Lean in,” he urged, wrapping an arm over her head to deflect some of the smaller branches and leaves. After a quick ride up they passed out of the forest canopy and into a cool breeze just as the night was beginning to break into dawn at the farthest extent of the horizon. A few seconds later they were hoisted up into the aft end of a small Mantis where they were levered inside the hold via an extendable pylon that the descenders were attached to.

Irene stepped off and onto the deck plate, pulling her vest off and having a seat while the Archons secured the aft hatch and the Mantis flew off, skimming the treetops.

“Thanks,” she said, cradling her head in her hands as a medic stepped over and started examining her.

“Good job getting down in one piece,” Brad said, pulling his helmet off.

“Did we get the tower?”

Brad shook his head. “It was shielded.”

“Damn,” Irene said, looking down at the floor as the medic applied a medicated patch to her forehead.

10

December 5, 2262

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

The first gout of green plasma hit the station’s hull armor, melting through half a meter of Herculium but failing to penetrate as the launchers above and below the impact point poured thousands of small, short range missiles towards the laser tracking points being emblazoned on the lizard cruiser’s shields by the two defending Star Force warships. Both were tasked with guarding the materials processing station and heavily outmatched…a frigate and corvette had no chance of squaring off against a lizard cruiser and surviving, but the banks of missiles hastily upgraded to the station added another dimension to the fight with the ships playing taggers rather than being responsible for the brunt of the defense.

Both Star Force ships added their plasma cannons, missiles, and small rail guns to the fight, as well as a load of attack drones from the frigate that were next to useless while the cruiser’s shields were up. None the less they circled around on individual flight plans and attacked the ship’s rear with lachars, flying on computer commands rather than having remote pilots for each of the tiny cubes.

Another plasma blast from the cruiser hit the station, impacting to the left and hitting fresh armor, missing a potential hull breach if the shots had been lined up. With no shields and the nearest reinforcements half an hour away, the orbital station’s survivability hinged on the massive missile wave it had just launched, emptying every rack it possessed intent on delivering a counterpunch that would at minimum take the cruiser’s shields down.

Paul hoped it would do more than that as he watched from a command nexus, surrounded by holograms being generated from the sensors on the two warships and station. Following the laser dots on the ship that otherwise was invisible to sensors the first of the missiles met up with a wave of anti-air plasma shards flying out from the cruiser towards the attack and, belatedly, towards the drones attacking from the rear. Dozens of missiles were shredded each second, but the mass fire and the missiles’ small size allowed a great deal to get through and smash into the cruiser’s shields, hammering them with successive hits as the long river of guided warheads flowed into the target with surprising force.

The ship’s shields endured through half the barrage, then collapsed on the forward arc, allowing the rest of the missiles, some of which the anti-air fire was still thinning, to slam into the hull and chew away at the armor plating and forward weapons batteries. Before the last third of the missiles hit most of the anti-air cut out, though that fact wasn’t visible inside the growing debris cloud covering the hull. The laser tracking dots were also obscured, with several of the missiles altogether missing the ship, though the rest simply slammed into the mass and detonated on impact.

Meanwhile the drones in the aft arc were dropping like flies while the two warships added their firepower into the newly breached shields as another plasma orb fired out of the maelstrom and hit the station, impacting one of the now empty launchers and blasting it into oblivion, along with a good portion of the hull armor beneath it.

The lizard cruiser thrusted forward, punching out of the debris cloud with part of its bow missing and damage scars reaching back towards the midline as it closed on the two warships and opened fire with its remaining lateral weapons, two drones trailing in its wake stinging the still intact rear shields ineffectively.

Paul redirected them to attack the forward arc, for what little it would do.

The three ships exchanged fire, with the Star Force warships having the upper hand briefly as their thin shields held of the first exchange of plasma. Once down on the second hit for the corvette and the third for the frigate both ships were tearing into each other’s hull armor, and while Star Force didn’t suffer from so much of a technological deficit in that category, the lizards’ protective hull covering was still superior, and in this case far thicker given the cruiser’s mass differential.

The corvette did manage to knock out the last of the cruiser’s shields with a nearly pointblank rail gun hit, then the pair targeted the remaining plasma batteries as their own hulls were being breached. They managed to take out one, which gave the corvette a bit longer lifespan as the frigate was the more heavily targeted and the first to go. Both ships did as much damage as they could, and in the confusion of the battle Paul was able to directly pilot the two drones in close and damage another of the plasma cannons before the small attack platforms were noticed again and quickly destroyed as the cruiser accelerated to get them away from the hull and into their anti-air firing arcs.

With them destroyed Paul was out of weaponry to defend the station with, and the cruiser, heavily damaged as it was, still had two rear-mounted plasma cannons operational. It flew over the station and began blasting away with impunity as Paul watched the feeds, seeing his reinforcements too far off to get there in time, but maybe at least they’d be able to get the cruiser, now that it was showing up on sensors thanks to the hull damage. With a few button presses he ordered the Excalibur to send the faster of the reinforcing ships ahead to strike the cruiser before it had a chance to put too much distance between them, given that its engine tech was superior to equally massed Star Force equivalents.

From the few camera mounts he had remaining Paul watched the cruiser rip the station apart mercilessly, then the hologram went blank and was replaced by an orbital tracking map showing what was left of the station and the small target alongside it. Glancing at the approaching warships he did a quick guestimate as to which direction the cruiser would flee and diverted more distant reinforcements along that line. The lizards might have other cruisers lurking around to assist, but Paul wanted to get this one while it was visible even if he did have to lose a few ships in the process to a potential ambush.

As Captain Evinson handled the particulars of the intercept Paul blew out a resigned breath, closing his eyes for a moment and calculating the effectiveness of the missile barrage. As he’d hoped it had evened the odds considerably, but the two warships hadn’t been enough to finish the cruiser off. Upgrading the missiles to heavier versions would adjust that balance, as would adding more defending ships…unfortunately he didn’t have enough of the latter, though subsequent shipments via jumpship would be bringing in additional ordinance en mass.

Star Force work crews were already pulling double shifts trying to get additional defenses installed on all the orbital stations in orbit around Corneria and the few others scattered across the system. Paul had known it was only a matter of time before the lizards began making assaults in space as well as the planet’s surface and today had been the first. It was a test run, he knew, on their part. Seeing how much resistance they would put up. He was happy with the results, even though the station had been destroyed. Fortunately he’d had it evacuated months ago, along with most of the others, only bringing the secondary ones online periodically as needed, surrounded by a fleet of warships that were pulling escort duty for Star Force’s cargo ships.

Those workers necessary would come over on the ships, power up the factory and stay aboard for several days or weeks as needed, load up the freighters with the products and power down again, then leave under the protection of a fleet sizeable enough to mass fire on any ambushing cruisers. Their combined fire rail gun attack was the only viable means of quickly taking down the enemy ships before they could get in close and tear apart Paul’s fleets, but he didn’t have enough ships yet to accommodate very many defending armadas, though he was receiving reinforcements with every jumpship run and the local shipyards were building additional ships as fast as they could, surrounded by the largest defense fleets he could muster.

He didn’t figure the lizards would hit them just yet. Their MO seemed to be to hit the weaker targets, which they’d just done, and see what kind of response they’d get. This attack had also served as a test for Paul as well, and now he had a benchmark to work from in further designing his orbital defense plan.

That plan, previous to this impromptu war, had always been predicated on seeing the enemy coming from range and moving his defending fleets to intercept, allowing him to safeguard multiple installations with a handful of superior ships. This time around his ships were the weaker, and he could not see the enemy coming, making every orbital station a target that he had to defend with assets on site…and he simply didn’t have the assets needed for that.

Even 10 times the warships he had now wouldn’t be sufficient, given the number it took to equal one of their cruisers. The missile launchers had been an experiment of his, and now he had test results to work off from. Hit the cruisers hard and fast with a mass assault using targeting data provided from nearby ships and he had a powerful deterrent to future attacks…but at the cost of an insane number of missiles, all of which had to be produced and their launchers installed on a total of 56 stations, not including the 3 shipyards or the one they’d just lost.

Using the controls in front of him he minimized the realtime holo, moving it aside to his left and bringing up a nearly identical map. He zoomed in on one station in particular and amended the defense schematic he had laid out for it. It already had a trio of cutters defending it, along with an identical missile package to the one just used to take down the cruiser’s shields. He quadrupled the number of launchers on a new work order, bumping up the installment priority so that he could have a harder target to work around a few months down the road. Upgrading all the stations’ defenses simultaneously would leave him having to keep his fleet spread out, but if he hardened a few targets he could keep less warships on station, perhaps even reduce the guardians to lancers just for the sake of laser tagging targets.

That was a good idea, actually, and Paul decided to amend the local shipyards’ production schedules accordingly. The Lancer-class warships were almost just a large drone or fighter, incapable of standing up to moderate damage. What they were good for was patrol work as a mobile weapons platform, easy to build in large numbers, given their small size, and something that Clan Saber had been producing for years.

In addition to the work order he put a requisition request in to Star Force to send out what lancers they had available in the next jumpship run. It would take weeks for the request to get there, and then more weeks for it to be fulfilled and the ships sent back but therein was the basic problem of interstellar travel and communications. The distances were vast, which is why Star Force needed to establish as much local infrastructure as possible to see to their needs and why they’d established the three current shipyards. It was just bad luck that the lizards had shown up before they could have established deeper infrastructure roots in the system.

Paul flipped the realtime map back up to normal size, filling the entire holographic environment around him, and saw that the intercept was going to take some time. The lizard cruiser was running, as expected, and his smaller ships were closing in but at a rate that was going to make the chase interesting. At best it’d be another hour and a half before they got to the ship and Paul didn’t feel like standing around watching for that long.

Leaving the chase to the Excalibur’s crew for now, Paul powered down and exited the nexus, returning to the Star Force command center buried within the heart of their largest colony on the planet. Prior to this attack he’d been reviewing manifests with Duke Hightower and refining their economic plans in light of the constant attacks. They both knew that the enemy wanted to disrupt their growth, which was something they couldn’t allow if they wanted to survive. Resupply from Sol would only get them so far, and it was unknown how many resources the lizards had in the system or what kind of resupply they had available to them.

They’d agreed not to expand to any new sites, but rather to enlarge those they already possessed, visibly expanding their perimeters for the lizards to see while secretly expanding into the bedrock below, building additional factories and habitats that would be difficult for the enemy to hit even if they discovered their existence.

They already had some equipment on hand to do that, and the colony Paul now stood within had multiple subsurface levels, but to move as much rock as was needed to quickly establish subterranean building room would require a great deal more burrowing equipment, as well as bringing in specialized crews from Sol. That is where they’d left their planning when news of the attack had come through, and that was where Paul returned to it, seeing that Hightower hadn’t been wasting time in the interim.

“Here,” he said, handing Paul a datapad when the Archon returned to the conference room that he’d reconfigured into a planning center. Displays and datapads were everywhere, along with half a dozen chairs and several half eaten plates of snacks. The pair of men, along with Greg, Rafa, and Morgan had already spent many an hour here working the problem in between fending off raids and seeing to Clan duties.

“Where’d you find these?” Paul asked, walking the perimeter of the room as he read.

“They came in on the last jumpship, stuffed inside the top hollow of some of the crates. Looks like someone was trying to maximize cargo space.”

“Good for them,” Paul said, reading through the amended supply manifest. “When?”

“The unpacking crews found them ten minutes ago,” Hightower told him, “along with that note.”

Paul read the brief message with Jason’s identifier attached.

Thought these might come in handy. Barely had time to get them aboard before the jumpship left. There are two complete sets of parts, in case you lose any. Blueprints and tactical suggestions included. Happy hunting.

Paul thumbed through the blueprints eagerly. “Any word on the lizard tech?”

“Nada,” Hightower said dejectedly. “The intact pieces appear to have no function, and the broken ones are too messed up for our people to analyze. I was planning on having them shipped back to Earth for further analysis.”

“Keep some here, just in case they’re modular components.”

“Are those going to be of any help?” Hightower asked.

Paul smiled. “I think so. Get the pieces assembled as soon as possible. If these check out, I want us to start producing the designs locally.”

The Duke raised an eyebrow. “That important?”

Paul nodded. “Jason did his homework. These should plug a hole in our aerial defense nicely.”

“Glad to hear. How bad was the damage in orbit?”

“We lost two warships and Factory 6…though we might get one of their cruisers in exchange. We wounded it and are chasing it down now.”

“Damn…that complicates things. It was empty?”

“Of people, yes.”

“Good, but we’re still going to have to shift our supply lines around. At this point, would you agree we’re better off moving our infrastructure underground?”

“Given that we don’t have naval superiority, I’m forced to agree except in the case of the shipyards. Putting them on the planet would be a mistake.”

“Whatever we build from this point on has to be for keeps. We can’t put it out there for the lizards to smash or we’ll lose our economic net due to attrition.”

“We’re working on shoring up what we’ve got, but in the case of replacing the factory station we lost, I agree with your suggestion to put it underground. I just don’t think we can build very fast down there.”

“And you don’t like conceding orbit,” Hightower pointed out, knowing him well.

“I haven’t yet.”

“Let me worry about how fast we’re building,” he suggested. “I’ll make it work subsurface if you can keep the supply lines from Earth open.”

“Deal.”

“Now, next item on the list,” Hightower said, sliding Paul another data pad over a clear portion of the long table spanning the room.

Paul caught it before it could slide off the edge and turned it right side up, setting the data pad with the blueprints for the new gunship aside.

Counterstrike

1

March 8, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

“Jasmine, contacts heading your way,” the skeet pilot informed the mechwarrior over the comm. “Kirbies with predator support.”

“Bring it,” she whispered, activating her comm as she glanced at her radar, which as typical showed nothing on approach. “How many preds?”

“Just one and moving fast. Looks like they’re going to try for a hot drop. Transferring coordinates.”

A line appeared on the map inside her cockpit, guestimating the enemy’s flight path…which was going to bring it over their position 3 kilometers to the east.

“ETA?”

“No more than five minutes. I’m pacing them laterally, so track me for timing purposes.”

“Copy that and thanks for the heads up,” the Archon said, switching to her star’s frequency. “We’ve got incoming,” she said, turning her mech to the east and accelerating its backward-canted legs into a hopping run. “Kirbies with a flying brick. We need to take it down so the fighters don’t get eaten alive, so move it Kerenskies!”

Behind her the other four mechs in her patrol ‘star’ shifted from a lazy walk into their own mechanical versions of running as they followed the Archon’s madcat, quickly catching up with the heavier machine. A rifleman ran up alongside Jasmine’s left flank, its knees jutting out forwards as it ran, twisting at the waist while its two ‘arms’ extended horizontally at its sides, with weapon muzzles coming directly off the shoulder joints.

On her right side the other Archon in her patrol, Darren-1598, ran up into a flanking position, his mech’s arms actually pumping forward and back for balance. He piloted a neo, a humanoid mech that moved in coordination with the pilot’s own limbs rather than the computer controlled ‘driving’ of the Battletech-inspired machines.

Behind her came a pair of ravens, named after one of the fictitious mechs rather than the Star Force Clan, that ran between her madcat and the others and took the lead in the five point formation. The smaller mechs raced across the snowy landscape on their backwards canted legs, sporting no arms or head. They just had an angled torso with some weapon nobs where the shoulders would have been, one of which had been outfitted with a tracking laser on each mech.

They ran forward in formation, two in front, three in back, with the ravens extending their lead as they raced over the snowy landscape at Corneria’s northern pole. Here there was a mix of evergreen trees and barren plains, both covered in snow as opposed to the tree-choked warmer regions of the planet that barely had the occasional grassy clearing where a mech could operate.

After the first year of the war against the lizards the trailblazers had decided to bring in 3 more Clans and stake out a foothold in the snowy region to see how the enemy reacted, as well as to bring more players into the game. Clans Kerensky, Scorpion, and Star Claw had been chosen for their mechwarriors’ prowess, as well as the Star Claw’s superior aerial skills.

The three Clans had established their own individual bases out of prefab structures delivered via jumpship from Sol, but spaced them close enough together that they could easily reinforce one another. They’d staked out a 120 mile radius which they watched over with constant skeet patrols, as well as having mechs deployed in a closer range to the trio of bases, so they could detect and respond to any attacks as quickly as possible.

At first the lizards had left them completely alone, which made the Archons wonder if the cold would actually offer a viable deterrent, but after the first 4 months they finally launched a raid…which was ended quickly as the mechs on base shot the attacking kirbies out of the air with ease.

After that things began to get more complicated. New units began popping up, including the Predators. They were larger than the kirbies by a factor of 5, carried no troops or cargo to speak of, and were essentially the lizards’ combined version of a flying tank and anti-air turret. The Clan skeets quickly realized they couldn’t get within range of the gunships without serious risk, whereas they completely owned the kirbies whenever they caught them alone.

The lizards’ ground troops also began wearing cold weather combat gear that offered them more ballistic and plasma protection, unlike the vests and leggings they usually wore. In the past few months they’d been attempting to penetrate the northern Clans’ outer perimeter and drop troops in the patches of forest where the mechs couldn’t go, even if they weren’t anywhere near a base or the outposts they had ringing them with anti-air weaponry.

It seemed the lizards wanted to establish some kind of foothold, but so far they hadn’t tried to set up an actual base the way they had down south. That base was growing by the month, and without Paul being able to sustain orbital bombardment with their cruisers coming out to harass the Star Force fleet there was no way to take it down, and the Archons had been reluctantly forced to accept and contain it, establishing several turrets of their own around the perimeter to help bottle up and detect the enemy when they were inclined to launch additional raids.

The troops assaulting the northern Clans were not originating from that base, however. Their source of origin was still a mystery, but as time went by the lizards were bringing in more and more resources and troops into the war, which made them wonder how many other bases they’d established on the planet without them knowing.

Thanks to the patrolling skeets, though, this upcoming raid had been spotted, and as the first of the kirbies appeared over the trees on the horizon to the southeast the ravens began tagging targets. Each pod contained 3 separate lasers, so between the two of them they could highlight and track six of the lizard ships, assuming their shields were up. If they weren’t then most of the lasers’ energy would be absorbed and there wouldn’t be enough reflection to track at range.

Jasmine held her fire, still racing her mech forward, until the predator was highlighted. It was flying in the center of the kirby formation with a dozen or more of the transports scattered ahead and behind it at a slightly lower altitude to give it clear lines of fire against any skeet attack runs. That put the kirbies right in the mechs’ sweet spot, but they weren’t the real threat. Take out the predator and the skeets could come in and wipe the floor with the kirbies.

Jasmine linked her fire control to the laser dot on the side of the flat predator that really did resemble a flying rectangular brick and launched a large salvo of missiles out of the two box-like racks that rode over the shoulders of her mech. Unlike with the fictitious mechs that these models had been based upon, there was no overheating concerns with weapons fire, so she unloaded every missile she had in one long river of smoke as each compartment in the missile boxes fired off in sequence, sending a pair of missiles out to the target every fraction of a second.

Beside her the rifleman opened fire on the predator with its two barrel-like arms, each of which contained a pair of medium lachars. Far less powerful than the heavy lachars sported by the defense turrets guarding their bases, these were none the less a potent offensive weapon capable of partial shield penetration, due to the fact that they were an energy weapon and the lizards were sporting physical shields. They also had significant range…farther than that of the enemy’s plasma cannons. With all four weapons firing in sequence, the predator’s hull took damage before the first of Jasmine’s missiles even made it to the shields.

Plasma orbs flashed back at the approaching mechs in response, hitting and vaporizing the snow around them as all of the lizards’ initial shots missed. The predator was powerful in close, but at range its weapons lacked the accuracy and firepower needed to engage a star of mechs…however, if the mechs didn’t keep moving the enemy would fly right by their position and they wouldn’t be able to catch up.

 That wasn’t necessary, however, because it seemed the enemy’s destination was just a few kilometers to the north. The kirbies flew off to a section of forest there and began to land inside as the smoking predator turned and flew towards the mechs, engaging them as a distraction while their ground troops landed. Its shields were down and its hull armor broken in multiple places thanks to the missile salvo, with the rifleman continuing to poke holes in it as the neo lit it up with plasma lances shot out of forearm gauntlets positioned to fire just over the top of its mechanical hands.

The two ravens ignored the predator, firing small racks of missiles at the kirbies along with a single small lachar on each. They downed one and set another one a fire but the rest made it to their target LZ without incident as the predator finally came crashing down into the snow after the neo knocked out half of its anti-gravity engines.

Jasmine fired on one of its intact weapons batteries with the plasma cannons mounted in her mech’s two arms as she walked up to it and then began blasting away at pointblank range.

“Divert to the landing zone, I’ll finish up here,” ordered her star as she began walking a long circle around the downed craft, looking for more weapons or any escaping lizards. They couldn’t let any of them get free on the ground and unaccounted for or they’d sneak up on the bases in the dark and destroy whatever they could…which was a lot if they happened to be carrying det packs.

As she circled around she saw an open hatch and three dots running off towards a patch of trees a few hundred meters away. They wore black envirosuits, which made them easy to spot even given their small size. Jasmine ran her mech towards them and fired two plasma blasts into the snow, erasing the black dots in geyser-like explosions of steam.

The plasma also melted through the thick, underlying snow pack, getting all the way down to the hard dirt before the liquid water from the flash-melted snow flowed in and formed a small, steaming pond. Content that she’d hit and killed all three, Jasmine wheeled her madcat around and glanced back off to the north towards the downed kirbies which were now out of sight, nestled down into the trees.

A flight of 6 skeets flew over, firing down into those same trees and received a bit of green plasma fire in return that missed badly and flew up into the air like fireworks in the dim light. The sun was near to setting which meant they had to deal with this raid quickly, otherwise any surviving troops would have the cover of darkness to work out of, and their pesky suits blocked them from showing up on infrared scans.

Walking her madcat in a wide circle Jasmine continued around the backside of the crashed predator, finding nothing more of interest, then accelerated up into a run headed for the rest of her star at the enemy LZ. She could see a few flashes of weaponsfire, but mostly it was just a wall of green trees surrounded by a sea of snow. There were patches of greenery everywhere, interspaced by the white fields that the mechs patrolled. Further to the north were several more tree ‘islands’ leading up to Clan Kerensky’s base, and she figured the lizards were probably going to try to island hop during the night.

Running her mech up towards its top speed of 80kph, Jasmine toggled the main battlemap that all units in the defensive sphere around the three Clan bases had access to. It was made up of telemetry from every tower, aircraft, and mech in the field…and everything they could see, she could see.

“Figures,” she muttered, seeing two other raids occurring at distant points on the perimeter. The lizards were gearing up for a big offensive, as seemed to be their MO. Start out with feeling raids then gradually escalate until the target was overwhelmed.

Well, unless they started dropping mechs of their own or brought in a bunch of Predators they were about to get owned…again.

The ground troops were the real problem, not because they couldn’t handle them, but because they were elusive. Perimeter defenses had been set up around each of the three Clan bases, made out of mobile concrete wall segments that could be pushed further out as the colonies grew. That had already occurred twice as the interior buildings had to be rearranged to make space for the first permanent ones to begin construction, the first of which had been a defense tower.

Each Clan now had a big tower right in the middle of their bases to ward off kirbies and predators from getting too close. One wouldn’t scare a cruiser off, but thanks to their escalation tactics they’d been spared that horror. As more towers were erected that threat would diminish, but as of right now the only thing that could take down a cruiser in their arsenal was a massed mech assault, one that would become excessively bloody to deliver enough firepower to take down a cruiser’s shields.

Then again, maybe the lizards were worried about Paul bringing down orbital bombardment against any cruiser trying to assault a base. That wasn’t impossible, and had been done before, but if a cruiser parked directly over the target then they’d render that tactic impotent…unless they thought Star Force might fire anyway, which they wouldn’t, but based off their own behavior Jasmine wouldn’t put it past the lizards, so maybe they weren’t putting it past them.

Regardless, with the tower up no lizard assault had tried to bring anything that flew in close to the bases, relying instead on dropping troops on the perimeter and trying to cause trouble for the exterior construction sites which were putting up outposts with smaller defense towers to establish a second perimeter that the enemy would have to fight past to get at the main bases.

As her madcat approached the perimeter of the tree island she noticed that her star of mechs had moved off and around to the other side. Following their tracks in the snow she kept a keen lookout on the nearby trees, hoping to get a line of sight on one of the kirbies that were hiding inside.

“All forces, stand by,” a voice that Jasmine recognized as Cora’s, Clan Scorpion’s leader and the trailblazer assigned to this northern front…not to mention the fact that she was hands down the best mechwarrior in both the Archon and enlisted ranks. “The forest landing zone is being targeted from orbit, stay clear and report any allied forces inside.”

“Oh shoot,” Jasmine said, turning her mech away from the perimeter and running to get as much distance as possible in between her and the incoming fire. She knew she wasn’t being targeted, but firing metallic slugs from space wasn’t exactly known for its accuracy.

She got 300 meters away from the forest edge when the first round hit. Jasmine couldn’t feel anything inside the cockpit, but a blast of air knocked snow off the nearest trees a few seconds after her battlemap indicated the slug hit. Another one followed it down, then another, and another. 8 fell in all, then Cora’s voice returned to the comm.

“Orbital bombardment has ceased. Move in and pick up the pieces Scorpions.”

Jasmine frowned. She didn’t know any Scorpions were nearby. Glancing back at the battlemap she confirmed that only Kerensky mechs were in the area, her star plus two others coming in from the north and west.

Then she noticed the air traffic. In addition to the Kerensky fighters circling around, taking potshots at the LZ as well as maintaining a visual perimeter while they could with the sun now halfway over the horizon, she spotted a group of mantises inbound on the battlemap that bore Clan Scorpion markings. She tapped on one of them and brought up that transport’s individual comm frequency.

“Whacha bringing to the party?” she asked, turning her mech towards the north so she could skirt around to the side that the lizards were most likely to try and advance from…those that were left alive, anyway.

“I’ve got Clan Scorpion Knight teams aboard, Kerensky. They’re outfitted for night fighting and will clear the woods. Any that run into the clear are yours…our troops have strict orders to stick to cover. Any movement on the plains you can assume is an enemy target.”

“Thanks for the assist.”

“Just returning the favor, Kerensky. One of your stars took down a predator picking at our outpost construction crews. I think they didn’t want us getting the turret operational.”

“Copy,” she said, switching to her star’s frequency. “What have we got?”

“Narrow road in,” Darren answered. “The ravens can fit, I think, but we’re stuck outside unless you want to start blasting trees.”

“No thanks. Aaron, Lily, report.”

“Lizards everywhere,” the non-Archon mechwarrior replied. “I think they made it out of the kirbies before naval tore them a new one. I’m almost stepping on some of them, they’re scurrying about so fast.”

“How close are you to the interior?”

“Hit the update on your map,” Darren suggested.

Jasmine frowned, then punched a pair of buttons on her dashboard. Suddenly the thick patch of greenery was replaced with a number of craters from where the rail guns had hit, along with tracking dots for the pair of ravens squeezing through gaps between the trees…or more likely forcing small ones open with their angled beaks. Having no arms on their mechs was an advantage in this case, for there was no way her madcat would have been able to push its way through, especially with the missile boxes sticking out the top to catch every tree branch within sight.

Following the map with half her attention on the ground in front of her madcat as she continued to run it forward, Jasmine saw that the mechs were a hundred or so meters away from the nearest crater, which had to have been just updated with a visual scan from orbit and enhanced for the low light conditions.

Speaking of which, Jasmine flicked on her mech’s external floodlights, brightening the snow in front and to the side of her, but leaving her aft arc dark. She had no weapons in the rear, and there was no sense in making her mech an even bigger target.

“Watch out for det packs,” Jasmine warned. “You’re in so close that it’ll be…”

Her words were cut off by a large explosion within the trees.

“Lily?” Darren asked, keeping his voice calm.

“She’s down,” Aaron replied as Jasmine saw the dot marking his raven catch up to the other one.

“I’m fine,” Lily responded a moment later, “just knocked over.”

“What happened?” Jasmine demanded.

“Shot one and he went boom,” the mechwarrior said, scrunching her mech’s legs up underneath its body and twisting about, trying to right herself. The raven had been knocked backwards and to the right by the blast, half pinning it between several trees.

“Wiggle free quick,” Aaron suggested, his light lachar picking off more lizards as his mech stood 40 meters behind on the ‘trail.’

 Before he could say or do anything else several green globs of plasma ripped through the forest and into the side of her downed mech.

2

The trees took half the plasma blasts while others were clean misses, but several got through and blew out armor on the nose cone of the downed raven as Lily struggled to get the mech upright.

Aaron responded instantly, pushing past her through the trees and making his mech the priority target. He fired back in the direction the plasma was coming from with his lachar, but only hit a tree trunk for his trouble. Gritting his teeth he held fire until his raven pushed to the edge of the nearest crater, only to be stopped by several toppled trees. His line of fire opened up, however, and he could see the intact kirby that had been firing on their position.

Or mostly intact. It had half a tree puncturing its far side, only partially visible from his position, but the ship was operational enough to return fire and send several plasma blasts his way, chewing up small divots in his thick battle armor.

He responded with a short range missile salvo, streaking six missiles into the plump hull and taking it out of the fight, then tilted his torso down ever so slightly and began sniping lizards moving around the tree-strewn debris field in his flood lights.

“Target down,” he reported over Jasmine’s comm. “Fleet made a mess in here. I can cover the Scorpions’ landing, but there’s no way we can maneuver across the blast craters. Maybe a neo could, but you’d have to be stepping over logs constantly.”

“Provide what cover you can then pull back,” Jasmine said, seeing Lily’s marker begin to move again. “Lily, status?”

“Took a few hits, armor only. I’m good to go.”

“Come back out and help us secure the perimeter. If the Scorpions can flush them out I want to be in position to cut them down as they leave the trees, but just far enough out that they can’t flee backwards.”

To her right she saw Darren begin walking his mech away to begin patrolling in the manner she’d just described. Jasmine turned her madcat around and walked the other way, getting some space in between them, then reversed course and began to follow her fellow Archon from a distance with the rifleman dropping in behind her. Together they began walking a long line separating the bit of forest from the one north of it, then turning around at the end and heading back the other way. Darren walked his mech right past hers, with only a few meters of separation and his flood lights illuminating her mech momentarily as the sun finally dipped below the horizon.

The display panels inside her cockpit automatically diminished the glare, but a moment later it was gone and she was left following the neo’s footprints out to the terminus point. There she walked the mech around in a tight circle and began tracking backwards, passing the rifleman and later on Lily’s raven as the mechs carved out a line in the snow, daring the lizards to cross.

They dared, at first, with the mechs easily cutting them down as soon as they were spotted. It was possible that some made it past undetected, but unlikely. The snow slowed their usually quick movements even more than it did the mechs, and it was more than a 3 kilometer gap from this section of forest to the next. Several times Jasmine had to run off her line to intercept lizards that had gotten past the mechs’ footprints, but with the range of her weaponry and superior speed it wasn’t really a fair fight for the lizards.

The crossing attempts soon stopped, Jasmine thought, because the others had begun to see the inherent difficulties in crossing. If she were in their position she’d have backtracked and flanked the mechs, but that would have taken time and prevented the assault forces from reaching their targets before daybreak…but then again they could always wait around for the next nightfall. Hopefully they weren’t cagy enough to start thinking like that.

Jasmine’s star stayed on patrol for the next 3 hours before a replacement star arrived to take their position. After 8 hours in the cockpit the Archon was ready to be relieved, regardless of how many lizards might be lurking around. Accelerating up to their full speed the 5 mechs traced the reinforcement’s tracks back across the snow-covered plains, zigzagging around the forested sections and headed back to base, eventually coming up on the small turret line that circled the Kerensky colony like the pearls on a necklace.

The two nearest defense outposts let the mechs pass through their floodlights without incident and in towards the concrete barricade ringing the sea of prefab buildings situated around the tall defense tower the rose up from the middle of the base. Jasmine’s madcat led the star around to the left until they came to a wall gate. Slowing to a half speed walk, she brought her mech through the narrow gap and onto the specialized concrete streets designed to hold up to the heavy weight of constant mech traffic.

Jasmine walked her mech through the rows of prefab buildings toward the interior of the base where the permanent structures were being built, one of which was a half completed mech bay/factory. She turned left off the main road and walked down a wide courtyard ringing the bay and into one of the prongs on what looked like a giant comb. The tall bay doors were already open, and very slowly she entered the inner courtyard around which was situated 14 mech slots, 4 per side of the square chamber, with two missing in the center of the side she was in walking through.

Jasmine swung her madcat to the left and into the slot next to the door, spinning about in place so she faced out from the wall, then shuffling the mech’s feet to slide back a bit into alignment between the maintenance catwalks teetering on either side. Once she powered down those gantries extended out and morphed to the mech’s position, allowing techs access to all points on the towering machine while she exited through the underside of the main body, climbing down an extendable ladder from the inside of the cockpit.

When her feet hit the floor she reached her arms back and stretched out her body, glad to be free of the cockpit and the overextended patrol. Above her reloading teams were already opening up the ear-like missile boxes on her mech to replenish the ammunition she’d used as others opened up maintenance hatches at various points on the armored body to check and replenish various fluids and parts, as well as top off the metallic hydrogen fuel reserves that fed the mech’s ample power core, giving it a longevity on the battlefield that no other craft could match.

Jasmine stayed at the mech’s feet as the rest of her star marched in, wanting to see the damage done to the two ravens. The lizards’ plasma was strong, but the kirbies’ cannons were small, nothing compared to the two huge guns on her madcat, but without shields every hit the mechs took incurred some damage. Cora had told them it was going to be quite some time before the mechs could wield effective shields even over specific portions of their torsos, and until then they were just going to have to outpilot the opposition.

Jasmine didn’t mind that, especially considering that Star Force shields weren’t that strong anyway. They absorbed a shot or two for the skeets, but after that they were pretty much useless. She’d much prefer to have Herculium armor between herself and the enemy’s weapons, but she did admit that having a replenishable defense on the battlefield during long engagements would be a decided advantage.

When Aaron’s mech walked in she could see several hits on the torso, but none of them were deeper than a couple inches. The ravens had half a meter of battle armor over their nose cones, so the damage the kirby had done was little more than a nasty scratch, though the white camo paint job would have to be touched up considerably. With so much lizard activity in the area she doubted the techs would scrap the armor plates the raven now wore in favor of new ones. Rather, they’d probably apply a lesser strength, moldable patch to the wounded sections and paint over it, readying the mech to go back out into the field in a matter of hours.

Lily’s mech was a mess, however. Like Aaron’s there were scrape marks in the paint from the trees they’d pushed through, but her raven looked like it’d been put inside a blender and sent for a few spins. More than half the paint on her mech was gone, ground off down to the deep gray color of the Herculium armor with multiple gashes in the nose cone, flanking plates, and even a few nick marks on the legs. None of the damage was critical, or even significant, but visually the mech was thoroughly chewed up.

The rifleman and neo were already inside and settling into their berthing slots when the ravens came in, so Jasmine walked along the perimeter over to the neo and waited for Darren to climb down. His mech was a wholly different design, with the cockpit located in the vertical chest whereas her madcat had a horizontal body. A boarding gantry lowered into place behind the mech where the cockpit opened from, allowing the Archon to step out on the second story level rather than having to repel down to the floor on the flexible ladder that mech contained.

Around them in the bay were four other mechs, plus two partially constructed ones. Unlike other Star Force military equipment that was fabricated in factories then shipped out to the users who performed the standard maintenance and repair, the mechs parts were created in factories but the actual construction of the walking machines was handled locally. That was a necessity, given that the repair crews had to get used to taking the giant machines apart and putting them back together when a leg, arm, or launcher suffered irreparable damage.

They also needed to be able to swap out weapons where applicable. Both arms on the madcat were modular, and while this one had plasma cannons she could have one or both replaced with lachars, extra missile boxes, electrolasers, or a set of seldom used auxiliary weapons. Jasmine preferred the plasma cannons, given that they provided the best damage potential in medium to short range engagements, in her opinion. The other two mechwarriors that shared her mech weren’t Archons so they didn’t get a say in the loadouts, having to make do with her preferences during their patrols.

“No scratches?” Jasmine commented as Darren came down from the upper deck via a wall ladder.

“Those two made up for it,” he said, a bit miffed.

Jasmine raised an eyebrow.

“They didn’t shoot the gaps,” he explained in a low voice, walking with her towards the entrance into the main body of the mech bay that housed their living quarters, ammo supplies, etc underneath meters of heavy armor plating. Mech bays were among the most hardened of Star Force surface facilities, making the entire structure one big fortress…and one big pain in the ass to build.

Jasmine frowned for a second, trying to understand what his pithy comment meant, then her eyes went wide. “They tried to push through the trees?”

“That’s what it looked like to me. Recon showed several potential paths in if you went out of your way, but I think they just pushed their way in.”

“You mean Lily,” she corrected him.

“Aaron too, but mostly Lily.”

“I’ll take care of it later,” she promised as the other three mechwarriors made their way towards them. She and Darren didn’t wait up, but headed off into the living areas and back to their quarters. Later that night Jasmine had a long talk with the two junior mechwarriors about the dangers of trees and walking machines, then hit the sack for what was only going to be 6 hours of sleep before they were due to be back on duty again.

Those 6 hours turned into 4 as a base-wide alarm woke her up early, sending a jolt of adrenaline through her system. Such an alarm was only used in worst case scenarios, meaning that the base itself must have been under attack.

She tore the blanket off her bare legs and ran over to her closet, yanking out a fresh uniform while resisting the urge to run straight down over to the mechs. While it didn’t matter what she wore in the cockpit, if she had to bail out into the snowy landscape in her underwear she’d be in a world of hurt.

Jasmine dressed as quickly as she could, putting on her jacket and gloves in the hallway outside as she ran down to her assigned mech bay. When she got there all but two of the mechs were gone, and those were already in the process of walking out.

“Damn it,” she said, sprinting back into the complex and down to the next closest bay. She had to go down three to find an available mech, having a choice between a raven and a neo.

“What’s going on?” she asked the nearby techs as she ran up to the ladder leading to the second story entry point on the humanoid mech.

“Star Claws are being overrun!” one of them yelled back as she darted across the catwalk and into the open cockpit hatch. “They need every mech we can get into the…”

She didn’t hear his last words, shutting the cockpit hatch behind her and started pulling off her clothes. Once her jacket, gloves, and right shoe were in a bin at the base of the floor she flicked her hand up and hit a button on the wall of the tiny compartment, then undid her other shoe and tossed it in next to the other as a large armor plate slid over the cockpit door, protecting her from any rear-mounted attack.

The inside of the cockpit went dark, save for dozens of small indicator lights. Jasmine finished undressing back down to her underwear and secured the lid on her clothing, glad that she had it available but half kicking herself for taking the time to get dressed in the first place. Had she been able to grab her madcat she could have just sat down in the pilot’s couch and took off, but the humanoid mechs required a much different control system…one that Jasmine had always operated better half nude.

The cockpit was an elongated sphere, stretched out vertically with a mechanical apparatus hanging between floor and ceiling, attached to both with leg and arm room to spare around the perimeter. Jasmine put her naked right foot into the shoe-like straps and fastened the various pieces tightly to her body, cursing the time she was wasting. The Archon worked her way up her ankle, calve, knee, and thigh before bending down and doing the same on her left leg.

She pulled on a slim back brace over her bra straps and fastened it tightly against her abdomen, then adjusted the chest straps to lace around her breasts, noting that based on the current configuration the last pilot had been male. Yet another delay when she needed to be out in the field fighting whatever the lizards were throwing at the Star Claws.

With legs and torso snugged into the floating apparatus…neither of her feet were actually touching the floor but rather suspended above it…she worked her way down her left arm starting at the intricate shoulder plates, then to her elbow and her wrist. She attached the tiny finger holds around each link in her digits last, 15 total including her thumb’s base joint. She repeated the process on her right arm then pulled a specialized headband/faceplate on that gave her comm options and navigational input, including all visuals recorded by exterior cameras hidden within the mech’s armored crevices.

“Qui, power up, aff,” she said, utilizing her vocal controls, given that her hands were going to be unavailable for pressing buttons. ‘Qui’ was intended to get the computer’s attention, while ‘aff’ was meant to end the verbal interface so that conversations in the heat of battle wouldn’t accidentally trigger functions when she was talking to someone over the comm.

At her command her faceplate, which was completely opaque, lit up with exterior monitors, giving her forward and lateral views intermixed by the computer and displayed as if she was actually the mech itself, with everything scaled down to match. Her viewpoint was centered on the mech’s stubby and immobile head, though hers was left free in the apparatus so she could look left, right, up, or down with the faceplate adjusting the camera view accordingly.

When the power came on the apparatus moved slowly, bringing Jasmine’s body in line with the current position of the mech. She went limp and let it reset her, then tightened her muscles and pushed against the straps, causing the mech to move as she did.

Taking a step forward, her bare foot in the cockpit felt the hard surface underneath as the mech’s foot stepped down on the bay floor…yet her foot was still in midair. The apparatus was not only accepting commands from her body’s movements, but feeding her tactile information and position data via stiffening the equipment at various points. To Jasmine it felt like she was touching the ground, just as she felt the sluggish movements of the mech’s heavy legs as hers fought the apparatus in a well-practiced tug of war that sent the mech walking out of its berth and towards the bay doors, arms swinging at the sides for counterbalance in lieu of computer-controlled movements.

She flexed her hands, with the mech’s five digits doing likewise, getting a feel for the controls she hadn’t used in a long time as she passed through the bay doors and turned to the left, moving into a slight jog and quickly relearned the necessary movements as the main turret reaching up well over her head pounded out lachar blasts in the direction of the Star Claw base.

3

When Jasmine got outside the gate she ran around the south side of the wall and turned east, catching her first glimpse of the Star Claw base. It was 17 kilometers away to the east southeast, but fireworks of plasma were clearly visible in the predawn night sky, with just a hint of blueness on the far horizon. The Archon took off running, with the mech matching each stride and arm swing that she made in the cockpit. At first it was awkward and slow, with the snow bogging her movements down to a quick jog, but as the kilometers clicked off her cadence smoothed out and her groundspeed increased up past what her madcat would have been capable of running.

The 17 kilometers to the Clan base actually were 21, given the zigzag around forested segments of the terrain, which periodically blocked her view of the base and the intense fighting going on. Having to concentrate her attention on her movements Jasmine wasn’t able to analyze what she was seeing, but she was fairly sure it was some sort of an air attack, otherwise the Clan Kerensky defense turret wouldn’t have had anything to fire at. She didn’t think it could hit a kirby 10+ miles away, so the lizards must have been attacking with something larger…and she desperately hoped it wasn’t a cruiser.

That would have stood out against the horizon, she thought, pumping her arms and legs as fast as the machine would let her. The Humanoid mechs didn’t have a top speed, with the stride and balance relying on the pilot alone, so Jasmine tried to get as much out of the mech as possible and was soon dripping in sweat as the cockpit’s air conditioner fought to compensate for her body heat.

Yet another reason she preferred piloting these mechs with the minimum of clothes.

“Qui, battlemap up left, aff,” she said, bringing up a small tactical map on the upper left side of her display faceplate. It appeared translucent, with a number of faint colored dots indicating their units and two enemy contacts…but based off the dispersal pattern of all the mechs, which appeared as blue dots, there had to be more than two. So those were probably damaged units showing up on sensors while there were more undamaged enemies in play.

Jasmine mentally cursed the lizard’s sensor dampening technology as she rounded yet another forest island in the sea of snow, coming up on a downed thor that was missing a right arm and most of its torso. The mech was a vertical variety, looking like the Humanoid mechs and built in similar proportions, but it had no flexibility of design and was run off the same movement computers that her madcat and the other conventional mechs were.

The Archon slowed to a walk, giving her aching muscles a brief respite, and turned her floodlights on the area, making sure not to step on the pilot if he or she was outside. As the neo walked around to the opposite side Jasmine’s gut flip flopped when she saw that the chest armor damage had reached all the way into the armored cockpit pod and burnt through, killing the pilot inside.

She ground her teeth together in anger. The mechs had been specifically designed to keep the pilot alive even when the machine was trashed. The cockpit pod she rode in now had special armor, even more dense than that covering the mech, that laid inside the regular armor creating a sort of lifepod should the mechwarrior be defeated.

Jasmine glanced at the battlemap, seeing that the dead mech wasn’t registering on their battlenet, meaning that its comm system had been totally fried and she wasn’t going to find out who had been inside. What was left of the external markings showed a Clan Kerensky wolf head symbol on the outside of the left leg, meaning it was one of her fellow mechwarriors.

Pushing on she followed one of several sets of tracks in the snow as the sky began to lighten ever so faintly, pushing back the starlight into greyness but doing nothing to dampen the plasma flares of the battle. She passed three more downed mechs on approach to the base, which was still 3 kilometers away, when a smoking brick lifted up over a section of forest to the south and flew towards her, firing plasma from two forward launchers.

She knew instantly that the predator was responsible for ambushing their reinforcements, probably picking them off in ones and twos after the main body had gone through. By the looks of it her fellow Kerenskies had made a fight of it, for not only was it smoking from several impact points but nearly all of the craft was showing up on her mech’s sensors now that it had cleared the trees, meaning widespread hull damage.

Hopefully that meant its shields were still down too, otherwise she was going to die along with the others.

Anger boiling over, Jasmine turned the mech towards the lizards’ flying weapons platform and ran full steam ahead, zigzagging to throw off their plasma cannons while thanking her luck for getting a neo, which had far more maneuverability options than the conventional mechs. She took hits to her right arm, upper left leg, and abdomen, all of which gouged out chunks of armor but none penetrated all the way through. The predators’ plasma cannons were far stronger than those on the kirbies, and standing toe to toe with one was akin to suicide.

They did have a weakness, however, that a fast mech could take advantage of. Jasmine broke stride twice to raise an arm up and fire a return salvo of blue plasma against the green coming from the flying tank, the first of which hit armor on the front end, with the second hitting an intact shield on the port side. Combined with the incoming speed of the predator she didn’t have time to get off another shot before she was underneath the brick and skidding to a halt.

It immediately tried to fly off, but she moved with it, quickly blasting apart one of the belly cannons with a pointblank plasma shot into an already heavily damaged underside of the craft. Half the smoke, it seemed, was coming up and around the edges from wounds sustained from beneath, suggesting that the predator had come down on the other mechs from the sky rather than skimming across the surface as it now tried to do.

The room above her head to the target disappeared in an instant and it looked like the lizards were trying to crush her mech underneath the predator, but before it could do either she ducked down and lifted her hands straight up, punching into the underside with stiffened fingers that dug into the damaged machine where her left hand impacted.

Belatedly noting that the other belly turret had already been slagged, Jasmine curled the fingers on the hand that had penetrated the armor and locked them into the predator as her other hand slid across the intact armor, scratching large furrows across the surface with the peeled material flaking off into the snow below. That hand slid off the side of the craft before coming back around underneath and firing plasma into exposed sections as the predator dragged the mech across the snow.

Jasmine held on briefly, then the chunk of hull broke away in the neo’s hand and she fell to the ground on her back, making an impromptu snow angel as she wiggled around trying to flip over onto her belly and get back up into a standing position. Once she flipped over she saw the predator careen into a section of forest ahead of her, dragging its port side in the snow and digging up the dirt underneath, making a dark little streak in the whiteness to where it stopped half buried inside the trees.

A gout of plasma fired back at her neo laying belly down on the ground and vaporized the snow to her right, sending a plume of gas and water up into the air that rained back down on her mech, temporarily blocking her vision. Abandoning the idea of getting up at the moment, she dug her left arm into the snow and lifted her torso up enough that she could get her right arm pointed forward…then she fired on the now stable target, unleashing her mech’s plasma lances as quickly as she could press her right thumb into her palm, switching from finger movements to firing controls.

Her plasma leapt out across the 150 meter gap in squirts, burning holes into the armor where the trees had knocked down the remainder of the predator’s shields. Three shots in and she was fortunate enough to take out the plasma cannon that was firing at her, while the others seemed to be either distracted or nonfunctional. Taking the opportunity while she had it, she sniped those locations on the hull then thumbed her palm again to deactivate the weapon and give her control over the hand as she pushed down on the ground and brought the mech’s legs up underneath the torso.

Jasmine got her neo to its feet and walked forward, pouring more plasma fire into the downed predator from both forearm cannons, tearing it apart bit by bit until there was nothing left but a smoking hulk of what had once been a formidable gunship. Breathing heavily, both at the exertion of the full body controls and the adrenaline of narrowly escaping death, Jasmine took 5 seconds to steady herself and assess the damage to her mech before she ran off to the east again, knowing that the others would need reinforced as soon as possible.

She zigzagged around two more sections of forest before her view opened up onto the main battlefield, with her mech tripping on the snow as she was thrown into a moment of shock. There were downed mechs everywhere, along with six more wrecked predators, as a flood of plasma and a few sporadic missile barrages exchanged between the Clans and dozens more of the lizards’ flying tanks swarming over the Clan Star Claw base, blasting away at mechs, ground troops, buildings, and anything else they felt like blowing up.

The main defense turret was down, literally having collapsed at base center. The perimeter turrets were also gone, the one on Jasmine’s left looked as if it had exploded from the inside out, with nothing but the shredded bottom half remaining. In the distance she could see swarms of lizards on the ground, moving around the perimeter of the exterior wall to several breach points where they were pouring inside. Her eyes backtracked the flow and saw a landing zone to the northwest where several dozen kirbies had set down and were offloading troops while firing on any mechs en mass that dared to approach, though most were still tied up fighting the predators, all of which were keeping very low to the ground or building tops.

Jasmine saw another downed predator near the edge of the base with a set of huge holes in the side, suddenly realizing that the Kerensky turret was targeting them across the 17km gap if they flew high enough, so the lizards were keeping low to avoid the heavy lachars that pretty much ignored the fact that they had shields. She guessed they had to learn the hard way, but there were so many remaining on or near the ground that she cursed their adaptability.

Her mech stood in place for a number of seconds after regaining its footing, with Jasmine just looking around trying to figure out what to do. Running out into that mess and getting herself killed wouldn’t do anyone any good, so she had to be smart about this and find a place where she could help. Part of her wanted to go after the downed kirbies, but even their smaller plasma cannons could rip her mech to shreds in sufficient numbers…and going after not one, but several predators was worse, even if she did have some help from the mechs still in the fight.

Just then she saw a group of skeets fly by and strafe one of the predators, blasting through its starboard shield and hitting the hull, shaking Jasmine out of her hesitation as she began walking forward, searching for a weak spot to hit.

Just then the predator that had been targeted by the skeets tipped to the side, grabbing the Archon’s attention and dismay. A neo had jumped up and grabbed the unshielded portion of the gunship, climbing its way on top and blasting handholds into the hull armor as it went. The predator’s anti-grav engines compensated for the additional weight, leveling out the craft as the neo hung on, rising to the top along with it.

Jasmine saw it punch down three times, hammering a topside shield until it breached, then amazingly the mech stood up on top of the brick-like design and began blasting down at the hull with impunity, strategically placed between the plasma cannons where all but one couldn’t reach. That one had been the pilot’s first target, then the mechwarrior began carving out a large breach point in the hull, firing one plasma blast after another down at her feet and cutting into the beast as it continued to target other mechs below.

More skeets flew in, this time from the west, and fired on the kirbies, the lizards crossing to the base, then a pair of the predators before they pulled back out, one of which took a hit and lost most of its tail, dipping its cockpit down backwards between the two remaining forward anti-grav engines before leaping up higher for a moment as the propulsive engines tipped skyward. Either mechanical failure or by pilot control those engines cut out and the skeet fell laterally towards the ground, still suspended on its two intact gravity drives which were no longer providing enough repulsive force to keep it in the air. The skeet angled into the snowy plain to the east, nearly impacting the fearless mech on top of the predator before passing out of Jasmine’s view as it dropped toward the ground.

As it disappeared the predator did also, suddenly falling from the air down into one of the base’s streets, throwing up debris as it at least partially landed on one of the buildings. The mech on top fell with it then jumped free as it hit the building, landing with one foot on the top of the outer wall and bouncing over it to land in a crouch on the mech strewn ground outside the base as if the mechwarrior was a commando rather than a pilot inside a giant machine.

It stood up and ran after another target not yet over the base perimeter as Jasmine glanced at the battlemap.

“Qui, eye track,” she said, then looked at the moving blue dot that represented the mech. “Data.”

A small display screen appeared in the upper right of her faceplate, detailing the mech, its current damage, and pilot.

“Clear data, aff,” she said, taking off in an adrenaline-inspired run to catch up to Cora, but having to step carefully to avoid all the debris on the snow field surrounding the base. If anyone was going to be able to pull them out of this mess it would be her, and Jasmine was going to do everything she could to assist the trailblazer, even if that just meant soaking up some hits meant for the other mechwarrior.

4

As Jasmine’s mech ran toward Cora’s another predator went down on her right, crashing into the snow nearby a trio of Clan Scorpion mechs that were just now being reinforced by a pair of Kerenskies. The five linked up and tackled the next closest predator while it and the others mixed their fire between the mechs on the ground and the buildings in the base, many of which were already destroyed.

Jasmine ducked left to run around a fallen Star Claw vulture, then ran straight under another predator, firing up at the underside with both forearm cannons as she passed by, not even drawing any return fire on the chaotic battlefield. There were so many targets for the lizards to shoot at that she ran into the clear on the other side without taking a hit, coming up on where Cora’s neo and a pair of Scorpion madcats were running circles around a pair of predators while support fire was coming in from half a dozen other scattered mechs.

Plasma flashed over the flying tanks’ shields, with Jasmine adding a couple plasma lances of her own as she approached, then a flick of motion impacted the side of the more distant predator, with the subsequent plasma coming from the mechs on that side now getting through to hit the hull.

Another flash of motion and the shields on the other predator’s flank went down and the two madcats running through the gap between enemy machines turned and fired two linked pairs of plasma each into the side of the alien gunship, setting it a smoke from the damage.  Cora didn’t know what was taking down the shields, but she wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. She ran left to swing around the front of the nearest predator, taking a hit to the right arm as she did so, then began adding to the damage the two Scorpion mechs were racking up when the predator’s starboard side came into view.

More mechwarriors did the same, and soon the weak sides of the two flying tanks were swarmed by the walking machines. One of the madcats lost an arm, the other an empty missile box as they ran the gauntlet between the two and attracted most of the predators’ firepower, but soon the enemy weapon platforms had their anti-grav drives hit and dropped to the ground, whereupon the mechs finished off any still active weapons batteries.

Jasmine skirted around the edge of the downed predator as she searched for Cora’s mech, which the battlemap said was heading the opposite way, back north towards where the Clan Scorpion base was. As soon as Jasmine caught sight of her neo it ducked inside the Star Claw base wall and disappeared again.

Another skeet squadron flew by overhead, strafing the predators now spread out over the battlefield…which was a mistake on their part. The surviving mechs were now grouping together and hunting down individual enemy units, taking one down then moving on to the next while the predators seemed content to just sit in place and blast away at whatever came near them…which made Jasmine wonder where Cora was heading.

She didn’t want to distract her with the comm, so the Kerensky just ran after her and entered the base through the same gate the trailblazer had. When she stepped inside she saw dozens of buildings had been obliterated, while others were under attack from the lizard ground troops. Barely two steps in and another of the buildings detonated in a blast too large to have come from the predators…meaning it had to be a det pack.

Outrage burning up inside her, Jasmine ran her mech down the rubble strewn street and began picking off every lizard she would find with ranged plasma shots. She knew better than to shoot one with a det pack up close, and she didn’t have time to take a close look at which of the vermin had one or not.

Cora’s mech was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t matter right now. As Jasmine walked forward she caught a glimpse of street fighting to her right between the lizards and what looked like Star Claw security forces augmented by a Knight. She stopped her mech and twisted around, lining up her right plasma cannon carefully, then fired just behind the lizards, killing two and knocked half a dozen more to the ground from the blast wave. She adjusted her aim forward slightly and fired twice more, then dropped her arm and let the Star Claws clean up what was left of that group of lizards.

Jasmine pulled out of the side street and walked on down the main that led to the rubble that had been the base’s primary defense turret. There two more predators were hovering and blasting away at buildings with impunity while the mechs were outside dealing with the others. Pulling her arms up and forward, Jasmine fired off repeated blasts towards the nearest one as she began to run at them before ducking into a side street when the pair began to return fire at her. Down that street several blocks was another predator floating over the base, which she fired at quickly as she ran towards it, intent on ducking right at the next intersection. Three steps prior to that the predator suddenly went down, from what damage Jasmine couldn’t see.

Knowing that some of its weapons could still be functional and dangerous Jasmine ran at it, intent on putting it permanently out of commission. She fired as quickly as her weapons would allow, pummeling the downed gunship as she approached. When she got up close she entered a section of the base with several leveled buildings that gave her a clearer view of the area, which was when she spotted Cora’s mech again.

It was defending another mech, this one looking like an oversized madcat. Jasmine had never seen it before, outside of the Battletech fiction. It bore the marker of Clan Scorpion, so she assumed it was one of Cora’s newest additions. The madcat mark II stood taller than the neo by a third, and was carrying lachar turrets on its shoulders instead of missile launchers, giving it an odd look. More important than that, though, were the pair of rail guns attached to the arms.

Immediately Jasmine knew that she needed to protect that mech above all others, just as Cora was doing now. The lachars would penetrate the enemy shields, while the rail guns would knock them down in short order, opening up opportunities for the rest of the mechs to exploit. The massive mech must have gotten to the party later than the others, just as Jasmine had, and Cora was now directing it to snipe the predators pummeling the base buildings with who knew how many people still inside.

“Qui, eye line, comm open, aff.”

Suddenly an icon for the mark II illuminated below the data box, indicating that a mech to mech comm line had been opened.

“Coming in on your left, madcat,” Jasmine said, sweating profusely from the prolonged exertion required to operate this type of mech, which was usually reserved for the highly skilled Archons. “Anything I can help with?”

“Thank you, yes,” Stanley-672 said gratefully. “The ground pounders with det packs have been redirected my way. Keep them off me if you can.”

“Copy that,” Jasmine said, taking a pot shot at several in her path.

“No plasma,” Cora’s voice cut in, “or you’ll set the packs off.”

“What do you want me to use then, my feet?”

“You’re in a neo, Jasmine. It’s designed for hand to hand.”

Suddenly a building a block away took a hit from a predator and came crashing down in a loud rumble, making Jasmine hesitate, unsure what to do in the midst of so much chaos.

“Stomp, throw debris, whatever,” Cora suggested. “Just keep them clear.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I don’t usually pilot a neo,” she said, running a few steps forward and kicking one of the lizards with the mech’s foot and bouncing his broken body off a nearby wall.

Keeping an eye on the big mech’s moving position, as well as Cora’s which seemed to be staying out in front, Jasmine took up rear guard position. She walked backwards from time to time, keeping most of her attention on the streets ahead and beside her as she played soccer with any approaching lizards, missing most of them. None the less she was delaying their approach as Stanley moved through what was left of the base and knocked down predator shields for others to finish off.

Jasmine saw many more mechs entering the base’s streets, figuring that Cora must have been rallying them to the defense from within, not only to protect the people inside but to give the mechs more cover to fight from. A quick glance at her battlemap told her they had approximately 30 mechs left in play. If they could regroup around the mark II, and they continued to get air support, then they might still have a chance.

Jasmine bent her mech over and jammed her left hand down into the pavement, then scrapped it across half the street trying to catch a group of lizards running at her legs. She caught only one of four, with the others sprinting on past her, firing up with their tiny plasma rifles. The Archon saw those and others moving past, with her unable to stop all of them. She was tempted to use her plasma cannons anyway, and blow up the det packs before they could get to the mark II…then she saw a useful metallic girder sticking out of the building debris.

She kicked two more lizards as she ran further back, away from the mech she was supposed to be protecting, and used her right hand to grab the broken beam. It bent slightly in her grasp but was still firmly connected to what was left of the building at the other end. Forming a partial fist she tapped her left thumb to her palm and deactivated the hand, then pumped round after round of plasma into the stuck end of the bent beam at pointblank range while still holding on with her right.

The metal began to corrode under the plasma attacks, first weakening to the point where she could almost bend it free, then finally sheering off, offering the mech a crude-looking hockey stick with the far right side having been bent at an angle.

It was awkward to maneuver, but Jasmine got her stick down on the ground and experimented with moving it side to side, finding it very heavy but offering better leverage than she’d had before. Pushing the stick ahead of her she walked back towards the mark II, knocking aside every lizard she came across and splattering many of them against the side walls of buildings that she half destroyed in the process.

As one went flying to the right Jasmine noticed it had a det pack on, and she unconsciously held her breath as it hit the wall…but thankfully it didn’t explode. The Archon moved on, clearing the road and keeping her mental fingers crossed that one of the little twerps didn’t detonate right underneath her. The hockey stick’s range gave her some comfort, but not being able to fire down on the lizards was just plain frustrating.

As Jasmine got back in position barely 50 meters away from the mark II it fired its rail guns again and took out the shields on an already smoking predator that it’d been gouging at range with its lachars, along with the help of a few surviving riflemans. As expected it had diverted across the base, bringing it over the cluster of mechs Cora had waiting for it.

With its forward shields down a salvo of plasma leapt up from between the buildings and slammed into it, resulting in a forward tilt almost immediately as one of the anti-grav engines was hit. The mark II then lit up its topside with its lachars, but wisely reserved its limited rail gun ammunition for later targets. Bit by bit, over the course of 30 seconds, the mechs hidden within the base chewed it to pieces, with the unfortunate result being that in its death spiral it landed on and destroyed a pair of intact buildings.

 On the other side of the mark II Jasmine caught a glimpse of Cora’s neo down on all fours swatting at the lizards to good effect, crawling from point to point in an almost humorous fashion as more and more of them appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She knew they had to have already been within the base and redeploying to come after the mechs, but it also made her wonder why they had so many boots on the ground when the predators were doing so much damage from the air. Their motives didn’t make full sense to Jasmine, but it was clear they wanted the base eliminated one way or another.

As if coalescing for one last push, the 9 remaining predators all repositioned themselves over top of the base, floating in slowly and shooting at both mechs and buildings with an insane amount of firepower. Stanley did his best to stay behind cover, but with so many weapons platforms flying about he couldn’t hide from all angles of attack and instead chose to pick a lane of fire to defend, firing everything he had at the first target to come up.

Abandoning her lizard squashing mission, Jasmine ran out in front of the big mech and down the street towards his target, hugging the right side as much as she could so he could still keep firing. His lachars were over her mechs head, so they weren’t effected, but he did have to hold back fire on one of his railguns as she passed, pushing her stick along on the ground in front of her.

With mixed emotions she drew some of the plasma fire away from the mark II, but lost chunks of her own armor given that she didn’t have much maneuvering room in the narrow street. She did manage to duck off a side lane for a moment, then reemerged with the beam held high like a club she could barely balance and walked towards the low flying predator with deadly intent.

But it was no good. Taking another couple hits to her armor she walked up underneath the predator as it fired on the mark II and realized it was too high to hit. Frustrated, she tried to throw the beam up and hit the underside, but it tipped out of her hand and flew off sideways, landing in one of the buildings that was now rubble. Letting it go she reactivated the plasma cannons in her hands and fired up at the belly shields of the predator, doing as much damage as she could. They went down on the first hit, thanks to the rail gun damage from earlier, so Jasmine hit the plasma cannon chewing into her mech’s head and eliminated it first off, then the one to the side that was targeting one of the intact buildings when her comm activated.

“Get clear, it’s coming down!”

Not needing to be warned twice, Jasmine walked backwards as she kept up fire on the underside, then saw the predator drop straight down without any prior tipping. The power source feeding the anti-grav engines must have been taken out, she figured, because the whole structure suddenly smashed down in front of her, shaking the ground so hard her mech tipped over, unable to maintain her balance…though that was partly due to the fact that she was walking backwards at the time, a trick she’d had little practice doing.

Even cushioned from the jarring blow within the cockpit, Jasmine’s body felt the brunt of the fall as the control straps stiffened to represent the ground at her back. Wasting no time she began to roll the mech over, only to find that the building to her left was blocking her way. She then tried to roll up to the right when another building came crashing down and buried that side of the street, pinning her arm to the ground under a pile of concrete.

“Wonderful,” she said, using her free left hand to pull chunks off and wiggle free. She had to scoot like a worm up the street on her back, digging her feet down into the road and tearing gashes in it to get traction, but she eventually got to a point where she could flip over onto her right side and get her legs under her. When she got back to her feet the mark II was gone…as were all the other mechs.

Her battlemap was also gone, meaning her comm array was damaged, either from the enemy plasma, the fall, or the building collapse, she didn’t know which. She tilted her head upwards in the cockpit, looking at the sky but couldn’t see any more of the predators. One piece of good luck, at least.

She began walking her mech off, checking the status of her right plasma cannon and seeing that it was still functional, though her arm had the white paint chewed off it by the rubble along with several gashes in the armor where the plasma had hit. Jasmine flexed the hand experimentally, finding the middle finger wouldn’t retract, but the other four digits still worked, which she almost found amusing.

A bit further down the road she came to a section of the base that had been wrecked, dropping the buildings down low enough that she could see over the top of the rubble. Two more predators were a few blocks away, exchanging fire with what looked like three groups of mechs, how many in each she couldn’t be sure, but the enemy shields were still intact, meaning the mark II hadn’t gotten to them, or worse yet it might have been taken out during her mech’s recent nap on the street.

She brought the neo’s arms up and opened fire with her plasma cannons, adding what damage she could from range and was happy to see her shots bring down the shield along with what looked like lachar blasts coming up from a mech behind cover. Trying to target the gun ports, but missing due to the distance and the inherent inaccuracy of shooting by arm position rather than computer controls, she kept up the constant fire. Had she been in her madcat it would have been a different matter, but she had to make do with what she had at the moment.

Her right arm suddenly exploded with a plasma hit, knocking out her cannon and almost severing the arm at the elbow joint as another predator surprised her from the side, dropping down in amongst the buildings and hitting her with multiple shots. Reflexively she stutter-stepped to the left and tried to twist around, but by then her right arm did come off, first at the elbow dropping the forearm and hand to the ground, then at the shoulder as multiple plasma blasts all hit in the same area. Jasmine cursed herself for being stupid enough to get caught standing still, but didn’t have the luxury of time necessary to form any of those thoughts into coherent words.

Another strafing run saved her, knocking out the weaponry on that side of the predator in explosive fashion and giving Jasmine a brief moment of respite to consider her next course of action. Her mech was wounded, but she still had one plasma cannon operational…and as long as she could contribute to the fight she wasn’t going to run away to try and live to see another day. She’d fight some more, then run.

True to her thoughts she stepped her mech over the debris of its severed arm and fired on the wounded predator. The flying tank spun around, trying to bring operational plasma cannons to bear on the mech but before it made a quarter turn it got hit again, this time from a rail gun, coming in from the left of Jasmine’s street. A moment later Cora’s mech appeared beneath the predator, firing up at the underside as Jasmine fired into its flank. The combined damage from the three mechs knocked out part of its anti-grav engines, but instead of dropping to the ground it careened to the side, scraping the top off several buildings as it skidded on its intact engines in a slow fall that was taking it directly toward Jasmine.

The Archon tried to run forward and duck underneath before the predator dropped too low, hoping it might even get stuck on one of the buildings but her luck didn’t hold up. As her one-armed mech loped forward in a hasty and awkward run, the bottom edge of the smoking predator dropped down and caught the mech in the chest, crushing its armor plates and knocking it backwards. The doomed gunship dragged the neo back with it as it crashed into three buildings, bringing them down and half burying it and Jasmine’s mech in the rubble.

5

Paul watched from Cora’s telemetry as the best mechwarrior the Archons had worked her way across the urban battlefield, stepping and jumping over debris from the destroyed prefab buildings that were falling like children’s toys under the aerial assault from the remaining predators. His battlemap showed skeet squadrons dancing around the perimeter of the assault, making tentative strafing runs when they thought optimal, but the anti-air batteries on the flying tanks were making them keep their distance. Already more than a dozen had gone down in an attempt to help the Star Claw base, unable to just sit by and watch as it was ground into rubble.

Paul didn’t like sitting and watching either, but there was nothing he or the others could do. The three Clans were in the northern polar region, too far away to reinforce in time. Orbital bombardment was out of the question, even though they had several ships positioned in geosynch orbit over the pole for just that eventuality. Had a cruiser advanced on the base then maybe he could have done something, but there was no way he was firing on their own base, so those ships had to sit by helpless.

Sending a ship down into the atmosphere would take time, and they weren’t truly built for that type of action. Only his smallest warships had enough engine capability to pull that off, and the enemy gunships were powerful enough that he wasn’t convinced that even a corvette would have won out against 4 of them with their shield tech. He would have sent one anyway, but there weren’t any in range…nor were there any Star Force gunships in the polar region. He and Cora had figured that the presence of the mechs would be far more effective, and they’d been right, but never before had the lizard’s hit them with so much firepower.

Nor had that firepower come from the lizard base. Paul and the others hadn’t found a way to crack it yet, but they had it under close observation and none of the polar raids had ever originated there…meaning they were either coming from orbit or the lizards had more than one base on Corneria.

Star Force had been expanding too, having geared up a significant portion of their local industry to the production of defense towers. Paul and Greg had been spreading them out like flowers in the forest around their bases, giving them a buffer zone against future attacks. They now had hundreds of the hastily constructed towers in the equatorial zones, mostly concentrated around the main Star Force bases while the Clans were largely responsible for their own defenses.

They’d been building smaller versions and packing them with missiles, on Paul’s orders to Clan Saber that the others had wisely duplicated. So long as they could laser tag incoming targets, massed missile assaults had proven to be the best means of defense in orbit and on the ground, given the short ranges the enemy’s sensor dampening armor forced their battles into.

Deploying mech armies had been a new technique, as had establishing a second combat theatre. But like every other advantage Star Force had gained in this war, the lizards came back at them with increased strength, nullifying it through sheer numbers or tactical brilliance.

These predators they were deploying on the northern front had never been seen down south, and Paul got the feeling the lizards had brought them in specifically to counter the mechs…making Paul wonder just how much more there was to their military that they were holding back. By now the lizards could have wiped them out if they wanted to do so…why they hadn’t still remained a mystery, and Paul suspected it had to do with their psychology, and perhaps their supply routes.

On the battlemap he saw a formation of 27 skeets comprised of fighters from all three Clans circle around from the east and fly so low to the ground they were kicking up snow plumes. As Cora and a few other surviving mechs were fighting an intact predator the fighters snuck up on it from the rear and launched a cascade of plasma into its shields as they passed by two and three at a time.

The predator’s anti-air turrets responded after the first few impacts, spraying out plasma shards in the general direction of the incoming fighters, most of which missed high. For some reason the predators couldn’t depress their anti-air fire below zero degrees, which the skeets had apparently figured out. Flying over building tops and down streets at high speed was dangerous, but with the predator up high over the city and firing down on it they had a narrow approach window which they utilized.

Paul’s fist clenched, pleased to see the predator’s shields go down, followed by significant hull damage on the one side. He was not pleased to see two of the fighters get hit, one of which pulled up after getting clipped and ran straight into the heaviest zone of anti-air fire, disintegrating within seconds. The other careened down outside the base and skidding to a halt in the snow near the western tree line.

The mechs underneath the predator made use of the opportunity and brought the gunship down a minute later, once again crashing into buildings that may or may not have been populated. Paul didn’t know for sure how many people had gotten out, or where they could even have gone to.

To the north of the base Paul saw another 5 mech icons approaching…yet another star that had been out on patrol and was only now making it to the engagement zone. There were several other stars still in the field, mostly around the Kerensky and Scorpion bases, that were moving to assist, while one was engaged in a small fight of its own against lizards on the ground trying to take out one of the perimeter turrets around Clan Kerensky’s colony.

That worried Paul, making him wonder if the lizards had more forces on the way. He’d been scanning the area using satellite telemetry, trying to visually pick up on any approaches, but that was next to impossible for the smaller craft. Even a cruiser was difficult to spot over the trees, though its size and coloration made it stand out a bit more over the snowpack.

The trailblazer stayed in his command nexus within Clan Saber for the entirety of the assault, hoping that he might spot some advantage their forces could use, give some warning to another attack or find a way to get them reinforcements…but in the end there was nothing he could do, aside from organizing a skeet/gunship escort for the mantises sent out to sift through the rubble afterwards.

Jasmine woke up after the third tremor, with the stinging pain in her head forcing her back to consciousness. She wasn’t sure where she was, but she couldn’t see a thing and had the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. Moving even a tiny amount made the pain in her head spike, so she tried to remain still and figure out what was going on, flexing her right hand experimentally, then her left…or she tried to anyway. It wouldn’t move at all.

That both confused and worried her, until she remembered that her mech had lost its right arm.

The Archon curled her right arm up, feeling it swing free with the telltale flexes of the control straps on shoulder, arm, and fingers. When the limb had been disconnected the control mechanism had released its counter pressure, now that her actual arm controlled nothing on the mech. The fact that her left arm was stuck in place meant her mech’s arm was stuck, so it wouldn’t allow the control straps to move.

That also meant her mech still had power, despite the fact that her faceplate was dark. When the control straps lost either connectivity or power they went limp, so as to not trap the pilot in place.

“Qui,” she said, with the word reverberating through her head painfully. “Emergency release.”

Suddenly all the clasps and straps disconnected, which she expected would drop her down onto the footpads…but it didn’t. Instead she was thrown back against the hatch, knocking herself unconscious again.

Jasmine woke up when the mech moved, rolling over onto her left side and holding her head. To her surprise her fingers felt a piece of metal sticking out above her left eye, which was apparently imbedded firmly, for when she tried to pry it loose all she accomplished was doubling herself over in pain. She curled up into a ball and tried to squeeze away the attack that seemed to be pounding her from inside her defenses, which wasn’t fair at all.

Just as her tensed muscles seemed to start to win out and bleed off the most intense pain coming from her head the mech jerked again, bringing it right back…then she found herself slipping across the floor and being dumped onto the wall as the mech turned over.

Next thing she knew she was tangled up in the control straps with blood dripping down her nose, then a painfully bright light drove a dagger into her head wound. Multiple hands found her shoulders, arms, and legs, pulling her loose from the straps and out of the broken cockpit into daylight.

It wasn’t until she was on a floating medical platform that she realized the daylight was actually the floodlights coming from a mech. Once passing out of those she was pushed across a patch of darkness, leaving her to look up at the starry sky before an injection rendered her unconscious again as the medics loaded her onto a waiting mantis.

Jasmine woke up with a jerk, lifting her torso up off the medical bed as if she’d been struck by an electric charge. Within a second her eyes were open and she was leaning back on her arms, looking around. Years of challenges and trials getting stunned unconscious and reawakened again had created a quick-awakening habit in a small portion of the Archons, with Jasmine being one of the most violent wakers…as if part of the urgency of her last waking moment carried over to the present.

“Easy, easy,” a Clan Kerensky medic urged. “You’re safe.”

It took a moment for Jasmine’s head to partly clear, but a knife of fog still lay in her forehead. She reached a hand up and felt the slick plastic patch on her forehead over her left eye, remembering the piece of metal that had been stuck in there…back in the cockpit…of her downed mech.

“What happened?” she asked, finding her voice to be rough. “How long have I been out?”

“Five days,” the medic said. “We needed to keep you under for the bone restructuring. You had a piece of debris imbedded in your skull. No brain damage, fortunately, but that piece of your skull had to be regrown. It’s covering the hole now, but thin. You’ll have to take it easy until the regen patch thickens it up, and you’ll need to eat a lot.”

“Define ‘easy,’” she said, looking around the small med bay. There were six other bed-like platforms, each with built in padding and heating elements, but no cloth-like accoutrements. There was a small, pillow-like bump, but otherwise Jasmine had been lying out in the open along with two other patients.

The room was warm enough that didn’t seem to be a problem, and Jasmine was wearing a deep aqua colored uniform, several shades brighter than the pale one the medic was wearing, indicating that she was a patient.

“Nothing that touches your head, or has the potential to,” the medic said, well aware of the Archon’s extraordinary training habits. “You should be fine running, if you can stand the headache, and agility drills, flexibility, etc. Your core workouts are a go. Unless you have any particular difficulty, movement would be helpful in the healing process. The thickness is enough to keep the new bone in place short of a puncture. Make sure you don’t bump your head on anything.”

Jasmine nodded, immediately regretting the motion and steeling herself against the pain, knowing she was going to have to work through it. “What was the result of the battle? Someone obviously pulled me out of the wreckage.”

The medic frowned, glancing at the other patients. “Only three mechs were left standing, though some loose patrols showed up at the end. All but two of the predators were taken down, but they stuck around long enough to level every building in the Star Claw base. They retreated and left us to pick up the pieces.”

“What about the lizards on the ground? Around here, assuming this is the Kerensky base?”

“It is, and they’re all gone, as far as we could tell. We lost a perimeter turret, nothing more.”

“How many survivors?”

“I’m not sure about the Star Claw base personnel. Most were killed, with the survivors being flown down south. As far as mechwarriors go, we only suffered 18% casualties. Scorpions had 15% and Star Claws had 26%. I guess the armored cockpits are worth the expense…save for the piece that cracked off and imbedded itself in your head.”

“By casualties, are you including me? How many are dead?”

“Wounded count as casualties. 3 Kerenskies, 4 Star Claws, and 1 Scorpion are dead among the mechwarriors. 8 Kerenskies, 3 Star Claws, and 13 Scorpions skeet pilots were killed. We brought a few wounded Star Claw Archons and Knights back that were engaging the lizards on the ground, but I don’t have casualty numbers for them. All their surviving security forces were evacuated south, along with the critically injured. We kept those that could be returned to combat soon around here, because we’re going to need every man we can get.”

“What’s up?” Jasmine asked, sensing something in the medic’s tone.

“One of the Star Claw skeets tracked the retreating predators back to their base. She ran out of fuel getting there and had to be picked up halfway back, but she gave us a target to strike back at. There’s a cruiser on the ground, with a shield tower in the early stages of construction.”

“When?”

“That’s up to Cora and Paul. Rumor is they’re working out some master strategy that involves bringing in some more of the Clans with high marks in mech combat.”

“Where’s the base? Is it accessible to mechs or down south in the forest?”

“I’m not sure. I only hear bits and pieces, but I get the feeling that it’s going to be several weeks at least, and if you keep that patch on you might be fit enough to join in the assault.”

“If they’re bringing in more Clans it’ll be more than a few weeks. It takes four weeks for a jumpship to travel straight back to Sol.”

“You’ll have to ask your peers about that. I just know there’s a timetable with how fast the enemy defense shield is being built.”

Jasmine glanced at the other patients. “How are they doing?”

“Worse than you, but they’ll all recover.”

“Is that a regenerator?” she asked, spotting the shiny V’kit’no’sat technology on one man’s arm…or rather what was left of it. It’d been severed just below the elbow.

“Special occasion. Cora authorized its use. I didn’t even know what it was until they briefed me.”

“We can only recharge them on Earth,” Jasmine explained, “and we can’t make any more if they’re damaged or lost, so we have to be careful with their use.”

“Alien tech I’m told?”

“Need to know,” Jasmine said as gratefully as she could. “Very few non-Archons know of their existence, and we’d like to keep it that way for now.”

The medic frowned, but didn’t ask any further questions.

Jasmine sighed. “The previous owners make the lizards look like harmless children by comparison. One enemy at a time is all most people can take.”

“I can believe that…the damn thing is regrowing his arm. Our current tech can only regenerate patches of existing structure,” he said, pointing to her head. “Growing an entirely new limb is…downright amazing.”

“Keep it to yourself until we can copy more of the tech. There are billions of people back home that we can’t share it with.”

“I understand. I’m just glad for his sake that you’ve acquired the devices.”

“Me too,” Jasmine said, swinging her bare feet over the side of the table/bed and letting them dangle there as she fought against the blinding ache in her head. “So…who had the luxury of using me to play Barbie?”

“Barbie?”

“Who dressed me?” she said, realizing he was too young to get the cultural reference from 200 years ago.

“Actually I’ve been your assigned medtech since they brought you back, so guilty as charged. Any complaints? I had to guess as to your size.”

“Enjoy the view?”

“Amazed would be more accurate. You Archons are put together better than the gods.”

Jasmine smiled. “Thanks, on both counts. I can shower with this patch on, right?”

“The seal is waterproof, yes.”

Jasmine stepped down off the bed and felt a spike of pain in her forehead as soon as her foot hit the floor. She stumbled, but held herself up with a firm grip on the side of the bed. “Are you married?”

“Ah, no, I’m not,” the medic said, surprised at the question.

“Girlfriend?”

“All the way out here? No, no girlfriend. I came to serve the Clan. Plenty of time for dating when you’re not in a war zone. Why do you ask?”

“I was wondering if I could proposition you for a co-ed shower. My head may be hurting, but my nose seems to be working just fine. I reek of sweat and blood.”

“Your place or mine?” he joked.

“Whichever one is closest,” she said, standing up a bit straighter but still clinging to the side of the bed for balance as she squinted against the pain.

The medic pointed back over his shoulder. “About 30 steps that way there’s a small unit you can use. It’s for us to use post-surgery.”

Jasmine reached her left arm up and the medic dipped his shoulder underneath and helped her walk past the other patients and into the shower/prep room. It wasn’t nearly as small as he’d made it sound, but it was one single circular shower pod about 2 meters wide. He pulled the door to the room shut behind them with his free hand and flipped on the lights as he walked her over to a changing bench.

“Don’t bother,” she said, pointing him towards the shower. “Just get me inside.”

“Mind your step,” he said, making sure she lifted her bare feet up over the ledge and onto the slightly elevated interior. The floor was made of soft, squishy, gripable material, but he still kept a firm hold on her as she leaned against the inside of the translucent circular wall.

Jasmine reached down to her pants’ waistline and began to pull them off, but couldn’t bend forward far enough without tipping over. “Would you mind?”

“If you insist,” he said, cautiously.

“I’m not shy. Strip me down and turn the water on…and you have my permission to ‘enjoy the view.’”

“Would you like a massage while I’m at it,” he joked, starting instead with her shirt and carefully pulling her right arm back in through the sleeve.

“So long as your hands are covered in soap,” she said, leaning the right side of her head against the wall, only to have him gently pull it off again to get the shirt over her head.

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell if you’re joking or not on that one.”

“Water is fine, unless you’d like to feel me up in the name of cleanliness. It’s all I can do to keep standing.”

“You sure?”

“I’m not shy,” she repeated. “And I’m quite stiff and sore from laying on that bed in the same position for days, so if you’ve also got a masseuse’s touch I’d appreciate the body work.”

“Alright,” the man said, trying not to take too much pleasure in his task. “You stand, I thoroughly scrub. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said, closing her eyes and grabbing on to the small control panel for the water flow, willing her knees to stay locked as the pain in her head tried to blot out all other sensation.

6

August 18, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Dozens of short range missiles leapt from the launchers on the line of three Star Force gunships floating in position over a phalanx of Clan Davion and Clan Thrawn mechs. The tiny projectiles shot out in plumes, individually tracking towards the incoming lizard fighters swarming up out of hidden hangars in the snow covered trees to the southwest. Beyond that lay the completed shield generator tower, standing high above the forest canopy but partially shrouded in white flakes from the storm that was blowing in. Barely visible in between were tiny bricks rising up slowly to follow the fighters out against Star Force’s approaching mechs.

The lizards had to split their defenses, however, given that the assault was happening on multiple fronts. The base was located on the far side of the northern pole, with more tree clusters than snowy plains, but there were three ground approach corridors into the base, branching out into a myriad of crisscrossing paths that led to the wider plains further north. The mechs had kept close to the trees during their long run up to the base, which they were still a few kilometers shy of, to stay undetected by the lizards’ sensors.

The ploy had worked, because until the fleet of aircraft came in to supplement the mechs the base hadn’t responded. The gunships had flown at ground level ahead of the main force of dropships, skimming the snow so they could catch up to the mechs to be in ambush position when the base defenders came out, and had just caught up to this portion of the marching mechs less than a minute ago.

As the dozens of dropships set down well back from the base, 8 Clans marched forward on the snowy approaches at a steady pace, no longer running as they had been earlier. The forward line of mechs on each of the three attack groups was comprised of mad dogs that had their shoulder weapon mounts that typically held missiles replaced with anti-air lachars. Due to the erratic paths in to the base the mechs couldn’t see the approaching fighters, so they waited patiently, watching the gunships’ missiles fire off over the trees.

Ten seconds later the first of the surviving fighters flashed by overhead, firing at one of the gunships and hitting its shields with a small plasma orb before the autofire setting on the mech’s weapons tracked and knocked it out of the sky. Several more suffered the same fate, some of which fell into the mech ranks but most had enough momentum to carry them across the angle of the path and into the forest on the far side.

Likewise, anti-air lachar clusters on the gunships mowed through the approaching fighter swarm, which had been diminished in size due to having to split up to attack all three approaching mech groups. Within a minute the Star Force troops took out 90% of the defending fighters, with skeet squadrons coming up from behind to track down the survivors as they fled over the forest and away from the mechs, making sure to steer clear of the invisible flat shield deployed above the base.

With the reports of the fighters all but gone, the leading mechs parted and walked over to the sides of the path next to the trees, letting the others pass by and going to the end of the line. Missile-packed madcats making up the next two lines ran on ahead, spacing themselves out and getting ready for the predators they knew were incoming. The gunships, outfitted for anti-fighter combat, pulled back and left the advance to the leading mechs, flying in a line designed to pull the larger, tougher lizard gunships directly over the ambush.

Some took the bait while others headed off over the forest towards the distant dropships that were delivering even more mechs to the ground at five different drop points that would filter in to the 3 approach paths to the base. Altogether there were 18 of the flying tanks deploying to counter the attackers, now split up into small groups, two of which passed over the trees and onto the path containing the Clan Davion and Clan Thrawn assault group.

The madcats up front had to pivot around to hit the gunships, because they crossed well to the aft of the formation, but they were still within missile range and turned to target the mechs anyway, with the now trailing mad dogs poking at them with the lachars in their arms. Swarms of missiles rose up and smothered the two targets, knocking down their shields within seconds and pummeling the armored hulls underneath as the rest of the 58 mechs targeted the predators with plasma, lachars, rail guns, and missiles of their own.

Both targets went down into the forest, falling well clear of the mechs, then became lost in the trees and blowing snow with only a few plumes of smoke rising up to mark their location but even those were quickly dispersed at altitude thanks to the storm winds. Reforming their lines the mechs moved on up the twists and turns in the path, gradually approaching the base as their reinforcements gathered kilometers back.

Jasmine was piloting one of the madcats walking out of a Dragon-class dropship along with the other Clan Kerensky and Clan Saber mechs that would join up with the reinforcements from Clan Scorpion and Clan Sangheili further down the line, then make their way to the rest of their Clansmen in the western assault on the base. Each step her mech took made her head twinge, but it was well worth the tradeoff to be allowed to join in the attack rather than sitting back at base while the others went into combat.

Clan Kerensky had lost so many mechs that Cora and Paul had decided to reinforce their numbers with a partial Clan Saber force brought in from Sol, while Clan Scorpion did the same with an element of Clan Sangheili that Jason had personally brought out to Corneria. Not being the best mechwarrior amongst his Clan, he too was going into battle with the reserves…though perhaps that designation was a misnomer, because they had a larger role to play if things took a turn for the worst.

Jasmine formed up with another madcat, a rifleman, and a pair of thors and led her star out on picket duty while a pair of specially modified Falcon-class dropships each landed a Hoth-class assault mech onto the ironically appropriate snow pack. All around them more mechs filed out of dropships along with hovertrucks carrying heavy missile launchers that stayed in the far back of the formation as the quadrupeds unfurled their legs and stood up.

“Alright, let’s do this,” she said over the comm to her star. “Heavies will take the gunships, we hit them if they slip by so stay within a kilometer and heads up for lizards on the ground. There’s no way of knowing what else they’ve got in that base to throw at us.”

“Copy that,” the rifleman’s pilot said. “Permission to take point?”

“Granted,” Jasmine said, beginning to walk her mech forward as the heavies behind her also started to move, though the one in the back was only partially visible on her aft cameras due to the increasing amount of blowing snow. If it picked up much more they’d have a blizzard on their hands.

Fortunately her mech’s long legs wouldn’t be affected. With each step they tore through the snow on the ground, gouging out long tracks that the other mechs followed. The snow here was virgin and probably more than a meter deep, but the mech’s computer adjusted for the additional drag automatically, making Jasmine glad she wasn’t in a neo this time around. None of their Clan’s second group were, in fact. All of the Kerensky neos had gone with the first group, which should anytime now be hitting the perimeter of the lizard base.

Glancing at her battlemap Jasmine noted several new icons had sprouted up, indicating defense turrets that apparently had been hidden within the forest. There were also some mobile enemy icons, suggesting that the lizards had some sort of base defenders that they hadn’t encountered before, but that she was happy to see were also showing up on sensors…unlike the approaching predators.

“All forces, alert,” Paul’s voice broke over the comm of every unit in the assault force. “Incoming cruiser from the south. Looks like we got their attention.”

“Figures they wouldn’t make this easy on us,” one of Jasmine’s mechwarriors commented.

“All part of the plan,” she reminded him. “Focus on our part.”

As she finished the words the lead heavy walker twisted its head to the left and fired off an electrolaser blast, followed by a pair of heavy lachars from chin-mounted barrels. Immediately a target illuminated on Jasmine’s battlemap as one of the 3 approaching gunships was damaged. The second hoth mirrored the first with a few seconds delay and fired off its head-mounted weapons at the same target, which quickly disappeared from the battlemap eliciting a smile from the Archon. The hoths had so much more firepower than the smaller, two-legged mechs it was crazy. They were practically walking turrets and extremely effective at range, though vulnerable to close range assaults.

Which was what her star was here to prevent, along with a range of other options Cora had planned into their assault formation.

Right now though Jasmine wanted to be with the first wave, mixing it up with the base defenders that she was monitoring on the battlemap while slowly walking her star forward, kilometers away from the base in the growing snowstorm with nothing to do but wait and watch.

Jason felt much the same way, escorting another pair of heavy walkers from his landing zone, trudging through the snow in his neo along with two stars of Sangheili mechs augmenting four more Scorpion stars. Situated a bit farther out than Jasmine’s group, no enemy predators had come out to greet them…or rather they’d retreated after reports of what happened to the others got back to them, but Jason and the others didn’t know that, given that the enemy gunships didn’t show up on their sensors.

That was the enemy’s greatest advantage, he knew. Had that not had been the case he was confident that Paul and the others would have turned the enemy back before he’d arrived on Corneria. His friend was thoroughly vexed at having his naval skills restricted as they were by being sensor blind to the enemy, but like always Paul was game for a challenge and was finding new ways to get at their opponent as the duration of this war stretched out.

The other major advantage the lizards had was the fact that the trailblazers had known nothing about them at the outset, but with each battle they fought the Archons learned more about the threat they faced, which allowed them to adapt to counter the lizards’ tactics…such as this assault. He’d been involved in the planning meetings, mostly as a spectator, as Paul and Cora had most of it worked out before he even got here. Unlike with the V’kit’no’sat, the lizards’ tech was only marginally superior in the grand scheme of things, making Star Force technology at least effective in combating them, which was all they needed.

Give the trailblazers an opening, however slight, and they’d find a way to exploit it. So too it seemed for the lizards, who were also adapting to Star Force’s tactics, but in the adaptation war the Archons were winning out, assuming this assault went as planned.

The lizards had made a mistake in putting a base this far north. Allowing surface access through the snowy paths gave Star Force a ground assault option, whereas the rest of the planet was full of forest with almost no grassland to speak of. The lizards’ other base had no approach clearings at all, making it immune to mech assault, which was one reason why it hadn’t been taken down yet. Perhaps the lizards had felt they needed a closer base to attack the northern Clan colonies, but right now that decision was coming back to bite them.

After a long walk in silence staring out at the near whiteout conditions Jason’s comm lit up with Cora’s heavy breathing.

“Jason, we need the neos up here ASAP to deal with base defenses. We’ve put down their vehicles, but the rest of the mechs are tied up with the cruiser and there are more turrets here than we expected. They’re delaying us from getting under the shield.”

“Coming,” he answered her before switching to his task force comm, which included both his and Jasmine’s groups. “Every Sangheili and Saber with a neo advance to the fork and follow me into the base, they need help with the perimeter defenses.”

He suited actions to words and began running through the snow, feeling his feet get tripped up a bit on the thick snowpack until his legs learned to adjust to the movement. A little over a kilometer ahead he and the six neos in his group caught up with four more waiting for him at the intersection of the paths.

“Let’s go,” he commed the others, highlighting their icons on the battlemap and creating a new comm shortcut for those nine mechs as two of the neos came up on his right and left shoulders in flanking positions, making it apparent that the mechwarriors were faster runners in the gigantic suit-like machines than he was.

As they ran through the snow, both on the ground and in the air, he began to see the outline of the cruiser ahead and slightly to the right. Its flat edge made it difficult to see, but the smoking holes in the hull sent up billowing black banners which drew his attention to the muted flashes hitting the hull below. He couldn’t see much through the snow, but it was clear that their advance mechs were putting up one hell of a fight.

Trying to look at it and keep his running rhythm was problematic, but in one of the quick looks he took that direction when the bends in the sea of trees allowed it, he saw a dull line flash across the sky, then a not so dull explosion on the ship. As part of the plan, the heavy walkers were within firing range of the base and tall enough to shoot over the treetops from all 3 directions. He imagined they were responsible for most of the damage to the cruiser, though if they’d managed to take the shields down rather than just penetrating them with their energy-based weaponry, then the mechs would become a far more formidable threat to the hovering capital ship.

His gut tightened when he caught a glimpse of a second cruiser silhouette nearby the first one, only set a kilometer or so back. At first he thought he was seeing things, with the falling snow messing with his vision, but then the contact popped up on sensors as it began to take damage, making him wonder why Paul hadn’t alerted them to a second incoming cruiser…or at least announce its arrival if they hadn’t been able to spot it on approach.

Before he could contact Paul to ask him what was going on they hit the edge of the engagement zone, seeing the charred remains of two turrets flanking the exit of the path through the forest to the clearing the lizards had either cut out of the trees or set down within, for there was a kilometer-wide gap between forest edge and buildings that this prong of the attack had apparently come through and dispersed to the right, for that’s where all the icons were displayed on his battlemap.

Jason passed a downed rifleman, already covered in a thin film of fresh snow, when target highlights flashed on his display via Cora, telling him which targets she wanted his neos to hit. None were near the cruisers and the other battling mechs, but in towards the scattered buildings only a few allied icons were showing. The base was obviously still in a construction phase, apparently with defenses layered in to the misshaped mess.

“Ignore the ships,” he told his double star, “we’ve got priority targets in the base. Stay sharp, stay agile. Make like commandos and follow me in.”

7

“All forces, alert,” Paul said, watching the orbital surveillance of one of the known cruiser hideaways on the planet’s surface. “Incoming cruiser from the south. Looks like we got their attention.”

As soon as he spoke the words the lizard warship had accelerated out of satellite view, heading into the upper atmosphere and accelerating hard to get to the northern base that the mechs were assaulting. Orbital surveillance on that was nil, given that it was currently smothered in a monster of a snowstorm that blocked out all visuals and most infrared. That said, it wasn’t blocking most of their onsite sensors, so Paul still had access to their battlemap and the camera views from the units on the ground…which were partially obscured by the blowing snow.

The Archon let the cruiser get a head start, then contacted his ships in orbit to drop down into preferred orbital bombardment range, splitting into two groups. One was a higher altitude orbit due to their limited gravity drive power/mass ratings. The lower group came all the way down to the top of the atmosphere and hovered in place at an angle to the target, allowing a wide bombardment corridor for the higher altitude ships to shoot through.

By the time they were in position the mech battle was deeply committed, with not one cruiser in play but two, as the battlemap reported. Paul nodded grimly, knowing that the lizards still had assets on the planet that they hadn’t been able to locate, but two cruisers they should be able to handle as long as the base shields remained up. The mechs had advanced quickly to get underneath its protective halo, counting on the threat of orbital bombardment to keep it up, not that Paul would have fired down so close to his own troops, but hopefully the enemy wouldn’t be savvy enough to call his bluff on that.

Based off the visuals coming in from the mechs on the ground and the growing sensor profile from the cruiser as they began to take damage, he saw that they were positioned low to the ground outside the shield perimeter, aiming at a very flat angle to shoot underneath the kilometer high flat shield without getting too close to its invisible edge. Given the shield strength, bumping into it would be the equivalent of running into an armored wall, so both the cruisers kept a buffer zone between them and the invisible barrier. While it would have been technically possible for their flat profiles to slide in underneath it, they would have been so pinned to the ground that their weapons batteries wouldn’t have been able to double up on targets set directly beneath it, so the lizards had done the next best thing and parked as close as they could outside.

A lot of mechs were hugging the tree line for cover, then running out into the clear to fire on the cruiser before ducking back in behind the trees, many of which were now afire from the cruisers’ plasma attacks. One hit from the main batteries could take down a mech, and there were several of the walking machines with arms and legs missing, strewn out on the ground to testifying to that fact, but with the mobility of the mechs and the disadvantageous position of the cruisers the mechwarriors were able to survive long enough to be able to bring up the hovertrucks from the second groups while the heavy walkers continued to pound the cruisers from afar.

Add to that the fact that a lot of the mechs were armed with lachars that were able to penetrate the cruisers’ shields. The mechwarriors had been instructed prior to the battle to aim for the ships’ weapons batteries rather than the easy to hit hull, and not long into the engagement the limited number of lizard plasma cannons within range began to thin, so much so that by the time the hovertrucks got to the engagement they weren’t fired upon by the two ships that had finally started to spin about to bring their far side weapons into play.

The missile launchers on the back of each of the dozens of hovertrucks carried only 2 missiles, which they took very little time in aiming and firing off before turning around and driving back down the snowy paths through the forest and away from the engagement zone. Each of their missiles contained a plasma warhead, functioning like the shells in Star Force’s handheld plasma weapons. The man-sized container held the necessary compressed gas and power source along with a detonation cap that upon impact would trigger the energy release and create the plasma at the target, rather than firing it from range and having it dissipate during travel.

Paul’s visual monitors, displayed like little windows floating in his holographic command nexus, started flashing with the ‘ship buster’ missile impacts. Huge plasma balls momentarily formed, reflecting off the snow clouds and bathing the battlefield in blue light as they assaulted the ventral shields on the hovering warships.

“Time to give them something else to think about,” Paul said to himself as he sent the command to his waiting battle groups to begin orbital bombardment…of the tropical zone lizard base.

Jason ducked his neo in behind one of the teepee-like lizard buildings, ducking away from the plasma shards a small turret was throwing his way. Two others behind him did likewise as they came around the corner of an especially high building that stood more than 3 times the height of the mechs and ran face on into one of the base’s untagged defenses on their battlemap.

It was untagged because Cora and her troops hadn’t gotten this far inside the perimeter. They were circling around the base, tagging and taking out the most easily accessible turrets to give the mechs fighting the cruisers cover to retreat back into. For whatever reason the lizards weren’t firing close to their own buildings, so the more mechs they could squeeze into firing positions there the better.

This particular turret was low to the ground, its top only rising to about waist height on the neos but its anti-air like plasma weapon succeeded in filling the entire walkway between buildings, meaning the mechs were going to have to take damage on approach if they wanted to go in that way. Before Jason was willing to accept that he walked his mech down the ‘bread loaf’ like building that he was hiding behind and poked out around the far side. The building was also taller than his mech by about double, narrowing at the top until it flattened out at about half the width of the base. This gave his mech’s arms a bit of clearance that its feet didn’t have, allowing him to slink around close to the side as he peeked out.

No other turrets were in sight, just several more closely packed dirt streets.

Jason walked around the end of the building and poked his mech out into the opposite walkway that led back down to the turret, firing off a blast of plasma from the flank only to see it rotate around quite fast and fire his way.

“Take it!” he yelled, walking back into cover after taking several divots of damage to his armor. Just before his line of sight was eclipsed by the yellow/tan building he saw multiple blue plasma lances hit the side of the turret and flash vaporize the armor covering it.

“Target down, Commander.”

Jason poked his mech back out, seeing the wreckage of the turret with a giant chunk melted out of one side while the other still looked pristine, with bits of snow sticking to the inner face. Inside the base there was little snow coming down, aside from that blowing in from the perimeter of the shield. Everything coming down from directly overhead was accumulating on top of the energy barrier, giving the assaulting mechs a zone of increased visibility.

He figured the lizards would eventually have to let the snow through, or maybe vaporize it with some sort of pulse in the matrix, but since he’d gotten to the base nothing had come down from above, so maybe the shield did have to be lowered for such a clearing…or maybe the lizards were just too busy to worry about details, but Jason knew that even a twig on top of the shield would continuously drain power from the matrix due to the pressure exerted upon it, and with every flake that fell the weight of the snow trapped on top was increasing.

The Archon pushed the thought aside. They had more defenses to neutralize.

“Heads up,” he said, running his mech towards the dead turret and the two neos now walking up to it. He quickly raised his mech’s arm and fired a single lance of blue meters in front of the pair and past them down the street where a group of lizards were approaching on foot.

His shot hit true, resulting in a painful flash of light whose concussion wave knocked the two closer neos off balance, but both mechwarriors caught themselves and stayed on their feet, though one had to brace his mech against the building wall with its arm.

“Don’t let the little ones get underfoot,” Jason warned, running up to and past the other neos as he headed for the direction the lizards had come from. “If they’ve got a det pack and get close enough you’ll lose a leg, minimum. Pop them at distance. I don’t care how many of their buildings we mess up.”

“Thanks,” one of them said as the pair dropped into formation behind the trailblazer as he pushed his mech into an intersection, intent on turning right, then juking back left and diving his mech across the gap and landing it on its face, digging up the dirt underneath the thin layer of snow as a large orb of plasma flashed by where his mech had just been.

“Heavy turret,” he warned them after a long pause as he crawled his way back to his feet. “No more than 30 meters in. I need one of you to poke your arm around the building and distract it to your side of the intersection on my signal.”

“On it,” the rearmost of the two said, walking his mech up close to the wall and standing ready a few meters shy of the opening. “How tall is it?”

“I’ll give you 20 credits if you miss,” Jason said sarcastically. “Just fire blind once and pull back, I’ll do the rest.”

“Ready.”

Jason walked his mech back away from the intersection and set himself. “Five…four,” he counted, starting to walk forward.

“Three…two,” he continued as his mech transitioned to a run and veered towards the more distant wall, but still short of the intersection by 50 meters or so.

“One…mark!” he yelled, ducking his mech’s shoulder and turning hard left in anticipation of moving out into the turret’s firing arc.

The other neo took two stuttering steps forward and exposed its left arm, firing off a single shot before ducking back behind cover. His attack didn’t draw a return shot, probably due to the turret’s firing arc including another lizard building  in the background, but the upper portion of the stubby turret rotated that direction just before Jason’s mech came running around the corner, clipping the inside wall with its arm and staggering forward off balance.

The Archon didn’t slow and plowed fist first into the turret, punching through the armor plating on the turret just below the plasma aperture. It fired over his shoulder harmlessly as the mech withdrew its arm and punched with the other, not making full penetration, but denting the panels considerably. Jason stood there, underneath its firing arc, and pounded the turret into submission. With the outer armor broken into shards he unfurled his mech’s fingers and grabbed at the inner mechanisms, ripping them apart and getting a power surge into his mech as he severed one of its conduits.

The surge scattered across the surface of the neo’s arm up to the elbow before disappearing, causing no damage to the shielded inner mechanisms. Other than the plasma cannon on the forearm, which had its own extensive protection, the mech’s limbs were heavily reinforced and shielded against all kinds of dangers that physical contact might spell…power surges, acids, shrapnel, excessive heat or pressure. The neos had been designed for hand to hand combat, originally intended to give the Archons the ability to fight it out with the dinosaurs one on one, but Jason and several others had been finding new applications for the Humanoid mechs, some of which had never been anticipated…including rockem sockem turrets.

Jason pulled the mech’s hands out of the turret that filled 90% of the gap between buildings and rose a good head above his neo, but like the rest of the lizard infrastructure it tapered towards the top, giving the Archon a slice of view to a courtyard of some sort on the far side, which he figured was the main reason for such a heavy turret in the middle of the base.

“I didn’t know these mechs could do that,” one of the other mechwarriors said, inspecting Jason’s handiwork as the pair came into view from behind.

“Your shot softened it up,” the Archon said deadpan. “Split up and find a way around these buildings. We need to get to the other side, and I don’t feel like taking the time to crawl over.”

“Move away, now!” the rightmost pilot said, drawing his mech’s forearm cannons up as if to shoot Jason.

To his credit the trailblazer didn’t hesitate, which is probably why his mech retained its legs. Before the other neo could fire at the ground troops running out from the small gaps between turret and building one of them detonated its backpack and blew half the turret apart, sending debris out into all three mechs while knocking Jason’s neo over onto its face.

The concussive force of the explosion, amplified by the close confines of the two flanking buildings, drove the neo forward and into the legs of the others, knocking all three to the ground in a pile of metallic limbs.

“Get off me…before more come,” Jason said, catching his breath as his mech squirmed around beneath the other two, realizing before they did how vulnerable the three of them now were.

“My right arm won’t move.”

“Roll off,” the other suggested, doing likewise to extricate his mech from the pile. When the other had done so Jason pulled his mech to its feet, seeing his faceplate filled with distorted images as the computer tried to compile the information from the various cameras into a single composite image. A few moments later the cameras cleared as the auto-cleaning mechanisms took the mud off, giving the Archon a good view of the shrapnel damage to the other two mechs.

The one on his right had a jagged piece of turret armor stuck in its elbow joint, while smaller pieces had either imbedded or scraped across the white camo armor. The other mech was similarly damaged, but without any large chunks imbedded.

The damage statistics on his own mech indicated moderate damage to the rear of his mech, but he couldn’t detect any hindrance in his movements as he spun his mech around, looking for more lizards coming through the now expanded breach.

“You ok, sir?”

“Don’t ‘sir’ me,” Jason said, moving his arms around. “How do I look?”

“Needle butt, Commander.”

Jason almost laughed, but his attention was focused enough on the enemy that it didn’t make it past his mental barriers to the surface.

“Pull off any of the large chunks,” he said, walking up and doing likewise to the other neo’s arm joint, then turning around so they could clean his mech off.

“Can you move that arm?” he asked, facing away from the pair towards the remains of the turret and mentally sizing up the width of the gap.

“The elbow is locked, but the shoulder and hand still work.”

“Test the cannon on the turret,” Jason said, walking aside.

“Hold on a second,” the other mechwarrior urged, pulling out one last chunk from Jason’s armor. “There,” he said, tossing the piece in front of the Archon for his inspection, “that’s all the big pieces, but you’ve lost a lot of armor depth to the smaller shrapnel.”

Jason stepped back and a blue plasma lance passed just in front of his mech, followed by a small explosion compared to the one that had knocked the mechs down.

“It works.”

“Good, now follow me,” he said, turning back into the dead end. “We’re squeezing through. Watch our rear,” he warned, digging his mech’s left hand into the turret’s innards and stepping up into the blast crater before pushing through the slightly wider gap at that height and wedging his mech in sideways. He fired off three plasma blasts at ground troops on the far side but his mech didn’t budge any further.

“Ah, somebody give me a push, please. I’m almost through.”

“Permission to tackle?” the closer mechwarrior asked, spreading his mech’s feet and arms wide, ready to sprint forward.

“Lean your shoulder into it and aim for my elbow, don’t hit my cannon.”

“Got it.”

A moment later Jason’s mech jerked from the impact and slid out of the vice grip the building and turret had on his mech’s chest, giving him a meter or so gap to work with. He fired at more lizards trying to approach from a large open area, either a landing zone or a reserved construction site, because it was too large and too far into the base’s interior to have been an inconsequential gap between the buildings. The far end of the rectangular plain butted up against a few tall but otherwise ordinary structures on the immediate other side of which stood the main defense tower that was sprouting the overhead shield.

Jason pushed and wiggled his mech through baby steps until he got past the intact half of the turret, finding a second rotational track slightly higher than the one on the opposite side sporting three times the weaponry, all of which had also been knocked offline, covering the giant plaza.

“Follow me through,” Jason said, firing two-armed now that he was clear, putting his ‘needle butt’ back towards the turret as he scanned the perimeter looking for more imbedded defenses for them to poach.

8

Jasmine watched as the hovertrucks sped by their leading mechs, then as the Saber neos were called up. Back behind her the two heavies were constantly firing their weapons off into the snowstorm, hitting one of the two cruisers that were picking at the mechs underneath the base shield. Everyone but her, it seemed, was getting into the fight, and she desperately wanted to do some damage to the enemy, especially as she saw some of the mech icons on the battlemap winking out…but for some reason she and the others had to guard the heavies when they could have been making a much bigger difference up front.

Her frustration increased when the hoths actually stopped moving forward, making Jasmine and the other mechs stop their slow advance altogether. The four-legged giants continued firing repeatedly, but apparently didn’t feel like getting any closer. Jasmine could appreciate that, given the firepower the cruisers had, but it also meant that her star and the others were just sitting by and watching. She would have pounded her fist against the console but stopped short, knowing it would only make her head hurt more.

A few minutes later that all changed as one of the two big icons on the battlemap began to move away from the base…and towards them.

“Oh crap,” she said, realizing they were extremely outmatched. Apparently the lizards had gotten tired of the big mechs taking potshots at them and were coming out to eliminate them, and probably all the others, before heading back in to the base.

“Everyone listen up,” Evin-693 said to the all the mechs in their battle group. The Sangheili was the highest ranking mechwarrior left among them, which meant it was his responsibility to organize the defensive effort. “Spread out and advance. Don’t let them take two of us down with one shot and don’t get caught up around the heavies’ feet. Make them choose between us and them. Target their weapons or we won’t have a chance of surviving this. The cruiser’s shields are down, but we don’t have the firepower to knock it out of the sky and we don’t want it landing on top of us either. Pull out its teeth and it can float around up there as much as it likes.”

“Move,” Jasmine told her star, pushing her mech forward with long strides that ate up the increasingly thick snow. Despite the relatively close range to the base she couldn’t see it or the cruisers in the snowstorm. She could barely see the trees on either side of the path, but fortunately her mech’s sensors weren’t so limited.

Before the giant silhouette appeared several lightning-like flashes in the sky marked the position of the heavies’ weapon strikes, then a huge mass of ship blocked out part of the blowing snow, suddenly increasing visibility between the mechs and the cruiser as orbs of plasma began raining down on the mechwarriors along with tiny shards from the anti-air weaponry.

Jasmine resisted the urge to fire immediately, but instead took the time to pinpoint the location of the weapons batteries while the rest of the mechs opened up on the underside of the ship. The Archon sent the coordinates for one of the heavy plasma cannons out to her star then launched a quarter of her missiles at it, having to use a visual lock in which the computer mapped out the target ahead and she picked the part of the screen she wanted them sent towards in lieu of a targeting laser which her madcat didn’t have.

The other weaponsfire from her star coalesced around that point on the hull, along with impacts from the other mechs, which knocked out the battery before Jasmine’s missiles could even get to it. Responding quickly while taking a bit of damage from the plasma shards coming down like rain as the snow continued to blow almost sideways, she tagged two more targets then fired off her plasma cannons at one of them, suddenly realizing that the ship wasn’t firing from very many positions. In fact, after one of the two she tagged went down, no more heavy plasma bombardments were forthcoming…only the rain of the anti-air batteries.

Those were deadly enough, but couldn’t take out a mech in a single shot.

Jasmine launched another quarter of her missiles against a new target as the rest of the mechs ate up the anti-air battery that she’d previously marked. This time her missiles made it to the battery before it was taken out, peeling off hull plates around the nub while cracking the aperture of the weapon itself. A backfire occurred and a green plume of plasma shot out from the underside of the ship, bathing the surrounding snow in green light before setting a chunk of the forest on fire, but the blowing snow quickly got to smothering the flames as more and more of the cruiser’s ventral weaponry was knocked out.

Looking for another target to hit rather than wasting her ammunition on the hull as others were doing, she noticed with some chagrin, her visual tracking program suddenly became inaccurate as the cruiser began to move again, first going forward towards the hoths, then it pulled up and retreated into the cover of the storm and disappeared from view. The torrent of snow immediately returned, blocking out most of Jasmine’s vision as she turned her mech around and looked back, wondering what was going on. She could only see a handful of the mechs through the snow, but her battlemap was reading a mass of friendly dots, meaning they couldn’t have lost too many.

“All mechs advance to base,” Evin said, his voice tight. “Best speed.”

“Yes,” Jasmine whispered, wheeling her madcat around and running off through the snow with her star pulling into a pentagon formation with her in the forward left slot. She kept the trees to her left in her view at all times, having no other means to navigate by as the mechs ran into a massive white wall that all but made them snow blind. She monitored their position on the battlemap, looking ahead to what mechs were left standing in the base and finding a lot of them still active.

What she neglected to notice was the absence of one of the heavies behind her, its disfigured hulk having fallen to the ground and been left behind, swallowed up by the snowstorm with only the flashes from its twin’s weaponry marking their position behind the advancing bipeds, but that light too disappeared as the distance increased and the snow thickened.

Neither she nor the others saw, minutes later, when a group of kamikaze kirbies, invisible on sensors and visually covered by the snow, flew by and rammed the other heavy walker, knocking it off its feet as one impaled it in the port side. The others flew by as if looking over the damage then zipped off through the storm towards the other hoths around the base where they would take several more down unsuspectingly.

Paul watched as one of the two cruisers assisting in the defense of the northern base pulled up out of the snowstorm and headed for space, both because it was leaving and because their sensors could clearly track it, meaning that the damage done to the hull must have been extensive. He watched its trajectory closely, wondering if it was retreating or redeploying to counter the fleets he had further south bombarding the other lizard base.

So far no cruisers had appeared to challenge them, but Paul didn’t think that would last long. The cruisers up north wouldn’t be the same ones that they’d had positioned in the south, because as fast as they were it would take them too long to intercept, meaning those that they did have laying in wait had to be closer by. One of those positions had been the original location of one of the cruisers that had redeployed to the north, but in the past the lizards had responded with no less than 2 ships, so when his lower fleet came under assault he wasn’t at all surprised.

The trailblazer issued a quick, preset order that he’d compiled earlier, ordering that fleet to dispense with the bombardment and hit the cruisers as hard as they could. Meanwhile the other, higher fleet continued its bombardment. Paul was not going to bring the two fleets together, so if the lizards were going to stop them from penetrating the base’s shields they were going to have to fight two separate engagements.

Minutes went by and no challenge to the upper fleet manifested. The 13 warships he had in the lower group essentially negated the pair of cruisers, driving them off heavily damaged while retaining only 3 equally damaged ships of their own. One still had its rail gun online, but its engines had taken damage and it was no longer able to maintain the hover orbit required. It kicked in its plasma engines and limped up into a conventional orbit, while the other two gained altitude intent on rendezvousing with the second fleet and offering what little weaponry they had to its defense.

As time went on and the orbital bombardment continued Paul began to crack a smile. It was a small one, unsure of itself, but growing in confidence as each additional rail gun slug hit the lizards’ shields, draining them of energy and further destabilizing the matrix.

No assault on the upper fleet was forthcoming, and Paul knew he’d pushed the lizards past their limit. Even if they did have another cruiser or two incoming from other locations, they couldn’t take the fleet he had assembled alone, which meant they’d either have had to hold back their first two cruisers and wait for the reinforcements, which would have let the Star Force ships pound on the base with two fists, or send out what they had against the weaker of the two fleets, hoping to be able to destroy it and then move on to the second with the help of the reinforcements.

The damage done to the two cruisers made that impossible…or maybe the lizards didn’t have any reinforcements available. Maybe the two cruisers up north were all the others they had on planet. Paul didn’t know which, and at the moment it didn’t matter, because the southern base’s shield was showing up on sensors, meaning the energy matrix was being disrupted close to the breaking point.

Paul’s eyes flipped back over to the northern assault as the second cruiser moved off from the base, but only a short distance. A frown replaced his thin smile, wondering what the warship was doing. None of the mechs, heavies or otherwise, were in that region, only forest.

When Jasmine finally emerged from the path and into the clearing that surrounded the lizard base the snow suddenly cut out, widening her view to where she could see all the mechs ahead and their weapons fire, along with a few salvos coming from the other cruiser off to her far right. Up above her was a flat wall of white where the shield was stopping and accumulating the snow overtop the base while gusts continued to blow in from the perimeter on the far side. She could see the angled wall of white filtering in underneath the shield edge, but thanks to the wind direction this half of the base was all but clear of blowing snow.

Her battlemap was constantly being updated with targets from the mechs inside and Jasmine chose to head left around the perimeter of buildings and tackle a section of icons that seemed to have been ignored up to that point, offering them fresh targets as most of the mechs coming out with them veered right towards the distant cruiser. A few headed straight in towards where the two trailblazers’ mechs were located and highlighted by a thin gold ring around their blue dots on the map.

Her star followed her without complaint or question across the plain to the buildings, then ducking inside to tackle one of the base defense turrets with good coordination.  From there they split up into two groups with Jasmine taking one of the thors with her. They teamed up on another turret, this time a small anti-personnel version that could do little to stop them, before a blanket of snow dropped down on the entire base, covering the mechs, buildings, and streets in half a meter of the white stuff, knocking down roaming lizards on impact but doing little to the mechs other than distract their pilots as the blowing snows followed it down, dropping their visibility down to 20 meters or so.

“What the hell?” Jasmine said just before a series of explosions muffled their way through the storm. She couldn’t see what was being hit, or much of anything else for that matter, so she focused on the position of her star. “Report status.”

“Green,” her wingman said, echoed by similar statements from the other three mechs half a block to the west.

Suddenly targeting coordinates flashed on her madcat’s display with Cora’s signature attached to the four closely placed points in the sky. There were no laser points to follow, nor could there be with so much snow in the air, but what was provided were precise position coordinates being measured off of three widely spaced mechs being used as reference for the targeting computers in every mech in the assault force.

“Hit it hard,” Jasmine said, walking to the side to clear a building and get a line of sight on the target, though in truth she couldn’t see a thing through the snow. She fired off two sets of her missiles, adding up to her 3rd quarter of ammunition spent, then fired repeated plasma shots off at the designated targets before a group of lizards appeared on the ground, trudging through the fallen snow to get at her mech.

“Eyes down, tangos on the deck,” she said, dropping her mech’s arms while twisting her torso around to her left. She melted both the lizards and the snow around them with two closely placed blasts then spun her head around in the cockpit, checking every directional image she had looking for more lizards as an explosion nearby rocked one of  her star’s mechs, taking out the blue dot on her battlemap.

“Kevin?!” she half yelled into her comm.

“He’s down,” the other madcat pilot answered. “Det pack.”

“Pull back,” she sniped, angry at the situation and her rotten luck. “Outside the buildings. If we can’t see the ground troops coming we’re sitting ducks in here.”

Her madcat twisted around to the right and began walking in a sharp turn, ducking into a street that would lead her back out into the clearing around the base.

Having worked their way down to the far end of the plaza Jason and his double star of neos, now reassembled, were working in unison to take the last of the ring of defense turrets, creeping along the building walls to stay out of direct firing range and less than 600 meters away from the primary defense tower when its shield suddenly deactivated, dropping the snow trapped on top down on the base as well as letting the storm in at them. His vision diminished within 20 seconds down to what was barely acceptable for hand to hand fighting, let alone taking out turrets that didn’t want to show up on sensors.

Nor did the buildings, or much of anything in the base, all having been made of sensor-resistant materials. Before he could worry about finding the turrets again based off the battlemap alone or, worse yet, wandering out into their field of fire, the tower started taking hits from the cruiser, blowing large chunks off that Jason’s mech could track even though he couldn’t see.

“Cora?” he asked, hoping she was ‘seeing’ what he was seeing.

“Targets incoming,” she said as she conversed with the mechs on the southwestern perimeter still playing tag with the cruiser. It was moving in over the clearing now that the shield was down, and as its forward edge came over the mechs on the ground they marked the location of its weapons batteries that the snow was obscuring from the other mechs’ view.

When the icons lit up on Jason’s faceplate he immediately fired both his cannons even as the cruiser was continuing to deconstruct their own tower via plasma impacts. Now that the shields weren’t covering the mechs they were in a more vulnerable position, even with the damage already done to the huge ship, meaning they had to deal with it now or be sniped to death from the air.

Flashes of blue plasma were visible around Jason in the snow, coming from his two stars even though he couldn’t see most of the mechs. They poured fire into the snow-shrouded target until the bombardment of what was left of the defense tower ended and Cora called off the massed attack as the wounded cruiser moved off according to Jason’s battlemap.

To his left one of the neos started firing again, followed by a familiar explosion that liquefied all the snow in the air for 100 meters, giving him and the others nearby a brief glimpse of the point of detonation.

“Backpackers are moving up,” the mechwarrior that had blown up the lizards warned. “And they can get pretty close now.”

“Don’t forget the turrets,” Jason said before they started moving around to look for lizards. “Push ahead along the buildings. We’ll take the turrets down one at a time while the last man watches our flank. As long as we keep walking it’ll be hard for them to catch up. Watch the side streets as we pass, and look for tracks in the snow. If they’re hiding in wait they’ll give away their position.”

“You two with me,” he said, referring to his two wingmen that had been fighting alongside him for the duration of the battle. “Everybody else get in line and follow close. If you can’t count the arms and legs on the mech in front of you you’re too far back, so keep it snug and arms wide. You see a little black suit shoot it on sight.”

Jason walked his mech to the left until he was a few meters away from one of the buildings ringing the large plaza and began to follow it forward to the next point on his battlemap that indicated a turret, grateful that the lizards hadn’t been smart enough to equip their troops with white camouflage, otherwise they’d never see them in all the snow.

9

Paul gave a quiet little fist pump when the holographic command center wrapped around him and his control pedestal showed the surface impact of a rail gun round penetrating the southern lizard base’s shields. A few more were deflected at various points across the field, then another got through, and another…then another was blocked, followed by a final half splatter whose remains fell through to the base below as the shield matrix finally disintegrated underneath the impact stress.

Paul checked the ammo counts his ships had left and saw they still had a third of their rail gun rounds remaining. With a quick order typed out on the control pedestal he ordered the fleet to expend all of their remaining ammunition on the now defenseless base.

Jasmine and her three other remaining mechs held position outside the buildings as the snowstorm continued to rage, forming the four corners of an improvised landing zone for the incoming mantises to home in on. Flying on sensors alone three of the transports set down between the mechs and began disgorging armored Knights and Archons that had obvious trouble trudging through the deep snow, but Jasmine was glad to have the backup. Inside her cockpit she highlighted the comm units on all their armored suits and grouped them into what she labeled as ‘ground,’ then opened a comm line to those troops only, rather than broadcasting to every Star Force unit involved in the assault.

“Ground force, who’s in command?”

“That would be me. Archon-219. Which building do you want to hit first?”

Jasmine created a ‘ground command’ comm option for him, then switched to it. “We need to establish a perimeter several buildings deep to keep their suicide squads at distance. Start with the small building to your left and work out from there. Let me know how you want to handle fire support.”

“We’ll identify targets and call for fire when we need it, otherwise just hang back and look intimidating. Do you know if there are any turrets near the target building?”

“It’s clear.”

“Actually, could you do us a favor?”

“Name it.”

“Melt some of the snow around the building entrance.”

Jasmine smiled. “Easy enough,” she said, walking her mech a few steps to the side and twisting around to face the building in question. She walked a bit closer to spot the nearest entrance through the blowing snow, making sure not to step on her own troops in the process, then fired off a single plasma blast at the ground near the building. It hit and flash vaporized the snow for several meters in diameter, soaking the ground beneath in excess water around the edges of the circle. She fired several more times, taking away the knee-high snow from the Archon’s path.

The Knights led the way, less encumbered by the resistance due to their greater height and strength. They were virtually invisible in their white armor, and only their identification tags stood out on Jasmine’s display, otherwise she would have stepped on them. When they got to the melted patch in front of the building they spread out three wide behind their shields while a fourth made his way up to the entrance and pushed his way through a bit of snow before getting hung up with the door handle.

One of the Archons came forward and fired his plasma rifle into the locking mechanism several times, but the door still wouldn’t open.

“Mech leader, would you mind shooting the door open for us?”

“Stand clear,” Jasmine warned. “These cannons only have one setting.”

She waited until all the little icons on her screen scurried off to the sides, jumping into the deeper snow and wading away from the firing line. Jasmine trigged a single plasma shot and hit the door square on, melting/blasting it apart as well as melting the remaining snow and connecting the doorway to the rest of the small clearing.

“Go,” she said, giving him the all clear while walking further to the east to keep an eye on the next side street while staying back far enough to watch out for lizard ground forces. The Archons and Knights poured into the building through the breach she’d just created while the other three mechs milled about behind her, watching over the mantises and not really knowing what else to do.

A few minutes later her comm activated again.

“Mech leader, ground troops coming up on our position. East radial street from the building. We’ve got a spotter on the roof, coordinate with her for fire support.”

The comm line, Jasmine noticed, was a 3-way with the ground leader’s portion cutting out, so she assumed the other was the spotter, which she tagged in her comm screen as such. “I’m in position at the entrance to the street but can see nothing more than snow. Give me a range estimate starting from the outer edge of the building and heading in towards base center.”

“250 meters,” the spotter said. “Aim dead center.”

Jasmine adjusted her firing controls and aimed using an estimated position in lieu of a line of sight. “Calibrate,” she asked, firing off her first shot.

The blue plasma streak flashed by the spotter’s position on the corner of the building’s narrow top, then hit more than 50 meters back of the group where the spotter couldn’t see through the snow.

“Overshot. Adjust 50.”

The second shot hit too short by 20 meters, but it did succeed in making the lizards run for cover. They slithered up next to the buildings and dove down into the snow…as if that would protect them.

“Mark position and repeat fire.”

Several more blue lances came down the street, not one of them hitting in exactly the same spot. They coated the area with plasma, boiling off the snow and creating a fog cloud that took the storm winds several seconds to blow away, after which the spotter could see several lizard corpses along with many more still alive and retreating back down the street.

“Mech leader, move up to the intersection and secure position. You’ve got them on the run and we’re advancing into the next building.”

“Copy that,” Jasmine said, switching to her star’s comm. “Ryan, stick with the mantises and make sure none of those lizard squads get close enough to do damage. Korna and Marrick, advance to my current position and stand by. We’re leapfrogging our way back into the base as the ground troops clear buildings out.”

Paul watched the ammunition counters on his orbiting fleet dwindle, dismissing each ship back to the shipyards for rearming when it ran out of rounds while arranging for other warships around Corneria to take their place within the day. Even though the base shield was down, the turret that produced it wrecked, and the rest of the base heavily damaged he always wanted to have ships in close orbit should they need to call down fire support. It was the one major advantage they had over the lizards and he didn’t intend on wasting it by getting caught out of position.

When the last of the ammunition was fired Paul sent orders for the skeets to move in, as well as sending the go orders for the dropships to start descending from their parking orbit.

Jason surveyed the damage to the defense tower from his mech six hours after the battle had begun. The storm had slowed enough to increase visibility up to 400 meters, allowing the mechs to move around more freely and finish off the remaining turrets. Numerous buildings still had to be cleared and secured, and there were many lizards still roaming about, far too many for what Jason would have guessed they had available, but then again there was little that they understood about their enemy, let alone what their standard troop deployments were.

The cruiser had done a good job of wrecking the tower. It was unsalvageable, which was what he figured was the lizards’ aim. When the cruisers left they were pretty much conceding the base to the Humans, but they didn’t want them to possess the defense shield…suggesting to Jason that they intended to come back at some point and didn’t want to have to beat their way past it when they did.

There was a small clearing around the tower that had collected most of the debris, though some of the surrounding buildings had been hit by smaller, lighter pieces that the explosions had tossed farther out, but they all appeared intact from his point of view, though the continuing snowfall was probably obscuring some of the damage…as well as making it difficult for the ground troops to move around. In addition to what had collected on the shield and then dropped down to the ground, the continuing storm was depositing several new inches of snow per hour, and though the intensity wasn’t what it had been earlier, the storm wasn’t predicted to stop for several days.

That was going to make things interesting if there were still lizards moving about. He didn’t doubt the things could burrow through the snow if it was deep enough, and already it was getting to that point. Jason had been experimenting in the open area around the tower remains on how to kick or push aside the snow with his mech’s hands for the past half an hour. His plasma reserves were running low, so most of the remaining lizard hunting was going to mechs with greater supply…mostly those that had come in with the second wave. However, Jason had just discovered a way to add to his available ammunition.

In his mech’s left hand was a gigantic snowball, which he now pitched at the base of the defense tower. It fell low, hitting the ground in front of the target and splattered satisfyingly on impact. He bent his mech over and started collecting more snow and mashing it into another projectile when Cora and three other neos walked into the courtyard.

“How’s it going?” she asked over the comm.

“Look behind me,” he said, still working on his new snowball.

Cora’s mech walked around with the others in tow and saw a series of experimental snow walls and fortifications that Jason had been trying out. “It’s packing snow then?”

Her mech jolted from an impact, off balancing her for a moment before the neo’s feet shuffled about to steady the mech.

“That it is,” he said, his mech’s hands no longer holding the snowball. “We should be able to secure the plaza with snow walls, then start bringing the transports down inside. It takes a bit of practice and a serious knee bend, but it’s doable.”

“You’re going to pay for that,” she mumbled, knocking her mech’s fist against its chest to get some of the clinging snow off the camera mounts. “Anyone left alive in there?” she asked, referring to the remains of the tower.

“I haven’t seen any, but the lower portion appears to be intact, so it’s possible. It’s going to take us forever to secure this base with the men we have, and the storm is making things 10 times as hard by giving the lizards all this cover.”

“Makes me wish we’d equipped the mechs with flamers.”

“True,” Jason said, referring to a weapon in the Battletech universe that was essentially an oversized flamethrower. That would have been extremely helpful in melting off key streets rather than having to push the snow around by foot or hand. “How many mechs do we have on the construction crew?”

“The five of us,” Cora said. “The others are still needed to clear streets.”

“Alright fellas,” Jason said, leading the way to the nearby plaza and kicking through one of the small experimental snow walls he’d built. “Let’s go build a snow fort.”

With dozens of skeets circling over the southern lizard base making strafing runs on targets that had survived the orbital bombardment, the first of the arriving dropships set down in the kilometer-wide clearing that surrounded the base, offloading Ninja Monkey mechs with Morgan leading the way out of the hold in her own neo and wasting no time as she ran in towards the base across the grassy field. The lizards had done well to prune back the forest and smooth out the surrounding ground so no enemy could sneak up on them from the trees, but they’d also created an opportunity for Star Force to bring in their mechs, which had proven to dominate the lizards on the ground.

Their superior aerial forces had been smashed by Paul’s warships, leaving only a few dozen fighters and two predators operational, though one of the gunships had a hole the size of Morgan’s mech in it. The skeets, loaded up with large belly missiles, had taken them down quickly upon arrival with Star Force gunships assisting in picking off the remaining fighters. With the air now secure, it was time to go in on the ground and secure what was left of the base, much as what was occurring up north.

Morgan would have preferred to have gone in with the Archon teams and fought hand to hand, but they hadn’t arrived yet and she didn’t want to play second string in the assault so she opted for a mech that would allow her to do approximately the same thing, only on an exaggerated scale.

Leaving the other mechs behind to catch up later, she sprinted her neo across the landing zone and up towards the line of smoking buildings, having to zigzag around several large craters created by rail gun slugs that had missed the target. In fact, the smooth clearing around the buildings had been potmarked so much that it appeared like a space shotgun had hit the lizard base, but there was enough clear ground in between the impact divots to give Morgan an easy approach, even if it wasn’t a straight line.

She’d been reviewing reports from the northern assault from her mech as it sat in the dropship bay in orbit, and she knew that that base had a large number of defense turrets imbedded between the buildings. She hoped that a lot of them in this base would have been knocked out from the naval bombardment, but she knew some were bound to have survived, with those now becoming her priority targets.

Morgan also knew of the threat from the little bomb-strapped lizards, but figured they wouldn’t pose much of a problem if she kept moving. Mechwarriors had a bad habit of standing still and shooting at things, but her Commando proficiency always urged her to stay in motion, which in this case would make it hard for the suicide squads to catch up to her feet where they’d have to be to take down a mech. Detonating any further away might knock her over, but it wouldn’t take her out of the fight.

Morgan ducked into one of the radial streets when she got to the buildings but only made it a hundred meters or so before a pile of debris blocked her path. She backtracked and tried another street, but didn’t have any more luck. After the third try she resigned herself to digging through and climbing over the debris, getting past three blockages before scaling a much larger fourth where two tall buildings had come down on top of one another. Using aerial feeds coming from the skeets she knew there was a clear road just on the other side, so she took the time to climb the small mountain then hesitated when she reached the shaky top, having to reset her feet several times to keep from sliding down as pieces shifted under the mech’s weight.

Morgan activated her comm on a private channel straight to Paul. “You sure made a mess of things down here,” she said, surveying the damage from her mount. It wasn’t the tallest in the ruins of the base, but it put her mech’s cameras up above most of it, letting her scan the graveyard of buildings, many of which were sending tall plumes of smoke straight up like marker icons thanks to the calm air conditions. “I had no idea the fleet could do this much damage.”

“Naval is the backbone of warfare,” he reminded her. “Which is why it’s essential that we maintain our superiority in space, even if their tech is better than ours.”

“Any more activity up there?”

“No…I think we’ve stretched their naval assets to the breaking point. Until they get reinforced, anyway.”

“Alright. Keep an eye out up there and we’ll do our thing down here. Just make sure they’re never able to do something like this to us.”

“I’d promise you that if I could, but I don’t think we’ve seen their full arsenal yet.”

“Neither do I,” Morgan said, twisting her mech around and climbing down the far side of the debris pile.

10

August 28, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Paul stepped out of the mantis at the captured northern lizard base in full acolyte armor onto the snow covered plaza, sinking his silver boots into a couple of inches of fresh precipitation. The rest of the accumulation stood all around him, making for the largest snow fort he’d ever seen. The outer wall was at least 400 meters long and probably another 250 wide, forming a giant rectangle inside the giant rectangle of the plaza that was more than twice the size of the fort.

The wall itself was at least two stories high and roughly square. He could see several impressions made by the mech fingers that had sculpted and compacted the snow, but otherwise it had a smooth surface. Paul wondered what improvised tools Jason had made out of the debris to achieve that.

Further inside there were two mini forts that surrounded modular anti-air batteries that they’d brought in to offer some protection to the improvised airfield. More than a dozen skeets sat on the ground next to them, while still more were on patrol in the skies above. Stationed outside the wall where Paul couldn’t see them were patrolling mechs, audible as they walked by as there was little other noise in the base to compete with.

“I don’t like that look on your face,” Paul said as Jason approached on foot from one of the small prefab structures assembled within the snow fort to act as a command center.

The other Archon shook his head, equally helmeted with his face obscured, accepting his friend’s joke at face value.  “You’ll share it in a few minutes,” he said as the pair walked over to a small hover truck and were driven out of the landing zone past two stationary mechs guarding the ‘gate’ to the snow fort.

“Any recent activity?”

“Not in three days, no.”

“So what’s the big secret?”

“There’s something we have to do that I don’t want to do,” Jason said with a tinge of controlled anger in his voice. “I don’t expect to find another solution, but I wanted you to have a crack at it anyway.”

“A crack at what?”

“You’ll see in a moment, it’s not far.”

Paul resigned himself to be patient, though he definitely wasn’t liking Jason’s tone. Normally they didn’t have a communication problem, but whatever this was it was getting under his friend’s skin enough to cause him to clam up.

The Star Force security officer drove them over to the upper southern sector of the base, passing by the remains of the defense tower and arriving at the loading dock of a conical building that ended five stories high with a blunted point.

“Tip of the iceberg,” Jason commented as they walked inside the half melted door. “Most of the facility is underground, for the warmth or protection I’d guess.”

The lizard buildings, it seemed, didn’t have any staircases. Instead they had lattice-like ladders in addition to cargo elevators. The pair of Archons took the ladders down two levels and walked across a short atrium before Jason pulled open a very thick door, letting out a wave of moisture and heat.

“Have a look.”

Paul frowned and walked inside, with Jason entering and closing the door behind him.

The naval expert was dumbstruck for a moment, then began walking down the rows of sealed, clear containers hooked up to a myriad of equipment. There were thousands of pods stretched out across the huge bay, with a footprint that must have covered several of the surrounding buildings’ substructures.

“A hatchery?” Paul asked.

“Yes...and remember these?” Jason said, picking up and tossing him a small device identical to some of the artifacts recovered from the first lizard base Star Force had scrapped over a year ago.

Paul caught it, remembering having sent the devices back to Sol when their local techs couldn’t identify what they were. To date no breakthroughs in that department had ever been reported. “What are they?”

“Watch,” Jason said, plucking the device out of Paul’s hand and walking over to an empty pod. He inserted the device into a matching receptacle, which then pulled the object inside the clear container and sliced it open with a cutting laser. The outer, mechanical shell was pulled off and discarded, revealing a second, less robust mechanism inside.

“We couldn’t figure out what it was because we never broke one apart,” Jason explained as the tiny device was lowered to the center of the container and pressed against a glob of clear gel, then quickly raised back up and shuffled into a small tube that sent it up into the machinery in the ceiling and over to the next empty container where it was lowered inside and the process was repeated.

Jason walked over and hit a button on that pod, pausing the process. “I’m not sure, but I think those little hand crates contain genetic samples that they use to grow new troops on site.”

Paul’s mind flashed back to the problem Jason had referenced. “How far along are they?”

The trailblazer twitched his head to the left and lead Paul down to another section of the pod field to where small lizards were incubating in a much larger gel layer, each as long as the Archon’s forearm.

“They’re growing fast. I’d guess there was a facility like this in the southern base before it got annihilated from the orbital bombardment, probably already turning out new crops of ground troops. This base is fairly new, and yet look at how far they’ve progressed. Now we know why they wanted surface footholds…and resources.”

“They’re not raiding just to raid,” Paul said, following Jason’s logic, “they’re planting industrial seeds.”

“Who needs supply lines when you can produce everything on site? We have to wait through an 8 week delay minimum for reinforcements and we’re limited by the size and number of jumpships we have available. Now suppose these guys are 6 months out from their homeworld…”

“They still need replacement cruisers,” Paul pointed out, thinking fast and hard. “I doubt they’ve established a shipyard yet, so unless they are getting supplemental resupply via jumpship, attrition will work in our favor.”

“Not my point, buddy.”

Paul turned away from the gel-bathed lizard and looked into his friend’s faceplate. “What am I missing?”

“The sensor stealthing.”

Paul thought for a moment, then closed his eyes as the obvious finally hit him. “Damn.”

Jason nodded. “As I see it, we can either turn tail and run or build as fast as we can, because sooner or later they’re going to bring their big guns out. If we really are on their frontier we might have enough time, decades even, but if they’re close by…”

“…we’re screwed,” Paul finished. Jason’s logic track was painfully evident now. The lizards they were fighting were just the enemy’s expeditionary forces, probably meant to explore, patrol, and deal with new or rising threats on the frontier, with the ability to grow new troops and build up whatever forces were necessary to deal with the threats they found.

Jason was also right in suggesting that meant the lizard homeworld was probably far away, but put up enough of a fight and they’d raise their status to the point that might, and probably would, draw a much stronger reaction from their civilization…like sending out their real army and navy to fight the Humans in a conventional war. The defense fighters they’d been employing, detectable by sensors, were probably part of their mainline forces and had been attached to the expeditionary role as base defenders, which suggested that there were probably many more ‘detectable’ lizard units in use elsewhere in their territory that they hadn’t come up against yet.

Including larger and more powerful warships, if what they were dealing with now were truly just skirmishers.

Jason nodded his agreement. “In the short term, however, what are we going to do with them?” he said, pointing at the infant lizards in the pods.

Paul glanced around at several of the developing aliens. “Best guess on time to maturation?”

“We need to analyze the equipment, but my gut says damn short. If this was a long term strategy, say 10 years worth, they wouldn’t be so aggressive. They’re spending ground troops like they’re easily replaceable, so my money’s on a year, max.”

“Genetic memory or quick learners?”

“Could be either, but if we hadn’t taken this base I’d expect these guys to be armed and in the field trying to tear us into pieces in no time.”

“That doesn’t leave us much choice.”

“I know,” Jason said regretfully. “I was hoping you’d have another idea.”

Paul considered for a moment. “Without a way to communicate with them…unless these guys are going to be blank slates, letting them grow up is just going to create more enemies. We need to let some go through the cycle so we can assess their actual capabilities, but I’m not comfortable letting them develop just so we can shoot them later.”

“If the blank slate theory holds,” Jason asked, “what are the odds of teaching them English?”

“If they’re maturation cycle really is as short as we’re assuming, I’d say slim. Have you seen anything on base that resembles a training center?”

Jason shook his head. “And if they’re not going to be training these younglings…”

“…then they’ve got to be born with the needed knowledge.”

“Genetic language?”

“An interesting possibility, but we don’t have enough data to be sure of anything right now.”

Jason looked over at one of the tiny lizards. “Mercy is the luxury of the dominant?”

Paul sighed and took off his helmet, with Jason doing likewise.

“That’s an odd smell,” Paul noted, tempted to put his helmet back on immediately.

“Can we take the chance?”

“We can if we want to,” Paul said, looking his friend in the eye. “Maybe these guys won’t be our enemies by default, but if they’re operating off of genetic knowledge I bet they’ll try to kill us the same way the prisoners did. Best case scenario is we let a few mature and, if they are hostile, keep them in a containment facility and see if we can learn to communicate with them.”

“That hasn’t worked so far,” Jason reminded him, referencing the suicides.

“It’s a challenge worth pursuing…but right now we’ve got a war to fight and can’t waste time babysitting our enemy. Maybe in the future we’ll give it a shot, but right now let’s take this at face value. These younglings are being grown, here, now, on our planet, to be thrown against us in battle after battle until they kill us all.”

Jason nodded, Paul’s words matching his own thoughts. “Explosives or plasma?”

“Plasma, sooner rather than later. Only use Archons, some of the others might get the wrong impression. Keep the equipment intact as much as possible. We’ve also got to consider the possibility that they come back to…” Paul cut off as his helmet started making noise. He slid it back on his head and toggled his forearm controls. “Repeat please, I didn’t get all that.”

“Orbital sensors have picked up an approaching ship, high velocity headed towards atmosphere. It is not one of ours.”

Paul frowned. Lizard ships weren’t detectable on sensors unless they were damaged…or unless this wasn’t one of their expeditionary force vessels.

“Where’s it heading?”

“We can’t tell, it’s arcing its trajectory. It may be going for an orbital insertion, but it’s definitely coming in hot.”

“Alert all bases and have them get skeets in the air, loaded with shipbusters…and give me position updates as they come in. It’s going to be a while before I get back to a nexus.”

“Trouble?” Jason asked after Paul finished. He’d left his exterior mic on, so Jason was able to hear his half of the conservation.

“Incoming ship, on sensors, not one of ours.”

“Coming here?”

“Don’t know yet, it’s still in space.”

“Get going,” Jason prompted.

Paul shook his head. “It’ll be hours before I can get back. I’ll help you finish up here first. Go grab some guys and extra ammo,” he said, pulling his plasma rifle off his back and looking for a release switch on the nearest pod.

The mystery ship didn’t stick around long. After settling into a brief orbit and launching an object down to the surface it left as quickly as it had arrived, moving so fast that none of the Star Force warships could have intercepted it had they tried. The meteor-like object fell to ground 37 kilometers outside the main Star Force colony, blasting an impact crater into the forest that was hard to miss. After skeet reconnaissance confirmed a single object in the crater a ground team was organized and deployed to investigate the nature of the projectile.

Initial reports indicated a large sphere with ablative plating, the contents of which were uncertain. Close range scans indicated a mechanism underneath the partially charred plating, and after carefully removing the excess material the survey team discovered a latch that opened up what appeared to be a container.

By that time the next day Paul had arrived on site and was present when they finally cracked the case, revealing numerous objects inside, all of which stood in stark contrast to what they knew of lizard technology. The yellow/tan motif was not present, nor was the rough, tough exteriors of most of their tech. Instead there were crystal-like items, partially or totally clear, stacked together in thick, flexible, grid-like straps that had apparently protected them from the impact.

“Doesn’t look like a bomb to me,” Greg commented, standing next to Paul.

“Doesn’t look lizard either,” Paul said, reaching in and pulling out one of the items. He turned the shard-like object over in his armored hands for a moment, then passed it to Greg as he reached in to pull out another much larger crystal brick from the center slot.

As soon as he did all 16 pieces began to glow pink, then the shard in Greg’s hand took on a mind of its own and jumped into the air, meeting up with the brick and attaching itself to it as Paul let the larger piece go. It hovered in the air as all the other pieces flew out of their containers and connected to each other, assembling into a crystalline spike ball that finally settled down to hover half a meter off the ground, perfectly still.

“Ok,” Greg said as a hologram materialized around the object depicting the surface of the planet, easily recognizable by the pole to the pole forests and distinctive snowcaps on top and bottom. To that image 7 widely spaced dots appeared on the planet, along with 38 tiny squares. Two of the dots began to pulse rhythmically, drawing a pointed finger from Greg.

“Are those what I think they are?”

Paul pulled off his helmet so he could get a better view. The hologram was faint, keeping the crystal projector visible beneath it, but the complexity of the surface features was intense, making the map look almost like a live image of the planet rather than an artificial construction.

“The squares are our colonies and outposts, and those two flashing dots are the lizard bases we just took,” he said, his eyes drawn to the other five dots, “but those…”

“If this isn’t lizard tech, and that wasn’t a lizard ship that delivered it,” Greg said slowly, “then it’s possible someone else just tipped us off to five more lizard bases on Corneria.”

Benefactor

1

October 2, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

“Clear to point 12,” Morgan reported over her comm before continuing on down the tree-covered hillside. She ran forward easily, dodging one tree trunk after another in her ranger armor, now repainted in forest camo, while maintaining an average speed of 12 mph over the rough terrain as she broke trail for the other Archons. Periodically she had to stop so they could keep up, so every few kilometers she would drop a virtual nav point and search the surrounding area, making sure it was lizard free before moving on.

The other 8 Archons were all acolytes, given that they needed enhanced leg speed and endurance for this mission. A mantis had dropped them off behind a ridgeline while in flight some 104 kilometers out from one of the 5 lizard bases on planet so their sensors wouldn’t know they’d deposited a ground team. The ‘fellowship of the nine’ as Jason joked had crashed down through the canopy, braking against the branches before finally dropping down to the forest floor as the mantis flew on to another location, making its flight line appear to be skirting the base while moving to one of the defense towers they were constructing nearby.

After collecting themselves and insuring that their equipment packs were undamaged from the fall, Morgan had taken point and led them cross country for the past 6 hours, running up and down the varied terrain in the straightest line possible. As of now they were only a few kilometers from the base, but over the next rise would put them in line of sight to the complex over three smaller hills.

The trailblazer charged up the opposite hillside, despite the heavy pack she wore, and made it halfway to the top before the others made it to her waypoint on top of the hill behind her. Had she turned around she could have seen their ID tags on her helmet’s HUD, but otherwise they remained as invisible as she was through the cover of the forest…or so they were counting on as they approached the lizard base.

The main worry was scouts or monitoring devices in the forest surrounding the target, which Morgan had the task to search out while the others just focused on maintaining their speed and not falling too far behind. Among them were Rafa, Paul, Jason, Cora, Greg, Kevin, Ace, and Ariel, the last of which was the only non-trailblazer among the group. She was currently a level 2 Acolyte, while the second lowest ranking member was Kevin at level 24. He’d always been one of their better runners, which left Ariel as the weak link in the group and as such she was only carrying a pack half as heavy as the others…all of which seemed to defy conventional wisdom by having all your war leaders put into such a vulnerable position. That would have been the thinking back in Sol amongst the various nations’ militaries, but true to Archon philosophy those who were the most skilled took on the toughest missions…and this mission would have taken twice as long and twice as many people had they sent a second gen team in on their own.

It was also an experiment, and Paul and the others felt it best if they were on site to feel out the lizards’ weaknesses. With total forest enclosure and a defense shield covering the base there was no way to drop their mechs into the clearing that orbital scans showed surrounded all of the lizard bases…no doubt to keep ground teams from being able to infiltrate the perimeter. Star Force couldn’t even get their fighters in over the base, which had significant anti-air capability in addition to the fighter swarms that would appear if any ship got within a set distance. Orbital bombardment was their only way to break through the surface defenses, and after the spanking Paul had given them earlier they’d scrounged additional cruisers from somewhere, because when he tried to repeat the process on one of the five newly discovered bases they intercepted and drove his ships off immediately.

He’d ordered his bombardment fleet to retreat as another experiment, seeing how aggressive the lizards were going to be. The fact that they let his ships go even though they were the faster suggested that for the moment they were merely concerned with protecting their bases rather than racking up ship kills. Paul had organized enough ships into the bombardment group to be able to kill at least one cruiser, and apparently the lizards didn’t want to get into a war of attrition if they didn’t have to.

That told Paul that they were operating with limited resources, but that they had enough available to make a mess of his bombardment fleet if he pushed that tactic. Part of him was tempted to do so and see if he could get free reign of low orbit, even if it meant losing half the ships he possessed. He didn’t feel comfortable doing that without knowing what the lizards’ resupply capabilities were, for ever since they’d captured the two enemy bases the lizards hadn’t mounted any more assaults against Star Force’s orbital facilities.

Now that could have been because of the reinforcement efforts Paul had been employing, or perhaps the fact that they were running short on cruisers. Either way it was buying Paul time to reinforce their orbital infrastructure and he wasn’t willing to lose the gains they’d made there by taking half his defense fleet out of the equation. He guessed his capital ship resupply rate coming in from Sol was greater than what the lizards had going for them, so as long as he could keep them on the defensive they might be able to win the war of attrition.

With orbital bombardment out of the question and aerial attacks being extremely problematic, it seemed the lizard bases were well secured and essentially untouchable. Paul and the others knew, however, that the longer they stood the more troops they would grow and the more equipment they would build, so they needed to at least do some damage periodically if they wanted to win the resource race, otherwise the enemy expansion could snowball.

When Morgan got to the top of the next hill she paused and put down another waypoint using her interactive helmet controls and forearm keypad, then she did a brief perimeter search. Several minutes later when the Archon group arrived she reported in that there wasn’t so much as a scaly tail tip within sight.

“Where are you at?” Paul asked as he got to the waypoint third in line behind Jason and Greg.

“Look up,” Morgan said over the comm.

Paul did as he was told and saw her ID tag up in the treetops, but couldn’t make out her position visually. The camo paint was doing its job well. “See anything from up there?”

“Plenty. Set a guard detail and come on up.”

“Greg, Rafa…play venator. Everyone else set up here, packs off, and rest,” he said, disconnecting his own gigantic pack of equipment and stretching out his body in a few loosening flexes before jumping up and grabbing one of the overhead branches, then hauling himself up onto it as he climbed his way up into the canopy.

“That tree’s not tall enough,” Morgan told him. “Move two to your southeast and you should be able to get high enough.”

Paul walked out on one of the thicker branches, holding onto those above him until he felt it begin to sag beneath his feet. He stopped there and bent down into a crouch…then leapt off the branch, which half collapsed beneath him, over to the next tree, grabbing for whatever handholds he could find.

He fell two meters before latching on and hand walking his way back up the very supple branches until he got a good foothold, then he shimmied his way around to the far side of the tree, having to move up another 3 meters to find an appropriate branch and repeated the jump, landing in much the same way with several branches sagging under his weight before he climbed back up towards the trunk and finished his ascent.

From the floating icon to his left he saw that Morgan was in a tree just south of his and still well above his head. Sticking close to the trunk he climbed up to the top where it started to wobble but his helmet finally caught a glint of moonlight now that he was higher than most of the other tree branches. There were still a lot of three pronged leaves in view, but after a few minutes of repositioning he finally got a good perch where he could look out and see the lizard defense tower and the top half of the base’s buildings, but not much of the clearing around it, for the hills in front of them blocked most of the lower view.

“I’m up,” he said, on a private line to Morgan. “What’s your take?”

“Do you have your scope on?”

Paul flipped the switch on the helmet add-on and saw a large section of his HUD replaced with a zoom window. He enlarged it to fill most of his vision, leaving a bit of normal view on the left side so he could see the branch that he was holding on to. “Yes.”

Interlinking with Morgan’s, Paul’s view of the base suddenly had a small tag added. He zoomed in on that point and saw a low and long building.

“What am I looking at?”

“You tell me, you’re the naval expert.”

Paul frowned, then gave the building a more thorough inspection. “You’ve got me. What’s so special?”

“Look again,” she said, adding a few more icons.

Paul looked at the points she’d tagged, then it suddenly clicked. “That’s a piece of a cruiser…dorsal ridge I think.”

“Then they’re building more rather than getting reinforcements,” Morgan pointed out.

“We can’t be completely sure of that,” Paul warned her. “Why didn’t we see that from orbit?”

“Look higher.”

Paul pulled back the zoom a bit and looked around, having some difficulty in the low light, then a bit of metal caught his attention about halfway up to where he figured the invisible shield would have been. “Son of a bitch.”

“Looks new to me,” Morgan offered. “Might be they’re shorthanded and don’t want us knowing they’re building another cruiser. If we had a few more ships on hand I’d say take it to them in orbit and bomb the hell out of this place.”

“Dicey,” Paul warned, looking at the false cityscape suspended in air above the construction yard. “I can see two other ship pieces from here. I wonder if they build in segments rather than on a skeleton.”

“Do you want to hit the ship?”

“No, we need to hit their fabrication units, which I’m guessing are here,” Paul said, tagging four icons onto his and Morgan’s scopes. “I also think this is a firearms plant,” he said, adding a fifth.

“I haven’t been able to locate the hangar, which makes me wonder if it isn’t underground.”

“No, I see it. It’s a decoy too. See the narrow building to the left of the defense tower…there’s a false cover floating on top. I bet the fighters can fly underneath for a good ways.”

“Why disguise the hangar?” Morgan asked. “We can’t hit it without taking the whole shield down, so what’s the point?”

“Either this is in response to our tactics, or this is a more mature base. I’d bet they’re operating on a predetermined playbook as far as the layout is concerned. Nothing here looks randomly placed. I’d imagine they’ve done this sort of planetary insertion dozens of times before.”

“What do you want to start with?”

“Let’s try the crawler.”

An hour later after the Archons had finally crept up on the tree line and got a good, ground level view of the base, a small six legged miniature walker scurried out of the forest and into the tall grasses that dominated the perimeter clearing. Barely half a meter long, the crawler disappeared into the moonlit greenery that swayed with the breeze, hiding the bits of motion the machine created as it passed along low to the ground.

Using a small datapad, Rafa guided the crawler across the sea of grass while the others waited for a reprisal from the lizards. None of their ground troops had been discovered in the forest outside the base. They’d done an extensive check of the immediate area before setting up a few hundred meters inside, dispatching Ariel and Kevin as venators while Cora guarded Rafa. Morgan was up in the treetops again as lookout while the rest were situated another hundred meters back guarding their equipment packs and ready to reinforce the others if the lizards did show their scaly faces.

 It took a long time for the crawler to get halfway across the kilometer-wide clearing, then Morgan stopped Rafa with a quick word as a sentry was spotted emerging from the gaps between buildings. It scurried along the perimeter of one, looking out over the grass, then darted back inside on patrol. A few seconds later the ranger cleared him to move on, even though it was unlikely that it could have been spotted from the ground.

From the air was another matter. Morgan could see its location on her scope, but she could also make out a faint bump in the grasses when it was moving forward…like a hamster moving underneath a blanket. She didn’t see any elevated guard towers on the nearby buildings but there was no reason they couldn’t have hidden camera mounts the way Star Force did.

“Slower,” Morgan urged, with Rafa responding by decreasing the crawler’s forward progress rate by 50%.

That took it even longer to approach the buildings, but make it it did. Rafa stopped it just shy of the edge of the hard dirt roads that lined the interior of the base, keeping the mini walker inside the edge of the grasses.

“Directions?”

“Go up the building on your left,” Morgan prompted. “Patrol shouldn’t be back for at least another 6 minutes.”

“Alright,” Rafa said, scurrying the little machine out and onto the rock-hard dirt. The camera mount showed that in fact it wasn’t dirt, but some ultra-compressed compound that formed a sort of asphalt. The Archon snapped a photo tag and archived it in his datapad for review later, then walked the machine over to the wall.

When it was a few inches away he trigged the gripping mechanisms to extend on all six legs, then began to slowly attach its front two legs to the building in front of it. From there it hoisted its weight upwards, attaching all of its legs to the building via air pressure, given that the material wasn’t magnetic, then disconnecting one and attaching it further up.

One leg at a time Rafa climbed it up the three story tall building and onto the roof, beating the sentry by 2 minutes. On top there was no one in sight, though there was a roof access door.

“I’m up,” he said, deactivating the suction cups and walking out across the building top with quick, regular steps.

“Head southeast,” Morgan said, guiding the little robot as it penetrated further and further into the base, dropping tiny marker beacons on various buildings as it passed.

Jason stood on the edge of the forest with only a few trees between him and the clearing as he unpacked the 7 projectiles that he would be using for ammunition in the shoulder mount launcher that he’d already assembled and had leaning against the tree two meters to his left. He knew he would have to fire as fast as possible, so he wanted to arrange each firing piece within easy reach to minimize reloading time.

Paul, Greg, Ace, and Cora were doing likewise, each at various points along a kilometer-wide section of the perimeter. Morgan was still playing lookout while Kevin and Ariel stood guard on either flank. So far their infiltration mission had been a success, but now was the time when their recent engineering would be put to the test, and if they’d guessed wrong about the lizards’ anti-air defenses they weren’t going to get much out of this attack.

Regardless, as soon as Jason fired off his 7 projectiles he would be on the run. The Archons didn’t know what kind of response to expect, but they weren’t going to stick around and watch in person…they had cameras set up for that, deployed and spaced several kilometers apart around the perimeter during the crawler’s long trek inward. They’d transmit visuals in burst mode several hours after the attack began, hopefully without the lizards finding them. The transmitters had been deliberately pointed away from the base and designed to transmit a cone of signal to an overhead satellite network that the lizards hadn’t yet deemed worthy of knocking out of orbit.

“Ready,” Jason heard Paul say over the comm, then a moment later Cora reported in as well. “Check.”

“Ready,” Jason added.

“I’m green,” Greg confirmed.

“Say when,” Ace said, waiting for the go ahead.

“Pop ‘em,” Morgan ordered, watching intently from her treetop position. Using the enhanced nightvision and tracking system on her scope she saw five very fast projectiles shoot out from the forest in a shallow arc, tagged by their tracking icons on her HUD, then slow as they hit the halfway point, dropping down almost all the way to the grass before leveling out.

More followed them in the same manner, all taking slightly different tracks as what Paul had nicknamed the ‘buzz droids’ flew into the base on tiny fan blade engines, tracking the locators that the crawler had placed. When the first group got to the buildings they either flew up and over or down the streets, going every which way in a very erratic manner using their proximity sensors and onboard navigation programs to track a path to their targets that wouldn’t take them very high.

“Anti-air is silent,” Morgan reported as the first of the 7th wave appeared on her scope.

“I’m out,” Paul said, breaking from his position and running deeper into the forest.

“Ditto,” Jason said, pulling the launcher off his shoulder and activating the self-destruct timer set for 3 minutes. He tossed the weapon aside and took off running, not bothering to look back.

Morgan waited a bit longer than the others, wanting to see their little buzz droids through to target and expecting the lizards’ defenses to be putting up some response. On her scope all the first wave of the flying bombs landed at their targets, settling down over the tiny tracking pellets like insects feeding off of flowers and waited for the others, or more accurately waited for Morgan’s delay signal to end. She kept it active in order to get all the buzz droids to target before alerting the lizards to trouble, but the moment it cut out their individual programing would take over.

She waited what felt like an eternity for the 7th wave to arrive and find their targets, but eventually all of the projectile icons matched up with the tracking signals, leaving the only odd man out being the crawler, which Rafa was still maneuvering around, gathering intelligence on the base.

“Pop goes the weasel,” Morgan announced to the rest of the Archons, killing the delay signal.

Small explosions popped up across the base, then were sucked back up by the night as the fireballs died out…then one last, bigger explosion went off as the crawler detonated its payload underneath the false canopy covering the shipyard, breaking it apart in a flash with the pieces falling down on top of the site in the ensuing darkness.

Morgan smiled once, then turned her back to the base and dropped down through the tree branches, slowing herself by momentarily grabbing them as they passed before hitting the ground hard and rolling out of the fall. She redirected the momentum into a somersault and came back up onto her feet in a run, heading deeper into the forest following the others as they fled the lizard base.

2

October 4, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Paul walked into the research lab fresh off a shower, workout, and long night’s sleep after their recent mission to find Greg was already there ahead of him. The Archon frowned as he walked in.

“You beat me.”

“That does happen on occasion,” Greg said, tapping one of the crystal shards on the alien holographic device to get it to flip screens.

Paul dragged a stool over next to the floating device and ran his fingers through his short hair, flicking a bit of residual water away. “Where are you at?”

“Trying to make some sense out of this grammar,” he said, looking at a screen of five ‘words’ that were made up of slashes and oddly shaped dots. “Their vocab primer is easy enough to understand, but their sentence structure is annoyingly odd without any verbs.”

“What’s the vocab count up to now?”

“The techs got past 3,000 yesterday, though I did spot a few inconsistencies, so don’t take their list as fact.”

Paul looked at the nearby table, spotting a particular datapad and got up to retrieve it. He turned it on and began sifting through the basics of the alien language as the probe had instructed them. It had begun with a hologram of water transitioning between solid, liquid, and gaseous states, then tagged the images with the vertically written word. It had then gone on through hundreds of others, establishing a basic vocabulary for the Humans to learn, along with their vocal equivalents that sounded like fingernails on chalkboard.

Fortunately the sound had to be triggered by pressing one of the crystal arms within the hologram so they didn’t have to suffer through that every time they looked up a new word, but the process of learning a completely new language was tedious enough, even when they’d been given everything they needed by the mysterious race that had built and sent the probe to them.

Paul looked through several new vocab entries, committing them to  mind as best he could, knowing that the more times he saw and used them the more likely they were to stick, then put the datapad aside and focused on the text document that Greg was looking through. It was wide, with 13 vertical lines of text. They’d confirmed that it was read left to right, top to bottom, but as his friend had said the language contained no verbs, so reading even this basic primer was difficult, let alone sifting through the library of first contact data that it contained.

They had managed to get a name, both in writing and their screeching language. Morgan had altered it enough to be useable, dubbing them the Hycre. There was what looked like a complete autobiography on the race included in the probe’s databanks, they just couldn’t read it until they learned the language.

Paul was glad they’d taken the initiative, not to mention warning them of the lizards’ additional bases. He’d much rather pit the trailblazers’ creative intelligence against the problem of establishing communication rather than hope the other side could figure things out. This probe was either standard issue for first contact situations or they’d taken a long time to design it just for them.

Or it could have just been something they’d pulled off the shelf and reprogramed, but never the less Paul was thoroughly impressed at the complexity of the artifact and the underlying significance that it held.

Fortunately for their sanity not everything in the databanks were text documents. There were also a great number of pictures and diagrams. The Hycre, as it turned out, were completely alien in physiology. They were, in crude terms, floating gas bags that existed in what they thought was labeled as an atmosphere of sulfur dioxide. They had no arms or legs, but six worm-like tentacles, four air ‘atriums’ that allowed them a measure of jet propulsion by compressing and expelling globs of air for movement, and a spikey tail fin that rose up over top of their roughly spherical bodies like a mohawk.

They also had no eyes, ears, or any other surface features. Their sensory organs were instead incorporated into their translucent skin. Paul wasn’t sure what their full capabilities were, sensory wise, but they appeared extremely weak. They had a large internal air bladder that, from what the diagram said, contained biologically created hydrogen gas to give them buoyancy enough to float around on their homeworld, which was listed along with a very complete map of this region of the galaxy.

After Greg had finished his round of Hycre lessons about an hour later he left Paul to continue working on his own. The Archon finished up a few new vocab entries into the shared database for the techs to continue with later, then touched the crystal shard on the lower hemisphere that brought up the probe’s collection of maps, starting with the largest one that had the Epsilon Eridani System on the very edge of what appeared to be a more rimward civilization.

It looked like a video game map with all the various factions labeled in different colors and symbols, each of which had a brief bio attached. Based on the pictures they had been able to identify 3 of the races along the coreward edge of the map as having been listed in the pyramid database, with confirmation requests on the others which were now in transit via jumpship for analysis. Paul doubted very many of the 28 other races would be in the V’kit’no’sat records, for between him and the other trailblazers on Corneria they had a good collective memory of the threats looming around the known galaxy.

About half of the marked territory had been claimed by the V’kit’no’sat on the edge of their empire, including Earth, but none of it had remained in their possession, at least according to the Hycre, and the fact that so many new races were abound suggested major changes in galactic politics. He doubted very much that the V’kit’no’sat had been destroyed, but was glad to not have them breathing down their necks any time soon…though Earth was on the edge of the Hycre map, so it was still possible that their primary enemy could still be nearby on the coreward side.

What it also meant was that their galactic playbook was out of date. Had the Hycre been in the pyramid database they would have had a language file on them, including comm frequencies and technological tie-ins. Having one computer system match up with another race’s was statistically improbable, meaning that a lot of tech work would have to be done before they could even link up their comm systems. The V’kit’no’sat had already done the leg work there for every race in their database, including the ones they’d eradicated, but Star Force wasn’t going to be able to rely on that resource with these rimward races, for they were complete unknowns.

The closest Hycre system was 53 light years away from Epsilon Eridani and 42 light years away from Sol, lying above Star Force’s home system within the bulk of the galactic disc, whereas Epsilon Eridani lay below it. The system had yet to be named on Star Force charts and lay on the outer edge of the V’kit’no’sat survey zone, which had cut lower on the galactic plane this far out, missing a lot of the upper systems. In total, this portion of the galaxy was about 2,000 light years thick, meaning Sol had a mass of star systems around it in all directions.

According to the Hycre map the system contained 3 planets and 6 moons. All three planets were gas giants, but only one had an atmosphere suitable to their physiology. According to what Paul thought were temperature numbers, they liked the atmosphere hot and thick, meaning that Star Force and the Hycre probably wouldn’t be fighting over planets anytime soon. He wondered where, exactly, in a gas giant they built their infrastructure, or how they could even gather resources to build ships and technology.

The answers were probably contained within the databanks, if they’d been so forthcoming, but they were going to take a lot of time to decipher. Right now he just wanted to get a feel for who was out there…and where exactly the lizards were coming from.

The Hycre had a name for them, but it was so high pitched that there was no imitating it. He doubted that was what the lizards called themselves, so they’d held off on naming them just yet. Their system tags were stretched across a good chunk of the map, but none were within 75 light years of Epsilon Eridani. That made Paul feel better, though in truth that could be very nearby depending on how fast their jumpships were, but he doubted they were close enough for quick reinforcement. Their homeworld was tagged as being 308 light years away at an angle, part rimward and part counterclockwise while being depressed into the lower half of the galactic plane.

They had 38 star systems tagged as their territory spread over a large region. Paul and the others figured that those systems were ones where they had colonies, but that they probably laid claim to many others. It was possible that Epsilon Eridani fell into that category and that they hadn’t sent a patrol through the system for the past decade, or maybe they were simply scouting out beyond their borders in search of enemies or new races to pick on. Either way, their main territory being considerably far away was a relief to Paul, suggesting to him that he might be able to establish naval superiority if Sol could keep sending him ships in addition to the few new models coming off the local shipyards.

He didn’t mind burning through them if it meant taking out one or two of the lizards’ if the enemy couldn’t replace theirs as fast. Exchanging ships like chess pieces had been one reason they’d gone with drone warships, otherwise they would have had to fight much differently in order to protect the crews onboard. Without crews they could act more liberally with their attack fleets, reserving their defense tactics for their command ships and battleships.

Paul wished he had a command ship in system, but they were far too large to haul across interstellar space. They had to be built locally, and that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. He wished he knew for sure how fast the lizard jumpships were, and how many they had available, but at least the Hycre had given them a good look at the playing field, even if they couldn’t detect the damn ships when they entered the system.

Paul had already been through the lizard territory system by system on earlier days, so today he picked a section of the map not dominated by the lizards, trying to get a feel for who the other major players were. He hoped some of them were giving the lizards hell on other portions of their border, because he feared that the more they held them off here, the more attention they’d get back on their homeworld…which might then decide they needed to make an example of the Humans. Paul much preferred thinking of Corneria as being a backwater planet the lizards didn’t truly care about, though they were going to quite an effort to set up shop here, even if they had to pay their own way with local resources.

The Hycre had their territory stretched out into fingers delving into a number of other race’s chunks of territory…though to be accurate the little colored dots on the map were all they truly controlled, not the mass of space in between. Paul guessed this was due to their need for a very specific, and somewhat rare, set of planetary conditions for them to inhabit, and given that a lot of other races were not happy or capable of living in gas giants they probably didn’t see them as an equal threat to the others.

That’s what he thought, anyway, until he was studying a race of flying bat-like creatures and saw that the Hycre had a colony on a rocky planet much like Corneria, save that it had no vegetation. The atmosphere was thick, but not of the type they needed to survive, never the less they had infrastructure on the ground, of what type the probe’s data didn’t say, but Paul had the feeling that it was a mining colony, probably going after resources they couldn’t get down in the cores of their gas giants.

That suggested to him that they were accomplishing through technology what they probably couldn’t do through muscle. In fact, he mentally kicked himself for dismissing their potential strength so quickly. Yes, their technology was far superior to Star Force’s, but just because they were physically…odd…didn’t mean they couldn’t work their way around the problem.

With that thought in mind Paul started searching through the map for any other terrestrial Hycre colonies, finding a few. Not many, but every now and then one would show up almost at random, but always on an uninhabited world, not only by sentient life forms but also with a lack of plants. It looked as if they wanted absolutely nothing around them on the ground, possibly out of fear, or maybe an aversion to those types of life forms.

It was impossible to say, he knew, but it was worth thinking about. Despite the fact that they’d tipped them off to the lizards’ bases he didn’t automatically assume the Hycre would be allies. There was a very good possibility of that occurring, and he definitely wanted to pursue that agenda, but he knew they had to prepare for the opposite eventuality, and their helping Star Force could end up being an ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ sort of deal. If they drove the lizards out of this region they could see the Hycre coming after them next.

There were too many possibilities and not enough data, even with the gem of information floating before Paul. They needed to do their own surveys, but with their jumpships tied up in cargo runs that wasn’t an option. They needed every bit of equipment they could carry in from Sol to have a chance of locking down this system. Until that happened, if it happened, exploring the galaxy was a moot point all around.

 Paul reached for the crystal that would zoom the map back out to full view when a chime sounded. He frowned, thinking he had hit the wrong crystal as his eyes darted over the various pieces half hidden behind the hologram. He shut it down to get a better view, then found one of the spikes on the other side glowing red with the last section flashing off and on.

When he touched the piece a new hologram jumped into place, this being the familiar geography of the Epsilon Eridani system. It was the same map he’d looked at multiple times over the past weeks, comparing the Hycre map to their own, but now there was a flashing icon in deep space, further in towards the star.

Paul glanced back at the now clear spike and turned the map off, then touched it again. This time it brought up a section of the database as Paul had expected it to do the first time.

He shut that off and brought the map section back up, then zoomed in to their system and found the same map again, including the flashing icon.

“So we can get updates too,” he said, wondering if that was another incoming jumpship. He ballparked the angle in to the star then backtracked to see if there was a nearby system along that path…and sure enough there was, but at some distance. He pulled up that system and saw that it was uninhabited, making him wonder if the other races avoided each other’s star systems or used them as gravitational way stations, just passing through on a whim to bounce off their star in another direction. Star Force couldn’t stop anyone from doing that here, but he wasn’t totally convinced that someone else couldn’t if they tried hard enough.

If this was another jumpship that meant reinforcements would be incoming…or it might have been the same one that the Hycre were now tagging for them. Either way, he needed to get a scout ship out there to find out.

Touching his earpiece he cycled through an audial menu until he got to naval control in the main Star Force colony where he now sat.

“I need a mouse prepped for interplanetary deployment, full fuel load.”

3

October 8, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

The tiny drone reconnaissance ship drifted toward the set of coordinates that the Hycre had given Star Force at high speed, intent on blowing by the location so as to make it harder to be intercepted by the enemy. Last time they’d sent ships out they’d barely gotten close enough to see the lizard jumpship before they were intercepted by its cruiser escorts, and Paul hadn’t sent the ship all the way out into the system just to get shot down prior to seeing what was actually at the coordinates.

As usual nothing showed up on the ship’s sensors, but the external cameras were trained on the area specified by the remote pilot back on Corneria so when the ‘mouse’ passed by its target without incident it had a variety of wide field and zoomed image captures that it transmitted off to the nearest unmanned receiving stations strategically placed around the system. There it was recorded and retransmitted through the network back to Corneria with several minutes of lag. Both the original signal and the stronger one were received, with any discrepancies rectified between the two, then the results were shunted down to the command center in the main colony where Paul, Jason, and Greg were waiting.

“There it is,” Jason commented as the first object in the data stream appeared as a small reflective dot on the visuals.

“There’s something,” Greg argued. “Is it the jumpship or have they brought something new to play with.”

“The size fits,” Jason said, doing some quick calculations. “And it looks like it’s exactly in the right place. No movement in 4 days?”

“Could just be a parking orbit,” Paul noted as the image slowly enlarged. Due to the time lag they couldn’t order a focus of the cameras on that particular spot, because by now the mouse would have already been past its target, so they just had to wait and hope it had gotten some closer pictures.

“That’s definitely a jumpship,” Jason confirmed. “But the question is, is it the original or a new…”

He stopped mid sentence as the radar telemetry from the mouse, completely useless up until now, showed a tiny pinprick of a reflection off the target.

“What the hell…” Greg whispered.

As if in response to his words the mouse suddenly began sending close ups of the target, having redirected its zoom function towards the sensor contact. Several large images of the elongated dropship seen from an angle appeared in a scattershot of singles beginning with wide shots then focusing down on puzzle piece sections of the hull or surrounding space.

Paul stepped forward and began using the touchscreen to sort them all out, compiling a mosaic that detailed the huge ship well in the sunlight, but with darker images of the shadows. He highlighted the shadowy pictures and had them digitally enhanced so they could make out the geography on the hull which, like their cruisers, was lumpy and irregular.

“There,” Jason said, pointing to one of the seemingly random pictures.

Greg squinted at the wall-sized screen. “Hull damage?”

“It explains the sensor hit,” Jason agreed.

Paul pulled up and highlighted several similar photos and circled a set of slots on the hull with his finger. “Docking berths for their cruisers.”

“Empty docking berths,” Greg elaborated.

“Redirect the mouse,” Jason suggested.

Paul flicked the photos off to the side of the screen with a swipe of his index finger and pulled up a command prompt. It was a bit more cumbersome than using a control nexus or dedicated remote terminal, but it functioned well enough. He sent orders for the ship to decelerate and reverse course, then to do a proper, up close surveillance of the ship, tagging its exact coordinates and manually devising a perimeter sweeping flight path for it to follow.

“It’ll be a few hours before it can get back,” he noted, bringing the photos back up again.

“Do you think we’ve run them dry of cruisers?”

“If this is the original jumpship, I’d say that’s a good bet,” Paul agreed. “If it’s a new arrival, then I’d say they’ve already launched their reinforcements and they’re either on planet or on approach.”

“That’s a cheery thought,” Greg commented.

“That damage though,” Jason said as Paul continued to sort through the images. “It’s on…well, I’m not really sure which is the aft end…”

“The gravity drives,” Greg said, cutting him off.

Paul didn’t say anything for a moment, thinking back to the update signal they’d received pointing out the exact location of the jumpship. He turned around and caught the attention of one of the control room staffers.

“Begin syphoning off 3rd fleet from the rotation,” he ordered, then turned back to Greg and Jason. “Let’s wait and see if the mouse draws any attention.”

Four hours later they had their answer as the speck of a reconnaissance ship floated 8 kilometers off the enormous jumpship, taking detailed visual scans of the damage to the hull without drawing so much as a single shot of weaponsfire. Gone were the escort cruisers from the first, brief encounter with the jumpship three years ago. All the cruiser berths on the 22km long ship were empty, multiple weapons ports…or what they thought had been weapons ports…were slagged, along with other pinpoint hull damage leading up to the massive chunk that was missing from one end.

“How many do you think are on that thing?” Jason asked.

“Too many,” Greg answered, “and it’s too big to take out?”

“Even if we had infinite ammo it would be hard to destroy something of that size,” Paul agreed. “But we can turn it into a floating heap if it really is as undefended as it looks.”

“Someone already put the beatdown on it,” Jason pointed out. “Think the Hycre have a few warships insystem that we don’t know about?”

“Yes I do. And I think they disabled its gravity drive before giving us the heads up on the location.”

“So we could come and finish it off?” Greg asked.

Paul nodded.

“How many ships is that going to take?”

“Enough to leave our orbital facilities in jeopardy for a week. Longer if it puts up a good fight and we lose some ships.”

“They’re leaving the mouse alone, so maybe they really do have their wings clipped.”

Paul shook his head. “It’s not picking up any debris from fighters or cruisers in the area. That makes me think either the fight didn’t happen here or they picked up their trash, which would mean they’re still active.”

“Recycling,” Jason mewed.

“And I’d bet that jumpship has internal factories that can replace the weaponry and maybe even the engine components. The Hycre have given us an opportunity that probably won’t last, and the longer we delay the more repairs they’ll get done. It’s a risk, but I say we hit the jumpship.”

“I agree,” Jason said, looking to Greg.

The Archon nodded. “How soon can we get there?”

“Inside of three days,” Paul said, tapping a button on the screen then painting a rough route via fingertip on the map from Corneria to one of the inner planets, then bouncing off of it in a slow arc around to the position of the enemy jumpship.

Jason looked at the map briefly and nodded, walking off. “I’ll start packing.”

Plasma fire coming from the jumpship was sporadic, but the cannons were producing huge blasts capable of punching through a destroyer’s shields with one hit. Fortunately none of Paul’s 43 ship armada had gotten in close to the behemoth and took dissipated blasts at distance before redeploying out to extreme rail gun targeting range. Hitting the ship wasn’t an issue with so much mass in play, but it was the critical systems on the hull that were the target…and hitting those from range was proving problematic.

Fortunately whatever the Hycre had hit the jumpship with earlier had created a blind zone in the oblong ship’s ‘aft’ section, which Paul directed a group of ships to approach. Upon seeing that they were getting no return fire to speak of, just a few anti-air batteries that were mostly harmless to the capital ships, he redeployed his entire fleet to that sector and had his ships begin creeping along the hull and sniping at the weapons batteries from the side where most of the plasma cannons couldn’t rotate to reach.

He lost one corvette in two shots as it approached a battery mounted on the side of one of the hull nubs, which gave it a more aft-looking firing arc. The loss wasn’t unexpected, but rather a tradeoff for the two destroyers approaching on the flanks to get in clean shots at the target with their rail guns. Like the kirbies the jumpship had auxiliary shields over each battery that had to be beaten down and Paul’s remote pilots onboard the Excalibur were quickly learning how much damage they could take before collapsing.

The 2 destroyers in question succeeded in breaching this plasma cannon’s shield in five shots, along with a bit of plasma from the corvette before it was shredded. After the 5th metallic slug partially punched through the destroyers slagged the turret with plasma, knocking the cannon out of the battle. They inched their way forward along the hull, looking like mosquitos crawling over an elephant, as they sought out more weapons batteries.

Paul watched and guided the one-sided battle from a command nexus on the bridge of the battleship, learning more about the jumpship’s capabilities with each miniature engagement. They were fortunate the lizards’ primary shields weren’t deployed, otherwise this would have been a much more tedious endeavor. Apparently the Hycre, who he was beginning to like more and more, had taken out several key systems with the internal damage they’d done, because Paul’s sensors were picking up multiple shield generators on the hull that were intact but nonfunctional.

Those got tagged as targets immediately, not wanting to run the risk of them suddenly coming online. The lizards had had days to begin repairs, though there was no way to know for sure just how badly they’d been hit. They fact that the ship didn’t try to run when the Star Force fleet approached confirmed Paul’s suspicion that the Hycre had either knocked out their gravity drive or its support systems, otherwise it could have zipped off faster than they could hope to follow, even if it had only a fraction of its normal functionality.

As Paul studied the hull through the intense, close range active sensors being emitted from his fleet he noticed a great deal of surface detail, including hundreds of docking ports, not just for cruisers, of which he counted 28, but a wide range of hull shapes that seemingly fit partially inside the jumpship upon docking, much the way the kirbies fit into the niches on the cruisers. He was also able to identify access bays, probably where the defensive fighters originated from, though they too were absent in this battle, either having been redeployed to Corneria’s surface to protect their bases or killed earlier when fighting the Hycre.

Then on the ‘underside’ of the wrinkled egg of a ship there were three sets of huge doors, which Paul was almost sure contained internal shipyards capable of building cruisers, for the shape and size were a near fit. Even as his fleet continued to fight their way across the hull of the jumpship his respect for the lizards’ ingenuity was growing. This wasn’t just a cargo ship, or fleet carrier…it was a mobile colony wrapped up in a battle station.

Whereas Star Force established supply lines to the star systems in their territory, whereupon they’d send shipment after shipment of equipment to slowly build infrastructure on site, the lizards could send this jumpship halfway across the galaxy if they wished and plant the seed for multiple colonies, all of which could produce the material and personnel they needed in short order from the resources on site rather than having to make hundreds, if not thousands, of costly supply runs back and forth from their existing colonies.

“MCV,” he whispered to himself as he tagged the ship as such on their battlemap, not so much as a name but as a description, standing for the ‘Mobile Construction Vehicle’ found in a number of video games that allowed players to build their entire tech tree at a new colony site, completely independent from their supply network.

This was a design concept that he was going to look into copying later, but for now he needed to eliminate the enemy’s foothold in the star system, because he knew how truly dangerous this sort of empire building tech could be if given ample time to develop.

When his leading ships got to the last 3rd of the jumpship they finally did encounter intact shields, the strength of which Paul couldn’t determine. Their sensors weren’t sophisticated enough to map out the energy matrix, let alone assess its strength, but the Archon guessed these would be more powerful than their surface base defense shields, meaning there was little point in wasting ammo to try and punch through.

Paul issued no flight zones around the ‘front’ of the jumpship and organized the fleet into cleaning off every hull object of value on the back two thirds, leaving the lizards their forward strong zone for the moment. So long as the ship’s cannons couldn’t turn to track them, they might as well not have been there at all.

Paul rearranged his fleet formation as ships began to run out of targets, bringing the smaller ones to the back while some of the larger ones were redirected to the underside. The rest drifted off into holding positions within the safe zone while those ships tagged by Paul began their assault on one of the three construction bays, targeting the thick doors that were also covered by an auxiliary shield.

Dozens of rail gun slugs fell within a minute, pounding away and draining shield strength as the Star Force fleet fired with impunity into the ‘dead’ end of the ship. Not long thereafter the energy barrier succumbed to the stress and fell across the entire length of the bay, exposing the armored doors to the kinetically laden assault. They didn’t hold up nearly as long, with chunks blowing out as impact craters formed, then widening and breaking through to the interior. The warships continued to target five distinct spots and poured all their fire into them and, once the doors were no longer sucking up the damage, the unseen internal contents began to take the hits.

Something inside didn’t agree with the metallic rain, for a large explosive backwash came out the holes in the bay door, then blew out a section of adjacent hull, filling the space around that section of the jumpship with debris. Paul sent out a ‘cease fire’ command and let the explosions settle down, assessing the damage before sending out new targeting coordinates.

The fleet resumed bombardment and succeeded in knocking out a large section of one of the two doors large enough for a frigate to pass through. With that objective achieved Paul called a halt to the onslaught and had the mouse redirected up and into the breach, the telemetry from which he had routed into his holographic chamber, with him taking on the perspective of the ship.

There was a mess inside, with ship parts floating around everywhere in the zero g environment but the huge chasm was still mostly empty. Paul saw that it extended well beyond the dimensions of the doors and had what looked like 8 slips capable of building new cruisers, two of which held smoking remains of partially constructed ships. He couldn’t see what had killed them, for they lay well outside the boundaries of the door in the flower petal-like arrangement of the slips around the perimeter of the entryway.

The inner hull opposite the doors was shrouded in a cloud of dust and debris, having been penetrated by repeated rail gun strikes. Paul didn’t know what had been there, but he guessed that was where the main explosion had come from, given that the damage ran straight over to the two slips as if vein-like internal components had blown out through the wall until they reached the ships, suggesting some sort of feeding lines.

“Are you sure you want to go in there?” Paul asked. “We really messed up the place. A power surge could kill you before you even see a lizard.”

“We’ll be careful,” Jason said, standing behind his right shoulder in the command nexus. “We can’t wait around to get enough explosives from Sol to take this thing out while they’re inside making repairs, especially with their partial shield up. If they get enough engine power to limp away…”

“I know,” Paul said, cutting him off. “Go.”

4

Jason sat in the hold of the shuttle, packed shoulder to shoulder with the other Archons of Beta team as the naval pilot flew them into the construction area through the breach point in the bay doors that the warships had just opened up. He didn’t see the sheer thickness of the doors that the rail guns had punched through, nor the debris field inside that was churning about inside. He sat, staring at his knees and those of the Archons seated across from him, waiting patiently for the go ahead as Paul found them an appropriate boarding spot as he coordinated the assault from the bridge of the Excalibur.

When the go ahead was finally given he flexed his fingers inside his silver suit’s armored gloves anxiously, waiting for the boarding hatch to open. When it finally did he had to wait a few extra seconds for the other Archons to spill out ahead of him, then he set foot on the deck of the jumpship and almost fell to the ground.

He caught himself in half crouch, seeing others ahead of him doing the same. The gravity was higher here, probably between 1.3 and 1.5, and that was going to slow them down considerably.

His eye line searched the immediate area. Beta team wasn’t the first to board, so he hadn’t expected a firefight the moment he stepped off the shuttle…which he saw was force docked to a hatch behind them. The inner section of the lizards’ hull was now lying beside the entry point from where it had been cut out, and a new Star Force docking collar had been welded to the hull in its place, giving them the size and fit necessary for their shuttles to board. The door on the lizard hull, he noticed, was extremely small, barely wide enough to fit one person, making him wonder what exactly it had been designed to dock with.

On his HUD he saw Morgan’s Alpha team moving across the ship with portions of the map being filled in as their suits’ telemetry was being fed back to the Excalibur for mapping purposes and the updated schematic being sent back to the ground troops, giving Jason a decent idea of what was immediately outside the construction nook they now stood in. The bay was long and small, with a partially constructed ship component stretching nearly the entire length. Behind him, next to the docking port, was a large bay door, ostensibly used for bringing the completed component out into the yard for final assembly, meaning the lizards first assembled it here, in atmosphere and gravity, before attaching it to the rest of whatever ship they were building.

On his quickly growing map Jason saw Alpha team drop a virtual marker, which Jason quickly added a team waypoint to.

“Let’s move,” he said to the other 9 Archons, choosing to walk forward rather than run while his body got adjusted to the higher gravity. The other members of his team, all second gen Sangheili and Sabers, spread out into a loose formation around him, plasma rifles ready, as two skirmishers took point carrying shields.

Jason followed three steps behind them as they came to the doorway leading out of the bay. The ceiling of the connecting hallway was about 8 feet tall, short for Star Force standards, but similar to what they’d found in the lizard surface bases, which was one reason why the Knight teams would be boarding last and assigned to defend the breach point. Their maneuverability would be hampered, but hiding behind their giant shields would make them very difficult opponents for the lizards to fight past and Jason was confident they’d hold their ground while the Archons pushed out into the ship as expeditionary teams.

When they got to the waypoint they found a bisecting hallway with Morgan’s tag on the left, meaning that was the way the next team needed to go. Jason removed the tag from the battlemap and gestured his skirmishers forward, yet to see any lizard corpses. On a ship this large he’d have thought to encounter droves of them…

Just then the lead Archon took a plasma hit to his shield, causing him to turtle up a moment before charging forward, knowing that he had to clear the hallway so the rest of Beta team could come through and assist. A wash of green plasma flared around his shield, then he ducked to the left out of view. Jason followed the second skirmisher up, who also took some hits to his shield. He stepped out from the opening and held position, allowing Jason and the others to exit the hallway under cover and spill out around him to either side.

The trailblazer ducked out right, feeling slow and sluggish in the high gravity as a pack of lizards came into view across the narrow room. Several were already down, but more were pouring in through the opposite doorway into the otherwise empty hexagonal atrium as Jason shot one on the front row, noting that they were not wearing their vest-like armor, but were actually bare chested. His plasma burst caught the one in what looked like an armored plate across where a Human would have had pectorals. The callous-like plate stretched down into a V-shaped tether that dipped down into the yellow leggings that it wore.

He didn’t noticed much more as he let the gravity drag him down to a knee, causing a pair of lizard plasma blasts to shoot high and miss overhead. With practiced ease he kept his calm and took down his targets one by one as the other Archons did likewise. Soon the bodies were piling up and the lizards entering the atrium were getting tripped up and blocked, allowing the Archons to advance and flank the door, firing down on some of the bodies that were still moving, not wanting to take a plasma hit from below.

Jason poked his rifle into the doorway and fired off several half aimed shots into the flood of lizards. His earlier thoughts regarding a lack of reaction from the lizards had quickly reversed themselves. They were rushing forward without tactics, just throwing bodies at them, which on one hand was beneficial to the Archons because they were very skilled at defending against such a sloppy  onslaught…but it also meant that they were going to have to hack out every inch of territory within the ship until they ran out of reinforcements to throw at them.

Thinking ahead, Paul slung his rifle over his back and latched it in place before picking up one of the lizards’ weapons and using it to fire into the backlog. Their plasma was more potent, and if this was going to be as long of an engagement as it looked he was going to need to conserve ammo until they could get their foothold established and start bringing in supplies.

He fired off another shot, noticing that the backlog of bodies was starting to extend down the hallway, meaning that their own dead were starting to push the living lizard hoard back a few meters.

“Start pulling bodies off to the side,” Jason said, ducking back out of the line of fire and grabbing one of the lizards’ arms from the pile that he was standing in. He yanked the body out, finding it also weighed considerably more in the high gravity, and stashed it against the wall before accepting another from Harrison. He stacked that one on top with more to come as the Archons slowly emptied the area around the doorway to give them more room to move and shoot, as some of the lizards stupidly tried to climb over their own dead and right into their firing lines.

By the time they got the foot of the doorway clear the pile in the hallway ahead of them was already a meter and a half deep, cutting off almost all return fire save for those climbing over the pile. The Archons kept a pair of gunners stationed a few steps back from the doorway to shoot the climbers down while Jason and another Archon crawled forward and both pulled on one of the bodies at the bottom of the stack. They had to brace their feet on the wall to get enough leverage, but they succeeded in pulling that lizard out and handed it off to another Archon for ‘storage’ as several more spilled down from the pile.

After a minute of work they had a foothold of two meters dug into the pile of bodies and continued their very slow advance forward as Delta team arrived behind them, finding absolutely no room at all to maneuver in the corpse packed atrium.

“Jason, what the hell are you up to?” Rafa asked.

“Follow Morgan’s route,” Jason said, not bothering to stop pulling out bodies. “They’ve broken through. See if you can’t flank these bastards.”

“On it,” he said as Delta team retreated to the branch and took off the other direction as Beta’s gunners shot another stupid lizard trying to climb over the stack.

Alpha team was on the run…forward through the ship. As they moved Morgan kept aware of the positions of the rest of the Archon teams coming up behind them and noted the lack of progress Beta team was having so she kept her 10 man team constantly moving in various directions, killing every lizard they came across while keeping them guessing as to where exactly they were heading on the enormous ship that offered them seemingly limitless options the further they fought their way inside.

Morgan also knew that every hallway and chamber they passed through would be added to the battlemap the other teams were using so she didn’t have Alpha team trying to lock down a foothold. The others could do that, so she’d decided on the fly to turn her team into the venators, borrowing the Canderian expression.

Most of the region they were progressing through now was storage, storage, and more storage, ostensibly to feed the construction yard they’d entered through. They’d come across several small habitats, she hesitated to call them barracks due to the lack of armament, workstations, and elevator/ladder shafts connecting to higher and lower levels. They avoided the latter, knowing it was best to stick to one level for now, and eventually found their way into an enormous internal structure filled with all manner of stacked crates.

“Break by twos, locate and tag the exits,” she ordered, heading off across the middle to find the far wall some 400+ meters away with Milli-1382 in tow. Another pair followed them halfway then split off as the others traced the walls in the hexagonal chamber whose ceiling mimicked the perimeter dimensions forming what looked like the inside of a soccer ball with the tallest crate stacks in the middle and reaching halfway up to the flat peak. Every seam in the room was lined with light bars that glowed red, casting a dim glow over the storage floor in contrast to the normal yellow/orange hue of the lizards’ standard lighting.

As Morgan got to the other side she began to see markers popping up on her battlemap as Alpha team identified the exits, and there were several. She found one more on the far wall bringing the total count to 8 as they downed a rogue lizard roaming the crate stacks. That was more than she liked, but it was a workable number.

“All teams,” she said, resetting her comm to reach all Star Force assets within range, “rendezvous point marked. We’ve got a large cargo area with plenty of cover. Establish and secure routes from the breach point, then start bringing in the cargo and personnel to establish our base camp. Alpha will hold location until reinforcements arrive.”

Beta team finally pushed through that gruesome hallway on their own accord, breaking out into another forked intersection. By that time Knights had begun to arrive, so Jason let them guard the fork while they pushed up to the right through the lesser flow of lizards and into a larger chamber filled with small cubicles, each of which housed a single machine, though the designs were varied. Most were located along the walls, but enough were spaced around the center to give the lizards good cover, so Jason and his team had to spread out and eliminate the pockets of resistance much as they had done numerous times in challenges…save for this time the weaponry was live.

He was glad to see no hesitation or nerves from the others, despite the small amount of damage done to their armor. None of the Archons had taken a direct hit, merely singes, but with so many opponents to fight even singes, added up over time, would kill them. Knowing that, his team wasn’t playing it conservative. They were sticking with established tactics and procedure while improvising when necessary.

Jason and Paul had had many discussions about the mettle of the second generation Archons, which until Corneria had never been truly tested. There had been so many small engagements on the ground, air, and in mechs that he’d set aside most of his concern for their skills and nerve, but this was by far the most in your face fighting any of them had ever seen and he was glad to finally put to rest any lingering doubts he’d been carrying about them.

Then again, these were all Sangheili and Saber Archons, and he wasn’t above entertaining the notion that they might be slightly better than the rest.

When Morgan’s call to set up base camp came through the Betas were still wrapped up in clearing out the various nooks as more stragglers came in to join the party. It took another 10 minutes to secure the facility, whatever it was, after which Jason called up Knights to hold the position while they pressed on towards the rendezvous point along with the others teams that wisely carved out multiple routes to the Alphas’ position.

On the battlemap there were four fingers reaching out from the breach point that coalesced back into the rendezvous point, with the intermediate spaces being cleared, one by one, by the reinforcements coming in, eventually establishing a wide territory within which to move and work.

And work they did. A second docking port was established, allowing the shuttles to run nonstop bringing in more Archons and Knights, along with an intrepid group of techs that began battlefield construction of their base as well as sealing off extra corridors with mobile bulkheads that they spot welded in place, reducing the number of access points into Star Force territory. That freed up more Knights to reposition elsewhere, some of which were tasked with guarding techs that were trying to hack into the jumpship’s computer systems using enemy tech captured from their ground bases.

Beta team eventually found their way to one of the 8 entry points into their ‘base’ where they met up with a pair of Archons from Gamma team on guard duty, quickly redirecting them to the other side where the lizards were making a push into the cargo area. Jason ran his team across the hold, weaving in and out of crate stacks that resembled small mountains until they arrived on the far side, seeing an entry point with no guards but with the telltale sound of weaponsfire further out.

The two Beta skirmishers led the team forward, their shields showing several holes where the plasma had chewed completely through. Jason followed right behind them, as usual, until they came up on Morgan’s and Rafa’s teams involved in a heavy firefight across a much smaller cargo complex. They immediately folded into the combined Star Force ranks, reinforcing their light positions within the crate-filled area and adding their firepower to the suppression effort against the incoming lizards from three separate directions.

Jason fired twice as he ran forward, then ducked down behind a stack of much smaller crates, two deep, that rose a little over a meter high…much smaller than those in the ‘base’ room. He nudged one with his elbow, finding that it gave slightly, meaning that whatever it contained wasn’t all that heavy, especially considering the above normal gravity.

“Nice of you to join the party,” Morgan’s voice chided him over his helmet comm.

“I hate to ask, but have you seen any det packs popping up yet?”

“No we haven’t, and I’m hoping it stays that way. Half the lizards coming at us aren’t even armed.”

“They’re trying to overwhelm us with numbers,” Jason commented, popping up and firing off three shots into lizards preoccupied with other targets before slamming back down on the floor behind the crates, helped along in no small part by the high gravity. “You get an ammo resupply yet?”

“About five minutes ago.”

“Good. If we start to run out we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

“You take any casualties?” she asked, the sounds of her own plasma shots wafting through her comm signal.

“Negative, you?”

“No, but we’re getting chewed up by partial and lucky hits. We’re going to need armor replacement at some point.”

“Paul’s on top of it,” he assured her. “He was arranging for more cargo shipments out here in addition to the supplies we packed, so as long as we hold our ground we’ll get what we need.”

An explosion to his right cut off his conversation as he scurried along the crate row and saw one of his team down against the far wall. “Zander?”

The Archon didn’t answer for a couple of seconds.

“Here. Just got my bell rung,” he said, dragging himself up off the ground. Fortunately he’d been thrown behind cover.

“What blew up?”

“A lizard…I think someone hit his plasma rifle.”

“Confirmed,” Harrison said, breaking into the team comm conversation. “Accidental. I don’t think they can trigger them manually.

“Copy,” Jason said, glancing over Zander’s armor. “No damage to speak of. You alright?”

Zander looked around. “My weapon.”

Jason looked around but couldn’t see it either. “Here,” he said, tossing him his own rifle before retreating back towards the entrance and grabbing one of the lizards’ weapons from a corpse.

“Jason, hit that top crate 11 o’clock from the door.”

The trailblazer spun around and looked straight ahead, yet slightly left, seeing a half dislodged cubical box a little wider than his chest above a group of lizards firing on Morgan’s position nearby. He brought the enemy weapon up to his shoulder, finding it was getting heavier and heavier as this battle dragged on, then popped up out of cover and blasted the base of the crate with a single shot, ducked down, then back up to fire a second shot. He did the same thing with the third and fourth, having to wait out the recharge period in between each.

On his 7th shot the crate, broken and charred, tipped over and fell on the lizards…then in a blur Morgan’s green ranger armor dropped in on top of them.

5

October 13, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Inner Zone

Paul spent an hour on the treadmill in the Excalibur’s small fitness area, warding off the stagnation of having to sit, wait, and watch while the others were onboard the lizard jumpship taking the fight to the enemy. He wanted to be with them but knew it was more important that he stay on watch in case the lizard cruisers reappeared. He expected they were still back on Corneria, but without being able to track their location it was conceivable that they could appear at any location at any time.

Captain Evinson could handle himself and the assembled fleet well enough, but Paul knew that Jason and the others were counting on him to watch their backs and, to be frank, no one else in the system had his naval skills. Roger and Liam were the only other ones he’d trust to do his job for him and they were currently stationed in the Sirius and Alpha Centauri systems respectively, growing the small defense fleets there in case the lizards saw fit to start hitting their other interstellar colonies. At present they had 8 inhabited systems, seven of which had colonies. The 8th was the Morpheus system, which had no planets, but Star Force had established a Canderian seda there as a way station.

Sirius and Alpha Centauri had the most infrastructure and population outside of Epsilon Eridani, so the other two naval experts had been sent there with the limited supplies making their way out to those systems. Almost all jumpship traffic had been diverted to Corneria, and Paul’s peers were the best equipped to make the most out of the limited naval assets that those systems currently fielded.

Fortunately the lizards hadn’t made their way to any of their other systems yet, and given the recent insights into their MO he guessed that they wouldn’t have to worry about reprisals outside of Epsilon Eridani. He did wonder, though, how much information the lizards had sent back to their territory, either in the form of courier ships or perhaps some form of interstellar communication system. He knew the V’kit’no’sat could send messages between the stars, but he didn’t know whether or not the lizards could.

If they did have that capability and had already sent a signal, then it was just a question of time before another lizard jumpship arrived to continue the war. Paul seriously hoped they’d have some time to catch their breath and build before that happened, given the distances involved, but there was no way to know what the others lizards knew, or how quickly they’d respond if they did.

No, he couldn’t transfer over to the jumpship and take part in the close quarters fighting happening all over the ship. He had to stay put and play Admiral, ensuring that their boarding parties wouldn’t be cut off from reinforcements and resupply.

The first of their supply ships had gotten out to the fleet yesterday, bringing with them more Archons and Knights, in addition to security personnel and a load of supplies, including ample ammo stores which they’d been in desperate need of. More often than not the boarding teams had been using the lizards’ own weapons against them, having expended their Star Force ammunition during their forays out from the base of operations and into enemy-held levels. Hunter teams had been established and were making deep runs further into the ship, killing whatever lizards they came across and then retreating back to base for resupply and rest.

Over the past 5 days they’d managed to secure a large chunk of the ship, approximately 8% of the ‘aft’ section…which the techs they’d brought onboard had discovered was actually the port side. Their hacking efforts had been mostly fruitless, though with some of the handheld pieces of technology recovered from the surface bases the techs had been able to open some light security doors and pull up some basic schematics. It was all access granted to the lizards and therefore not traditional ‘hacking’ given that their techs didn’t have a clue how their programming language worked, but every advantage they could give the boarding party was valuable.

They’d also confirmed that the port gravity drives were offline, damaged in the prior battle. The ship couldn’t jump without both engine sections working in sync, though it should have been possible to limp the ship around the system with only one section active. Why the lizards hadn’t done that no one could figure, and securing the starboard region of the jumpship had become one of their top priorities.

That area of the ship had also become the lizards’ holdout. From the outside it was still shielded, and the mass attacks against the Archons had stopped completely, switching over to defensive efforts in which they pulled back and fortified that third of the jumpship with most of their remaining crew, though the lizards had their own hunter teams roaming about, probing Star Force’s defensive perimeter. What had initially been a panicked and clumsy repulsive effort had evolved into a theatre of war inside the gigantic ship, one that Paul didn’t think could come to conclusion for several more weeks at the earliest.

All the more reason he wanted to get inside and relieve the others. He was fresh and itching for action…but if the lizard cruisers did attack and he wasn’t here to deal with it, it was possible that they could defeat their fleet and put the boarding parties in a world of hurt, himself included, and that was simply too great a risk to take.

After running some of his frustration out on the treadmill Paul returned to the bridge and relieved the Captain, who left to begin his sleep cycle after giving the Archon a brief update. Paul replaced him in the command nexus and pulled up the holographic display of the war taking place inside the jumpship.

The view started outside the ship, then zoomed inside with chunks of the ship glowing blue, grey, and red. Some of them had detailed schematics, others were dead zones that hadn’t been mapped out yet. The blue areas had been secured by Star Force troops and either blocked off or guarded against lizard reprisals. They had been adding deck after deck to the blue for the past few days, earning each with a high lizard body count, so many in fact that they’d had to repurpose some of their construction bays as morgues, filling them with stacks of bodies and then drained of atmosphere to keep them from decomposing.

They were also gaining so much ground that their numbers were getting thin. The hunter teams weren’t affected, but those Archons and Knights on guard duty were having to protect more and more territory, thinning them out where they couldn’t afford to physically block off connective hallways…though they couldn’t be sure that anything was completely blocked off, given the alien architecture, so they had to keep patrols roaming the safe zone in case any incursions occurred.

The security personnel that had arrived with the supply ships had freed up most of them, allowing for a much larger push earlier this morning. Paul had stayed online during the campaign, coordinating directly with the Archon teams and essentially commanding the assault, then he’d caught six hours of sleep, hit the treadmill, and come back at it. Not being physically active as he normally would be during training allowed him to get by with less sleep, and as long as he had to play watch guard he was going to observe and coordinate as much as possible.

Several things about the lizard response to the boarding parties didn’t make sense to him…and he was the one Archon on site that had the luxury of considering the overall strategy while the others focused on winning the smaller, hand to hand engagements.

First off, there had been no det pack attacks. That had been his primary concern with mounting the attack in the first place. Given the confines of the ship their troops wouldn’t be able to spot and snipe them from range, and he hated the idea of losing an Archon to some stupid suicide bomber. Jason had been confident they could mount an effective defense, and Paul had wanted to be with him to help them do it. Not only had they not lost a man over the past 5 days, though several had been badly wounded by plasma burns, they’d not even come across a det pack laying in a storage area.

They had to have some onboard, and given their lack of concern for the wellbeing of their own troops he was confident the lizards wouldn’t care about wrecking small pieces of their huge ship if they saw that they were losing. They’d wrecked the shield tower in the northern base on Corneria before retreating, denying the use of it to Star Force, so their reluctance to use their suicide troops against the boarding parties didn’t add up.

Second, upon arriving the lizards should have moved away. Even with limited gravity drives operational they should have been able to slowly build up speed and make it hard for Star Force to catch them. He conceded the fact that if their inertial dampening fields didn’t extend through the entire ship anymore that any acceleration they undertook would have to be limited, but the fact that the ship hadn’t so much as budged a meter during their approach concerned him.

He could partially have overlooked that fact if the lizards knew they couldn’t outrun his fleet, but when they had intact weapons on the front…now starboard side of the ship…why hadn’t they used the gravity drives in that section to swing it around and at least attack the Excalibur, who’d kept its distance while the smaller warships came up close.

The third point that bothered him was the lack of response from their surface bases. He assumed that they knew of the attack on the jumpship by the Hycre, and if they were watching the position of the Star Force warships in orbit, which they had to be, then they would have seen him syphoning off ships from their defensive assignments and sending them out from the planet.

Had he been the lizards he would have mounted some kind of attack against their facilities, either on the planet or in orbit. There were several orbital stations that no longer had warship guards, just automated defenses. A pair of cruisers could take one out if they were smart about it and used their anti-air weaponry to knocked down the missile salvos which would have to be split between the two ships, or if they weren’t then one could cover for the other, survive the onslaught, then tear the station apart.

An even easier attack would have been to use one of the cruisers for a surface assault on one of their smaller outposts, or even to start picking off the defense turrets they’d been spreading across the forests of Corneria anywhere and everywhere they could. A lot of them didn’t have overlapping fields of fire yet, so why not just start picking off some of them while losing nothing but some shield energy?

Paul didn’t have answers for these questions, but he knew the lizards could have been causing them more trouble than they were. He wanted to put it down to some psychological or tactical quirk, but he didn’t have enough information to make that assumption just yet. Bottom line was they were making slow but significant progress in taking over the jumpship while the lizards seemed determined, yet unable to stop them.

How many more of them were on the ship was also a lingering question. They’d already killed 8,000 of them, but given the size of the jumpship there could be a great deal more than that holed up in the starboard section. The center region was mostly an unknown, though the hunter teams they had probing that section weren’t encountering high populations, so Paul figured that most of them had to be cowering behind the shielded section of the ship in case Star Force resumed its bombardment of the hull.

“Paul?” Jason’s voice cut into the silence of the command nexus.

“I’m here.”

“We’ve got a situation. I’m out with one of the expeditionary teams…”

“I’ve got your position marked on the battlemap.”

“Then you can see that we’re pushing into some of the unknown territory. We just got finished with a nasty fight. A group of lizards were defending a set of doors that they really didn’t want to give up. When we’d fought through about half of them the chamber opened up and some heavy troops came out to stop us. They weren’t much taller than the others, but they massed probably twice as much and had an armored carapace. They came out unarmed and tried to claw at us with some nasty retractable…well they looked like short swords coming out of their wrists. They didn’t do anything but scratch our armor, but they survived a few plasma hits long enough to engage us hand to hand before we took them down.”

“Same race?”

“A variant, I’d guess.”

“What was inside the chamber?”

“A lot of tech I can’t identify.”

“What’s ‘a lot?’”

“An interconnected complex, twelve large rooms in total. Stuff is built into the walls and partitions.”

Paul studied his location on the map. “You still there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got the position marked. Do you want to hold or come back for it later?”

“Tough call, we’re pretty far out. Record my telemetry and see if you can make anything out of it.”

Paul isolated Jason’s signal and pulled up the camera view from his helmet. “I’m on, give me a tour.”

Jason walked further in from the door where he was standing with several other Archons and began a lazy circle around the perimeter of the nearest section of the complex, making sure to look at each of the wall-like banks of vertical equipment cutting across the floor as if they were scratch marks. There were four rows, each of different length, with similar equipment embedded into the walls, making the entire area appear like a giant puzzle piece. Further on it connected to another chamber that was of different shape, but still with the puzzle piece feel to it.

“Any clue?” Jason asked, walking into the third section.

“No chairs or cubicles,” he commented, “but I get the feeling those are workstations.”

“Feels like a library to me.”

“Was anyone in it?”

“After they came out to fight, no, but there are several exits they could have scurried out of.”

As Paul watched, Jason passed closer to one of the banks of equipment, giving him a close up of the interface controls. There were more of the glowing nubs that they’d come to recognize as the lizard version of buttons, but they still hadn’t been able to identify any sort of keyboard pattern, nor were there any markings on or nearby the nubs to identify their function.

There were some display screens, flowing with unintelligible lizard script, as well as geometric protrusions coming out a few inches into the walkways at random points. Paul thought some of them might have been containers, but he couldn’t see any latches or seams.

“Are they all like this?”

“Pretty much, though we only did a quick look to make sure the area was clear.”

“Hold up…what’s that to the right?”

“The arch?”

“Yes. What’s on the other side?”

“Just another chamber, but it is a bit larger. Same stuff inside,” Jason said, walking over and into one of the center rooms in the complex. There were three situated in a rough triangle with the others forming chains radiating out in ones and twos.

“Ceiling’s higher too,” Paul commented.

“If these are workstations, they’re too tall for the lizards,” Jason said, looking up at the top of the ‘bookshelves’ that were a meter over his head.

“You’re right. I’m back to no ideas.”

Jason walked around the corner of one of the banks, which were cut shorter in length and set perpendicular to each other in sections, and stopped short when he almost tripped over a piece of equipment the size of a trashcan sitting on the floor.

Paul saw a display on top with flashing script that altered with each blink. “Jason…”

“Fall back!” he ordered over the comm as Paul saw his helmet jerk around and move out of the chamber, backtracking towards the entrance. “Run!”

The other Archons didn’t need to hear any more than that and began lazily walking out of the entryway with weapons raised, heading back down the hall that they’d fought their way through just minutes before, looking around for incoming enemies as they stepped over the fallen lizards.

They were about halfway down the corridor when Jason came sprinting out of the doorway and turned hard right towards them, his momentum smashing him into the far wall. He ricocheted off it and jumped into the air over a pair of bodies at his feet, quick as a startled cat. The jump didn’t go very high, due to the heavy gravity, but Jason never came back down. Just past the apex of his jump the entire wall on his right blew out and into the other side of the hallway, taking Jason and the Archon team with it as the bomb the lizards had planted shredded the tech-laden complex.

6

“Jason’s team is down. A bomb went off. Get to them now,” Paul said from Morgan’s helmet as it sat on a crate beside her as she was gnawing on a ration bar in the middle of their field base. She laid the half-eaten chocolate covered bar on a crate and pulled her helmet back on, hearing the tell-tale clicks as it locked into her collar armor.

“I’m not getting a hit on his position.”

“Go here,” Paul said, giving her a waypoint. Nearby it were two other Archon tags. “I lost his signal when the bomb blew, but he wasn’t right on top of it. I can’t reach any of his team on comms.”

“Isn’t anyone closer?” she asked, grabbing her rifle and running across the makeshift camp, tagging a couple others on the shoulders to get them to follow.

“I’ve got two other teams headed that way, but I think you can get there the fastest. If they’re still alive I don’t want any lizards stumbling over them and finishing the job.”

“On my way,” she said, adjusting comm channels. “Jason’s team is down, get to the waypoint as soon as you can,” she told those Archons following her a few steps back before she accelerated and soon lost them in the maze of the jumpship.

Paul followed her progress from the Excalibur, wanting to head down to the shuttle bay and go over himself but knowing that he wouldn’t get there as soon as the others could. As expected, her dot on the battlemap was traveling faster than all the others and made it to the waypoint a good 3 minutes ahead of the other teams, with those Archons trailing her still 8 minutes back. Her dot merged with one of the two Archons’ from Jason’s team then his comm activated.

“David’s down and out cold, but alive,” she said, pulling off the adept’s red helmet and finding a blood-soaked patch of sandy blonde hair beneath it, though it took on a ghostly hue in her helmet lights. A small rivulet of the dark liquid ran out of the helmet as she set it aside, but the injury wasn’t nearly as bad as his helmet looked with a puncture through the far left temple where a piece of metallic debris had imbedded and poked superficially into his head.

Morgan stepped over and lifted a section of wall off his legs then dragged his unconscious body back down what was left of the hallway as her eyes scanned the area, looking for more signs of Jason’s team or lizard incursions, which could have been hiding anywhere in the debris piles. Walls and ceiling were gone, replaced by a cluttered cave of broken ship with the upper decks having fallen down in pieces to the lower ones. She was on the edge of a large crater that stretched at least two levels down and into which most of the debris had fallen, but there were still piles around the edge blocking her view and making her very cautious as she set David aside for others to deal with while she continued looking for the rest of the team.

One more signal was still active on her battlemap, supposedly a dozen meters to her left, but all she saw was debris stacked up to her shoulders. Following the signal to the closest point she began prying off heavy components and tossing them aside like toys, frantically digging down to find the buried man.

“Damn,” Rafa commented when he and his team arrived and dove into the recovery effort. They weren’t as strong as Morgan, but they more than made up for it with the extra hands. One of them attended to David while the others helped Morgan dig out Olsen, with one staying back and standing guard as he walked about looking for signs of other survivors.

After a few minutes a bit of silver elbow appeared, trapped beneath a large severed beam that was itself pinned beneath a pile of debris that would take more than an hour to remove.

“Clear me some footholds,” Morgan said, yanking yet another piece of lizard ship aside.

“It’s going to take more than you to move that,” Rafa told her, brushing some smaller debris off the broken floor tiles that Olsen was laying on.

“I don’t have to move it far,” she said determinedly, wiggling her back underneath it in a crouch so low it looked painful. “Be ready to pull him out.”

Rafa stepped over and grabbed one arm while another of his team took hold of the other, then they waited for Morgan as the others continued to pull pieces off both the downed Archon and the beam.

The ranger’s green armor was motionless for a long moment, then with a small grunt of effort the beam moved fractionally, shifting the debris around in a cascade of scrapes and whines.

“Pull,” Rafa ordered, getting a couple of inches of movement out of the downed man. “His left leg is caught at the knee.”

The beam shifted again, this time dumping a large piece off the top that fell down towards Olsen before one of the Archons caught and tossed it aside.

“Got him,” Rafa said as the man’s leg came free and the pair pulled him out of harm’s way in a matter of seconds, allowing Morgan to drop the beam back down and crawl out of the cavity she’d been standing in.

“There are more here,” she said, walking around intently, “but they’re not showing up on sensors.”

“How many?”

“Five more,” Paul’s voice answered. “They were all together save for Jason, who was further to the starboard in the same hallway.”

“Not much of a hallway left,” Rafa told him. “Best guess on range from my position?”

“The others should be right where you’re standing…Jason should be about 20 meters further down.”

Rafa looked across three separate piles of debris in that direction, along with a lot of hanging, half severed components from the ceiling coming down to rest on top of them making for a navigational hazard, but one that he thought he could squeeze through.

“I’ll look for Jason,” he told Morgan as he climbed up and over the first pile, ducking under a bulkhead set at an angle blocking his path. He slid down a meter from there, then had to climb up two more to get past more obstructions, constantly on the lookout for more bits of red or silver armor.

“Found one!” he heard Morgan yell out behind him, but he couldn’t take time to worry about that. Jason, if he was still alive, might need every second he could give him.

Rafa saw daylight…or more accurately orange fire light on the other side of a thin wall of debris. Without internal illumination the blast site was more or less dark, with bits of light filtering in from access corridors and, in this case, some type of fire. Rafa pushed his way through the debris, forming a hole large enough to worm his way through and into a small opening where the junk wasn’t so thick. On his left was what looked like a major structural support that hadn’t been toppled by the blast. The debris was stretched out on either side of it like snowdrifts in the approximate location Paul had given him for Jason’s location.

Rafa looked around, then focused his attention to the right using some deductive reasoning. If the blast had come from the left then it would have knocked everything to…

His adrenaline spiked as he saw a smooth piece of semi-glossy armor buried in the wall of debris, prompting him to jump into the pile and start peeling pieces off. When he had Jason’s right thigh exposed he pulled out some type of pipe segment that retained some sort of light colored goo, which resulted in even more debris falling down and covering the silver armor.

“Damn it,” he said, digging his way back through and making only minimal headway. For every three pieces he pulled out two more came sliding down the mount to replace them. Frustrated and worried for his friend he pushed his back against the side of the pile and began digging out the pieces by his legs, bracing the falling debris against his own body. Soon the armored thigh reappeared, dented extensively from the crushing impact that had buried it.

He wanted to ask for help, but knew the others needed finding just as bad so he concentrated on shielding Jason’s body with his own while he pulled off piece after piece from the Archon’s chest.

“Morgan, get in here,” he finally said over the comm. “I’ve found him but I’m stuck.”

Within 20 seconds the debris pile to his right shook then reformed as Morgan forced her way through, then the ranger began reaching down and pulling pieces of debris off the other side of Jason as she too leaned into the larger pile, forcing it back off his head.

“Oh shit,” she whispered, seeing his crumpled helmet appear as she reached in and pried up some more debris. Balancing on her right foot she lifted her left up, then planted it on his abdomen and pushed down hard, desperately hoping she wasn’t killing him with the effort. The more flexible region of his armor impacted and her foot caught the lip of his cod piece. She pushed hard against it and Jason’s torso extracted itself from the cavity the two Archons had bodily created.

Morgan reached down and arched herself over Jason’s head, letting the debris fall down on her while Rafa pulled out. It buried her almost completely, but left Jason loose underneath her abdomen. Rafa stepped back and grabbed his feet, then yanked hard to pull him out, dragging several long pieces of debris with him.

“Clear,” he said, pushing away junk from the floor so he could lay his friend out flat.

Morgan rose up underneath the debris pile and twisted her way out, ignoring the sheer weight of the stack as she too came over and examined Jason, whose armor was a mangled mess.

“His arm is misplaced,” Rafa noted, seeing it bent back at an impossible angle at the shoulder.

“Get his helmet off,” Morgan said, trying to pry up the neck connections. She got one to release, but had to break the other to get the bottom portion off…but it still wouldn’t come clear of his head, for it had been dented so much it now held his skull in a vice-like grip.

Rafa slid his fingers under the now open neck and gestured for Morgan to do the same on the opposite side.

“Three, two, one, pull,” he said, yanking hard and finding the helmet material too strong to budge.

Morgan raised her right foot up and held it in the air above Jason’s head. Rafa brought his left up and touched their boots together heel to heel and tried again using the extra leverage. With a snap his helmet’s faceplate broke along the left side, with the crack extending up a few inches to the top. The two sides peeled back an inch, but it was enough to slide off his head.

“Paul,” Morgan said into her comm. “Grab the regenerator and get your ass over here. Jason’s breathing, but he’s got a massive head wound and a broken arm, minimum.”

“Coming,” Paul said, running out of the nexus so fast he didn’t even bother to power it down. He raced through the battleship over to the med bay and removed the piece of V’kit’no’sat tech from secured storage, then hopped into a shuttle and piloted it over to the jumpship himself, wearing nothing but his casual uniform.

He was met at the entrance by a Knight that led him into their base of operations, then handed the regenerator over to a trio of Archons that ran off to deliver it to the recovery site while Paul hastily pulled on a generic set of adept armor on hand to replace components from the others lost in battle. With the pieces assembled it was slightly larger on him at the torso than usual but he didn’t care. He grabbed a plasma rifle then headed off with another waiting Archon who led him through the contended zone and over to the blast site where the other Archons on Jason’s team were laid out on the ground receiving medical treatment.

They were surrounded by more than a dozen Archons and six Knights, ensuring that no lizards would be able to take advantage of the situation.

“Report,” he said to a medtech that was also wearing a suit of armor obviously not designed for the man’s small size. He had the helmet and gloves removed and was applying prefabricated patches to Olsen’s bare chest that appeared to have been crushed on the left side and was covered in bruises. Off to his left he saw the regenerator on a female Archon he didn’t recognize, given that her armor, now completely peeled off her body and laying at her side, didn’t have its comm system functional enough to give him an ID tag.

“I’m sorry, Jason had to wait. She was dead when we pulled her out and I had to try. It brought her back just a minute ago and I don’t know how to deactivate it until it finishes healing her…nor do I think we should try just yet.”

“Where’s Jason?”

“Where they dug him out,” Greg said, pointing back over his shoulder. “Do you know how to override that thing?”

“Yes,” Paul said, taking a knee next to her and examining the device that had its metallic tentacles wrapped around her bloody and naked body. They extended everywhere from her head down to her toes as the miracle machine raced to repair multiple injuries. Paul could see her skin moving beneath it as the tissue regenerated over several puncture wounds.

He knew he had to wait a bit longer and glanced over at the others. “What about them?”

“I’ve got them all sedated,” the medic explained. “A few broken bones along with blunt force trauma across multiple organs. Two spinal tweaks and one snap. Their armor saved them, but they got twisted and knocked around inside it something fierce.”

“Do we have them all?”

“Yes,” Greg answered, looking down at his fellow trailblazer. “I assume all this was from a det pack. If they’re going to start going kamikaze we’re going to have to pull back and work out a new strategy.”

“It wasn’t,” Paul said, his eyes back on the woman who he now recognized as Kira-1301. “I was online with Jason when it happened. They encountered a new version of lizard guarding the entrance. I think it was an elite demolition squad sent out to destroy something they didn’t want us to find. He was giving me a tour of the place when he stumbled across the device, figured out it was a bomb counting down, and ran away with a few seconds left. They didn’t get far enough.”

“We’re losing him!” Morgan’s voice yelled through the comm.

Paul looked down at Kira’s bloody face. “Hold on,” he said, touching a series of tiny crystals on the device that retracted the rivulets of metal, suddenly made liquid again, back into a long cylindrical device that he passed up to Greg.

“What do you think?” Paul asked the medic as Greg ran off into the debris field.

The man studied her intently, then slowly nodded. “She’s stable…and numb. I don’t know for how long. Do you?” he asked, not having any prior experience with the highly secretive devices.

“Go ahead and sedate her. The stun effect numbs the pain but doesn’t render the user unconscious.”

The medic pulled a small vile out of his briefcase-like kit as Paul stood up and walked past the other Archons, giving them a good four second inspection each before following Greg into the maze of debris. By the time he worked his way through to the fire lit location he saw Jason, equally stripped of armor and clothes, wrapped up in the metallic tendrils of the device as he slowly convulsed.

He didn’t say anything, but he did push his way forward and knelt down next to his friend, his gut wrenching with each tremor in Jason’s body. They continued on for a long time, slowly diminishing in amplitude until he at last lay still and a few of the tendrils on his head liquefied and repositioned down around his neck until they touched the base of his spine.

“Is that fire going to be a problem?” Paul asked in a whisper.

“Not at the moment,” Morgan said, not taking her eyes off Jason. The small pocket in the debris field was cramped with the four trailblazers crowded around their friend, so Rafa decided to give them some more space.

“I’ll get the others back to the Excalibur,” he offered, sliding past Paul to get to the small opening that they’d crawled through.

“I’m going to scout out the area,” Greg said, following him. “Make sure the lizards keep their distance. Let me know when you move him.”

Paul nodded as Greg left him and Morgan to watch over Jason as the V’kit’no’sat technology worked to repair his broken body.

“What were they protecting?” she asked him.

“I don’t know. He didn’t have much time to look around before it blew.”

“The new lizards?”

“Thicker, with retractable forearm blades. Body guards I’d guess. He said they came at them hand to hand, and I get the feeling they were sent out to insure this mission succeeded by their commander.”

“It must have been something big, because there were lots of opportunities on Corneria to put these new ones into play.”

“They always seem to be holding back on us. Think we hit a nerve this time. How do you suggest we proceed from here?”

“With their penchant for explosives? If they were being devious about it we’d be in a world of hurt and I’d suggest a different tac, but aside from this they haven’t blown anything up and you pointed out that this was designed to deny us something, not to kill us, though I’m sure they would welcome the collateral damage. Bottom line, we keep doing what we’re doing. Press forward and keep on them. If we give them time to think or settle in to a proper defense line then we’ll have problems.”

“You’re not worried about this happening again?”

“I’m worried about what they could do, but they don’t seem to be that smart. So no, I think we can still handle them in close quarters. A lot of them have been unarmed and unarmored. I don’t think they’re set up to handle an internal engagement like this. Most of their combat troops are probably down on the planet.”

“Or the ones here were grown with a different purpose in mind,” Paul commented. “Be careful.”

Morgan laid an armored hand on his shoulder. “If they start to get smart we’ll see it and pull back, but as long as they’re fighting dumb we need to take this ship while we’ve got the opportunity.”

A sharp pop from Jason’s body as a bone was set in place made both of them jump, then Paul looked around at the unstable chamber where they stood and the bits of fire visible through the gaps in the debris behind them, realizing how close he’d just come to losing his best friend.

7

October 18, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Lizard Jumpship

Morgan tossed her spent rifle aside and grabbed one of the forearm blades of the ‘mauler’ lizard as it jumped on her, falling backwards and kicking it over her head while holding on. It flipped over in midair, then came crashing down on the bridge floor on its back. Before it could move Morgan’s green armored fist appeared over its face and came down with crushing force on its neck, then she reached out and tripped another that was rushing the Archon team that had just fought through over 400 lizards as they pushed their way into the central region of the jumpship.

Morgan rolled over on top of the one she’d tripped, wrapped it up in a hug and pulled it over with her as she continued to roll through a second rotation. On the third the mauler’s neck snapped and she came back up to her feet, taking a plasma blast to the shoulder.

Her eyes darted around the narrow bridge to find the shooter as several dozen maulers, all unarmed and attacking the Archons hand to hand, swarmed toward the bridge entrance trying to drive them back out into the killing field that was a promenade one deck below down a double staircase. She spotted a lizard in the back, neither their normal troops nor the mauler variety, standing in the shadows with a rifle aimed her way, waiting through the momentary cycling delay.

Ducking down, Morgan charged forward into one of the maulers as it swiped its arm blade at her uselessly. Had it struck it would have done little more than scrape a small cut across her armor, but it never landed. Her left land caught the lizard’s wrist as she ducked her head and met the thing shoulder to shoulder, forcibly driving it backward and into its cohorts…all the while providing her with some cover as she ground her way forward.

Before long another mauler hit her from the left side and she had to abandon her grip else be knocked over. Ignoring the slashing blades she grabbed hold of one arm on each and swung them around her as she twisted her body, using them as dead weight to knock the others aside as she demonstrated her impressive strength. The moment she let go another plasma blast came her way but she dodged it by dropping down to her knees, then she leapt forward as the other lizards fell into each other like dominoes, stepping on and over two of them as she went after the shooter.

Two more maulers came at her from the side, seemingly intent on preventing her from getting any further into the bridge. Morgan dispatched them quickly enough, but when she looked back over at where the shooter was supposed to be she no longer saw it. Two seconds of further looking and she was hit by another lizard, which she punched in the chest twice before kicking into its midsection and knocking it to the ground. Behind her the other Archons, some still with ammo, were systematically killing both those attacking them and the ones Morgan was knocking down. Returning to help them clear out the remaining few she momentarily let the shooter go.

“Did I see a shot fired?” San asked after the last of the lizards in the immediate area were down.

“Yeah, but it ran off,” Morgan said, glancing down both side sections of the T-shaped bridge. Where they were standing and where the maulers had fallen was a long, elevated walkway with sunken control stations on either side. It dead ended at the top of the ‘T’ where there were a few auxiliary platforms rising up a meter or so higher. The walkway split from there going right and left, stretching out behind walls with additional sunken stations lining both sides. Which one it had fled down she didn’t know, but there were exits at the end of both. “Secure all three exits.”

On her order the 9 Archons split up, two each going to the exits while the remaining trio stayed and began policing the bodies as Morgan searched frantically for any more of the lizards’ explosive devices. As hard as they’d fought to keep them out of the bridge she wondered if they hadn’t planted one of the devices as a backup to keep it out of their hands, especially since the maulers had been present. They’d been seen only four times, two of which had been during the planting of explosives, the second of which had failed to detonate when Greg’s team had gotten the drop on the demolition group before they could arm the device.

The other two instances had been in a power and computer core…both of which were necessary for the continued function of a significant portion of the jumpship and therefore probably not candidates for destruction in the lizards’ eyes. Upon closer inspection the operational access in both areas had been extremely limited, meaning that the maulers just weren’t sent to blow things up, but to lock out the Humans from having access to critical systems as Star Force pushed further and further into lizard-held territory inside the jumpship.

As she heard the ‘all clear’ checks from each group Morgan searched every nook and cranny on the bridge trying to find one of their explosive devices but her search came up clean, so on a hunch she hopped over the walkway railing and dropped down into one of the tail-hole lizard seats and tried to bring up an operating menu as the techs had taught her to do over the last few days. They hadn’t learned to read the lizard language yet, but certain computer functions didn’t require full understanding, only memorization.

Morgan frowned inside her helmet, then opened a comm channel to Paul. “Bridge secured, no explosives found, but they locked out the equipment again. We’re not going to get any use out of it, so I don’t see a point in risking any of the techs by moving them up before we clear out this sector.”

“Nothing is working?” Paul asked.

“I’ve only checked one station, but we had to fight through maulers, so I’m pretty sure they locked everything down. We’ll make a thorough check. Get Greg and Rafa’s teams moving up.”

“They’re already in motion.”

“I also think I saw a new lizard variant. It got away during the fighting.”

“Describe it.”

“Thin like their line troops, but with a narrower head angling up to a point. It shot at me from range then took off while we were cleaning up the maulers.”

“Three down, eight to go,” Paul said, referencing the breakthrough they’d had with the genetic nodules they’d recovered from the captured northern base. After cracking them open and studying the basic genetic material inside they’d identified 11 distinct varieties of lizard, though there was some speculation as if that was the full extent of their race’s subdivisions or merely those that were allotted for use by their expeditionary forces.

“Where do you want us to go from here?” Morgan asked, hopping over to the next station and finding its interface equally intractable.

“After the holding team arrives split up into two groups and head out both of the other exits. Starboard team runs and guns as a distraction while port team assaults the rear of the area Rafa is clearing. He’s running up against some above average resistance, see to it that they don’t reinforce through your area.”

“ETA on the holding team?”

“No more than 20.”

“Alright, we’ll…” she cut off, noticing a flashing light on the underside of one of the platforms at the top of the ‘T.’ She’d missed it before because her line of sight had been too high. “Stand by.”

Morgan ran down the row of consoles in the opposite direction and stepped up onto the walkway at the nearest access point as she adjusted her comm back over to her unit frequency.

“Guys, get ready to fall back on my signal,” she warned, hopping over the fence-like railing beside the starboard platform and dropping down into the row of stations on the top of the ‘T’ looking for an explosive device that she’d missed earlier…but there was none. What she found was a blinking nub on the upper end of the wall-mounted control board. Crossing her mental fingers she touched it, resulting in a lizard-style map of the star system appearing in holo as if it was an upright flat screen floating an inch off the control paneled wall.

“Paul, I think we’ll need those techs after all. They didn’t lock down all of the consoles. Check my helmet link, I think you’re going to want to see this.”

Back in the command nexus on the Excalibur Paul brought up her image of the holographic map and immediately came to the same conclusion that Morgan had. Three tiny dots were a third of the distance away from Corneria out to the jumpship and one was pulsing with what the Star Force techs had previously identified as an incoming communication or data transfer on their displays.

The lizard cruisers were finally coming out to assist the jumpship, and one of them was in the process of signaling to the crew.

9 hours later the Excalibur fired its massive rail gun at the first of the three targets it could not see, using sensor telemetry from the jumpship relayed through a helmet cam to the bridge crew that were able to visually map out the lizards’ sensor grid and correlate it to their own without the use of any numbers, merely guestimates based on the image, hoping that their holo display was as accurate as their own.

The Excalibur fired off six rounds before the three ships came close enough that a forward positioned corvette was able to tag one with a laser, at which point all the rail guns in the fleet opened up on it as another cruiser broke off from the group and jumped the corvette. The smaller ship didn’t last long, but it maintained position and the laser lock on both ships as long as it could.

When it went down Paul’s position data on the ships went with it, cutting off any more firing locks, but thanks to the jumpship telemetry he could still see where the ships were and adjusted his own fleet positions accordingly. When the first two cruisers arrived, one with a gratifyingly large amount of forward damage to its hull, they met up with a bowl-like formation that had the two enemy ships centered in the middle of the prime firing zone, at which point missiles that were already inbound found their new targets via the hull damage on the one and additional laser spotters on the other.

They met up with a hail of anti-air return fire that cut through the cloud of incoming warheads with lethal efficiency, but the initial barrage had been so massive about half of them still got through, slamming into the shields on both ships as well as adding to the forward hull damage on the port vessel. Before the ships had passed out of that shrapnel cloud rail gun rounds began shooting through from all directions within a 160 degree hemisphere, pummeling the lizard ships with a ferocity they didn’t expect, given that they had always had the advantage of position when ambushing Human warships in the past.

A large slug from the Excalibur slammed into the cruiser that still had its forward shields up, breaching their already depleted matrix on impact and deforming into a smooshed mass that tore into the ship with far greater surface area than a normal slug, cutting a long trench down the top of the ship back to one of the bumpy ridges where it finally came to rest, popping that surface feature like a balloon and throwing debris out in all directions, some of which caught underneath the still deployed upper shield. It ricocheted underneath all the way back to the aft, scratching up the hull as addition rail gun slugs tore into the narrow front of the ship.

Caught off guard, the lizards seemed unsure of which ship to go after, given that all were approximately the same distance away, then they split up with either one heading to the edge of the ‘bowl’ in an attempt to confront an individual ship while also enabling them to veer away from the formation on an escape trajectory, which both ships quickly elected to take as Paul ordered the bowl to reform into two arms, both of which came up from the center and out at the cruisers, closing to plasma range and adding that to the rail guns they were continuing to fire.

Both ships were caught with their shields down and took significant damage before their higher rate of speed pulled them away from the Human ships, which were now able to track them on sensors. Paul ordered his fleet not to pursue, given that only his smaller ships had a chance of keeping pace and they wouldn’t be enough to take one down, even if it already was damaged. From his link to the jumpship telemetry he saw that the third cruiser had pulled off as well and was making a long circle around the jumpship, apparently trying to flank to the other side.

Or to the starboard, Paul thought, remembering that attempted comm signal. He quickly issued new orders to his fleet and got them to begin repositioning as the lone cruiser began to tighten its turn and head directly for the jumpship, and at increasing speed.

Paul typed out new orders to his fleet, having them stretch their lateral formation out into a long column off the port side of the jumpship as he had a pair of destroyers split, one going high and the other low with orders to laser tag the incoming target without drifting into the firing lines of the intact plasma cannons on the starboard end.

The cruiser hit the brakes quickly as it approached the jumpship, attempting to get the drop on the Human ships, but it maintained sufficient speed to make a strafing run, firing off its plasma cannons at the upper destroyer and managing three hits before it flashed past, taking down the ship’s shields and burning off a bit of hull armor. It targeted a Star Force cruiser next, but met up with a hail of plasma fire of its own that didn’t abate. As the cruiser passed ship after ship it continued to get hit, while was only able to get a shot or two off at each of them.

Halfway down the line it took a slug from the Excalibur in the face, which weakened its forward shields enough that the plasma cannons on the battleship punched through as the lizard ship passed, along with every upper lachar battery on the heavily armed ship poking holes in the underside of its hull, which were then added to by a heavy destroyer and a pair of frigates at the end of the line.

The enemy cruiser exited firing range a shieldless, smoking mess, but was otherwise intact. The damage was superficial, but left the ship vulnerable to continued attack, hence another strafing run was not forthcoming.

Paul watched on the jumpship’s sensors as the cruiser flew off to rendezvous with the others half a million kilometers away. They stayed there for the better part of a day, making repairs and recharging their shields, before they attempted another attack, during which Paul lost a destroyer and suffered heavy damage to a cruiser as he ordered all his ships to focus their firepower on a single target, which they successfully wounded before turning their firepower on the other two ships and driving them off. The third cruiser also tried to escape, but its engines had been damaged to the point where it could only outrun the Excalibur. Paul had it trailed and put out of commission, after which the other two lizard ships broke off and headed back to Corneria, silently conceding defeat.

He knew they’d be repaired in their surface yards and be sent back out to attack Star Force again, but not in time to save their jumpship, meaning the rest of this conflict would be decided by the ground war inside the behemoth.

8

October 21, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Lizard Jumpship

Jason fired a long range shot down the hallway, nailing a lizard in its unarmored torso and dropping it to the ground before it could fire another plasma blast at his team as they fought their way inside three side chambers. Another two showed up behind it, weapons raised, as Jason took them down without trouble. He walked forward, passing behind the backs of his team as they fired into the rooms, feeling the ache of the heavy gravity with each step on his weakened body.

Another lizard came into the hallway and was shot down by the Archon before he got to the end and took up a guard position, fighting off the few stragglers heading their way as his team cleaned out yet another section of another level on the jumpship. This was his first mission back after nearly getting killed in the bomb blast so he’d assigned himself to one of the teams not pressing into the heart of the lizards’ remaining defense. Epsilon team had been running the cleaning efforts on the lower aft side of the starboard section of the jumpship, finding a lot of small clusters of lizards holed up in areas such as this.

Behind him he heard another door opening as the team worked through each of the rooms, about half of which had lizards in them. They’d mostly emptied when the firefight had begun, spilling out into the hall while Epsilon gunned them down with lethal efficiency. Jason had held back behind the group playing a support role due to his weakened state but he was glad to get back into the action, knowing that the faster they cleared these lower threat areas and secured them with teams of Knights and techs who were sealing off each section as they progressed, the sooner they could consolidate their forces and make the big push against the fortifications in the far starboard wing of the ship that Morgan had scouted out just yesterday.

Going solo and covert she’d infiltrated what was left of the enemy lines and made her way deep into the far side of the ship where she discovered a mass of portable turrets, sealed doors, barricades, and everything else the lizards had been working on as they sacrificed thousands of their crew to keep the Humans at bay. Morgan reported that they were holed up fairly good and that it was going to take a forceful attack to break through…the kind of attack they needed most of their available Archons for, but to free them up the rest of the ship had to be locked down first, thus the sweeper teams were pulling double duty as often as possible.

Jason had spent the past two days in training rehab, assessing his strength and returning some flexibility to his body, which had been drastically reconstructed with new tissue. He figured he’d at least lose 6 levels on his acolyte ranking, which currently stood at level 58, because the regenerator’s replacement tissue, while miraculous enough in returning them to action in short order, was never as strong as what it was replacing, meaning that even though Jason was ‘fully’ recovered his loss of strength would take months, if not years to replace.

He pushed one of the lizard bodies off to the side as his team approached, having already cleared out the rooms behind them. What the lizards were still doing out here he didn’t know, but this area appeared to have been some type of barracks and not defended at all. The lizards they came across were the standard variety, most of which were armed, but without the numbers necessary to overcome the armored Archons. It was almost as if these smaller groups had gone rogue and were holing up wherever they could.

Jason saw and shot another coming up on his left, then his team split up and went three ways…forward, left, and upper left. The hall going to the right led back to an area they’d already cleared and at the end of that hall he could see the tall, white armor of a Knight standing guard. Once the rest of Epsilon team had moved out Jason waved the man forward, holding position until he arrived to ensure no lizards could slip past during the changeover, then he followed the middle team up the angular branch to his upper left.

They encountered no resistance, as was typical of most sweep segments, but he and the others always had to stay on guard for if the lizards knew they were coming they’d either rush them or try and set up an ambush, and given that they knew the layout of the jumpship far better than the Archons those ambushes could come from any corner, room, or hallway at any time, keeping the sweeps from ever becoming routine.

Epsilon didn’t encounter more resistance until more than half an hour later when one of their forward scouts took a sniper blast to the shoulder and spun around as he fell to the floor. In the next second every Archon ahead of Jason in the foyer went evasive, leaving the trailblazer with open air between himself and the source of the pinpoint plasma shot.

As soon as he saw the retractable turret hanging down from the ceiling he took a wild shot at it and ducked down behind a short pillar that had the lizard version of art on top of it. The smooth, crystalline image of twisting lines and sharp barbs shattered as another plasma blast hit it over top of Jason’s head. As he ducked down he heard return fire coming from his team, then a ‘pop’ as the turret finally detonated under the plasma assault.

“Clear,” one of them said, with Jason and several others coming up out of cover to inspect the scene.

“Stay sharp,” he suggested, though technically he wasn’t leading the mission. “That was defending something.”

“Door,” Jaime said, jogging over to the empty wall behind where the turret had lowered. “I can see the seams.”

Xavier-466, who was leading the mission, motioned for the others to search the side entrances, one of which branched into an alcove, the other a hallway. Half the team scurried off out of view while the rest of them took up defensive positions, Jason included, as Jaime further examined what looked to be a hidden door.

Jason watched the road behind them, noticing a small nub on one of pedestals nearby. “Heads up,” he warned, getting the others’ attention before pressing it.

As soon as he did the hexagonal slab of wall pressed out, then slid aside revealing a short tunnel about shoulder height on the Archons.

“Jaime, Frank…go,” Xavier ordered, holding back until he knew what was on the other side. Jason came up and stood beside him as the other Archons crouched down and began walking through. A few moments later they came back out, apparently without finding any lizards.

“Armory,” Jaime reported. “Standard rifles, about two thirds empty.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Jason said, urging the others on before getting on the comm with the Knight team trailing them. The other Archons split up and followed the others out, who were already rendezvousing with the other portions of the 15 man team as they searched and held this small area of the jumpship.

When the Knights arrived to relieve first Jason, then the others, Epsilon leapfrogged ahead to the next section, and the next, and the next ad nauseum until they came to either a lift or ladder connection to the other decks above or below them. Those points defined the edge of their current sweep, most of which had already been sealed off by Gamma team who was hopping around enemy held territory ahead of Epsilon and setting up hard points for them to sweep between. Once they got the rest of this deck port of the new demarcation line secured they’d head up to the next level and repeat while Gamma headed out further into the starboard and started sealing off more passageways to limit lizard movements.

It was tedious and tiring work, especially for Jason, but it was necessary. They couldn’t have lizards running around behind their lines, and with a ship of this size they couldn’t be sure they’d gotten them all unless they held a secured line and gradually walked it down the length of the ship.

After three more days of similar sweeps Jason and Epsilon team, along with similar work by the others, had pushed the lizard lines all the way back to within 200 meters of their fortifications, whereupon they discovered that they hadn’t established their last line of defense across the entire width of the jumpship, but focused it on a small chunk inset from the hull, probably to keep it clear of possible weapons damage should the exterior shield go down and the Humans’ fleet started firing their deep penetrating rail guns into that area.

This also meant the lizards had less area to defend and could consolidate their efforts to holding just the one fortification with however many personnel they had remaining. Paul and Morgan decided they weren’t going to hit them right off, but rather sweep up the balance of the territory that they’d left undefended all the way to the tip of the starboard side. In doing so they also cleared out the weapons batteries of their gunners, discovering that they were in fact manually targeted and fired.

They took two more days to consolidate the remaining areas and establish their own barricades around the lizard fortifications to keep them from fleeing, as well as to diminish the number of guards that were necessary to secure the area, allowing them more personnel to devote to the attack, which was planned with four insertion points…two on the top level and opposite one another, fore and aft, one in the middle of the cube-like stack of decks from the starboard, and one on the third lowest level from port.

Jason was assigned to the port insertion team as a sniper, carrying a lachar rifle that he used to knock out one of their defense turrets from the side down a long hall, after which a team of Archons moved in and secured the location, battling a mixed group of standard lizards and maulers. From his lateral position he couldn’t see anything, for the battle was taking place just inside the doorway the turret had been positioned in front of, but he soon got the call to move up.

Jogging forward in the heavy gravity he passed by several other Archon teams waiting in side hallways to get the go ahead. Most of the doors on this level had been welded shut, leaving only a few openings that the lizards were guarding. The one the breach team had just entered through, and that Jason was now only a few steps away from, was one of three that his group was assaulting, except the other two were feints with little more than two Archons each, ordered to make as much of a ruckus outside as they could to draw off lizard support while the main team was going in through this entrance.

When Jason got to the remains of the dead turret he ducked under the ceiling-mounted device and turned the corner, stepping into the short passageway where Paul and his advance team were waiting. Figuring that the naval battle he’d been fearing was now over, Paul had left the jumpship’s defense in the hands of Captain Evinson so he could take part in this final push.

“Left side,” Paul told him as the others parted to let him and his long weapon through. “Armed barricade. Right side is blocked off.”

“On it,” Jason said, dropping to a knee just inside the cross hallway as one of the Archons held his shield up on the outside of Jason’s body, allowing him to get half his torso out into the hallway while sticking the barrel of his sniper rifle through the gap between shield and wall. Several plasma blasts came their way, one of which hit the shield but the Archon held it firm and gave Jason the time he needed to sight in on one of the lizards’ heads visible in the gun slot on their heavy, metallic barricade.

A single pull of the trigger and the lizard’s head jerked back and fell out of sight. Jason adjusted his aim slightly to the right and fired again, dropping another. The plasma fire coming at them stopped for a moment, then more lizards behind the barricade moved up to take their fallen comrades’ positions, making themselves Jason’s new targets as they fired in earnest down the hallway.

Another shot hit the shield, causing it to glow on the back side for a moment, visible in Jason’s peripheral vision. He ignored it, knowing that even if they got a lucky shot through the gap his armor could take the hit. Calmly pulling the trigger in a rhythmic sequence he shot one lizard after another as their heads appeared in the narrow slot until they either ran out of troops or got smart enough to keep their heads down.

Jason scanned the gap with his scope, trying to make out what was on the other side.

“Flush them out,” he said, keeping his aim on the barricade.

Another Archon with shield in hand ran out into the hallway and ducked down on the far side a couple of meters to Jason’s right. When he didn’t draw any return fire he stood up into a crouch and began walking forward.

A bright flash from Jason’s weapon downed yet another scaly head as it popped up, but it was the only one to show itself. After a short pause the Archon continued forward, this time making it all the way down the hall and up to the barricade. He poked his head out from behind his shield to glance through, then slid it over his shoulder and brought his rifle up, sticking the muzzle through the gap and taking up guard position.

“You’re clear to move up,” he reported through the team comm.

Paul clapped Jason on the shoulder as he and the other members of the breach team ran by, leaving the trailblazer behind. He ducked back around the corner just to be on the safe side and began reloading his rifle from the spare ammo pouch fixed to the small rack on his back. There he also had a standard plasma rifle attached next to a stinger pistol. He wore no pack, as some of the others did, preferring to stay light and mobile given his fire support role.

Motion from his right caught his eye as the other Archon teams began coming through, apparently already called up by Paul. They did wear packs containing a wide variety of combat gear that might come in handy, given that they had no idea what was beyond the perimeter post they’d breached. From here on out they were winging it, and the more options they had available the better.

That, and a whole lot of spare ammo.

Jason let them pass and finished topping off his rifle’s magazine with the cube-shaped ammunition, then slid it back into the underside of the barrel clicking it into place. It held 48 shots in a 2x2x12 rack that the rifle’s mechanism drew power and particles from to create the lachar blasts. Unlike the plasma rifles, which had to have their own power source to magnetize the barrel and propel the plasma out by, the lachar rifles had no need of power other than a small battery to operate the retrieval mechanism and displays. All the power required for each shot was stored in the cubes, each of which was a powerful capacitor that also carried a small amount of material with it that would become the charged particles mixed in to the laser matrix.

When empty, the ammo cubes were shifted into the butt of the rifle and held there for later recycling, as well as to keep from leaving any evidence behind of the sniper’s presence. The spent ammo magazine held an equal number of shots plus two, after which any additional trigger pulls would result in the dice-sized capacitors being expelled directly in front of the trigger assembly as they were used.

Jason flipped open the cover on the butt of the rifle and dumped the empty rounds out on the floor, then sealed it up and blended into the flow of the passing Archon teams. If Paul needed him for something in particular he’d call, otherwise he was going to tag along and help out where he could from afar.

When they got up to the position where the barricade had been Jason saw the others climbing up and over the angled wall and slipping through the meter wide gap between it and the ceiling. He clipped the sniper rifle onto the back of his armor and climbed up in turn, using the gun port as a foothold before spilling over the top sideways and coming down on one of the lizard corpses that had been partially dragged to the side.

He kicked it further under the angle of the barricade then followed the others up to a waypoint marked on his HUD. From there the teams were splitting up, each with their own objectives. Jason saw an icon pointing him further down the hall, courtesy of Paul, so he broke formation with the others and headed off on his own, swapping his sniper weapon for his plasma rifle and flipping the safety off as he followed the virtual breadcrumbs Paul was leaving for him that were leading well away from the others.

9

Jason shot two wayward lizards on his way to the position Paul wanted him in, finding an open door onto a large expanse filled with dirt, sand, and a few scattered trees. The sound of plasma fire was everywhere, but directly in front of Jason was a small fort, on top of which there were a pair of lizards firing off the opposite direction down over a hillside where he guessed everyone else was.

Plasma rifle in hand he ran across to the bottom of the fort where there was an open doorway, drawing no attention from the gunners up top who had their tails to him. Inside was an empty room with a skeleton ladder running up to the top where the lizards were shooting from. Switching out his rifle for his stinger pistol, Jason began quietly climbing up, his eyes focused on the opening above him as he reached for each spur of the ladder with his free hand. Very slowly he made it all the way up to the top where he could see the feet of the lizards in front of him, who were still oblivious to his presence.

He glanced around, making sure they were the only two there as he brought the pistol up over the lip of the hole, then shot the one on his right in the back once before twisting the stun weapon to the left by a meter and shooting the other one as it turned to watch its companion fall, not realizing that they’d been ambushed due to the nearly silent nature of the weapon.

Jason shot them both a second time to make sure they were unconscious, then he swapped the pistol for his plasma rifle and killed both where they lay with pointblank shots to the head. Unfortunately they weren’t in a position to take prisoners and any lizard they left alive would pose a threat to him and the others when it woke, so he dispatched with them quickly and dumped the bodies back down the ladder hole into the room below.

He switched weapons again, bringing out his sniper rifle as he surveyed the area. On the other side of the hill was a short concrete-like wall with a dry moat on the far side that would make it difficult to scale coming this direction. Beyond the moat was a sparse terrain with a lot of variation. There were flat areas, hills, ditches, clumps of trees, sand dunes, bits of walls and barricades, boulders, and even the hulk of a downed kirby…all of which immediately told Jason that this was a lizard training course.

What better place to mount a defense than an area of the ship designed for ground combat.

From his position he could see lizards moving about everywhere, but their main defensive position was the kirby, which apparently still had a turret functional, because its heavier plasma was blasting away at some of the small fortifications that the assaulting Archons were taking cover behind. Jason was about to sight in on the transport when he noticed another tower in his peripheral vision off to his left. It was identical to the one he had just captured and had several lizards firing down on the Archons that were attempting to flank the kirby, fighting up a corridor along the moat.

Jason swung the long barrel of his sniper rifle around and sighted in on the other tower. Three trigger pulls resulted in three head shots, which silenced the fire coming out of the tower.

Pulling back from the scope he swung the rifle down to the area the flanking team was approaching and found the tightest knot of lizards in their way. He killed two whose heads he could just see the top of behind a low wall, which caused the others hiding there to jump out and rush the Archons. He got two more before the close range firefight began and he saw one red suit of armor take a hit to the chest and go down, but before he could sight in again on the moving combatants the rest of the Archons had mowed down the enemy with coordinated fire and rushed forward to appropriate the bunker the lizards had been hiding in.

Jason pulled up and scanned the perimeter of the huge chamber, looking for more towers. He found a silent one across the way, just visible above a clump of trees but couldn’t find anyone in it to shoot so he continued his long pan until he heard noise below him.

Standing up out of his crouch and spinning his weapon around he got into firing position before the lizards below him could climb up the ladder and walked forward until their bald, scaly heads came into sight. He shot the one standing next to the ladder first, then the one on the rungs who had a harder time bringing his weapon to bear. It fell back down on top of the pile of bodies, bringing Jason’s kill count up to 37 for the day which he absentmindedly kept track of. He waited and listened, but no more appeared below him so he knelt back down next to the window opening and sighted in on where his HUD indicated Paul was.

He couldn’t see him because of the hill in between them, so Jason advanced up what he thought would be their projected path and started sniping individual lizards caught out in the open. He got through six of them before there was an explosion that brought his head up from the scope. Where the kirby had been laying in the sand there was a large cloud of dust, out of which trailed a small wisp of smoke back to the position where the rocket launcher had fired it. Jason grinned as the plasma fire coming from the transport ceased, then dropped his eye back down to his scope and started to pick off lizards wandering around the dust cloud, unable to see where they were going.

An hour later Jason abandoned his tower, having only 15 rounds of lachar ammunition remaining. The assault team had succeeded in taking the training course and killing all the lizards holed up inside, including two new varieties that he hadn’t seen before. One had an angled head, as Morgan had described, but the other type only stood shoulder height to the other lizards, had no claws on its 4 fingers, and unnervingly had four black eyes, set two on each side at an angle, making for a ‘W’ shaped face when you included the ridge-like nose/snout.

There had been six of those killed, along with 17 of the others, which Jason thought must have been some type of support personnel or leaders, because they’d been protected by the others rather than joining them in the fight. Three Archons had gone down, two of which had bad plasma burns but would survive, thanks again to the armor they were wearing. A few others had light injuries and damage to their suits, but for the most part Paul’s assault force was intact as they repositioned into a defensive line, securing the territory they’d gained as runners brought up additional supplies from base camp that they stashed in the charred remains of the more or less intact kirby.

Jason took a break there to reload his sniper rifle as Paul assembled the team for the next thrust, which would be to take the two levels below the one they’d just captured. Before they could even make their move the lizards hit back from above, hammering the defensive lines with surprising numbers that forced a retreat back into the training course.

Jason ran up and dove down onto the top of a sand dune, laying belly flat on the upslope as he unloaded lachar blasts into the hoard of lizards and maulers pouring into the quickly organizing kill zone that Paul had their forces retreating into. From the flanks came dozens of plasma lances, making the entire scene look like it was lit with strobe lights. Jason’s yellow lachar blasts barely showed up in the frenzy, which was added to even more by several plasma grenades thrown into the group that exploded out like water balloons filled with blue plasma, knocking half a dozen lizards up into the air with each detonation.

Yet still more poured in, trampling the dead and wounded as they rushed forward, trying to get at the Archons through sheer numbers. Jason kept firing at the armed lizards, ignoring the blade-wielding maulers, as their forward defense lines retreated again, falling back to cover as the zergling-like hoard rushed past and blocked them from view.

When they got close Jason had to fall back as well, taking off at a run for the kirby as he switched weapons. When he got to the open bay door there were two other Archons already in position, offering him cover fire. He jumped up into the bay and spun around, firing back at the approaching maulers as they rushed ahead of the others on all fours and jumped at the Archons, getting shot down before they could get their sharp forearm blades in range.

Jason knew the blades weren’t the main problem. The maulers were stronger than the others, and if they engaged them in hand to hand combat they wouldn’t be able to shoot at the lizards that were armed and not yet firing, but coming up behind the maulers in large numbers.

The trailblazer kept his calm and shot the maulers on approach, one of which he hit in the air, ducking aside as its body fell into the bay near his feet. He kicked it back out as another Archon appeared from the right and ran up into the ship. Jason held fire for a split second to let him in, then returned to blasting away at the lizards, aware that he’d already gone through about half his rifle’s magazine.

When the maulers thinned out the lizards behind them started firing their plasma rifles, causing Jason and the other Archons to duck for cover. He was standing in the middle of the bay door so he dropped to the deck and fired from a belly position while the other three ducked toward the corners. Dozens of green plasma blasts hit the back wall of the kirby throwing off bits of debris and smoke, but the Archons stayed alive long enough to see the hoard thin slightly, then Jason saw a silver suit in the distance cutting into the side of the lizard flow coming toward them with a stun sword.

He didn’t even need to look at the ID marker to know it was Paul. He was followed by two adepts who were shooting the lizards on either flank as their three person arrowhead dug into the side of the river of lizards, taking some of the pressure off the kirby just as Jason ran out of ammo. He tossed the plasma rifle aside and pulled the sniper rifle off his back as he rolled to the side, ducking back further into the bay and retreating to the far wall where he set up in a kneeling position and targeting the lizards as they jumped up into the bay.

The Archons on the wings let him kill the first three to jump up as they kept their fire on those outside, but when they started coming in fours and fives they had to retreat a few steps and start shooting them as they appeared else they’d be flanked. A mound of bodies quickly formed on the edge, offering the lizard reinforcements some cover as they walked into the kill zone as another one of the Archons ran out of ammo, pulling out a lachar pistol to replace his plasma rifle.

Jason took two hits to his armor before the lizards finally ran out, then got to his feet and rushed to the opening, knowing that others might still be in need of the few sniper rounds he had left. When he jumped down on what had been sand a few minutes before he landed on a carpet of bodies that stretched back all the way to the entry point nearly 400 meters away. Off to the right there was still a firefight going on so Jason trudged his way around the perimeter of the ship, finally finding sand beneath his boots again. He climbed a short rise and took up position on top of the sandy dune, sniping six more lizards from a tendril of the hoard not yet taken down.

All around the battlefield isolated Archons emerged, adding what firepower they had left to help those still engaged while others were running up to engage the lizards hand to hand. Paul wasn’t anywhere nearby, but Jaime and a few of his fellow Sangheili were pinned down behind a nook of a wall so Jason fired off his last 3 rounds at the lizards surrounding them, then ran towards the engagement as he pulled out his stinger pistol, firing wildly as he approached knowing that it didn’t matter which lizard he hit or where so long as he didn’t hit the Archons.

One of the lizards came flying back out from the nearly obscured Archons, knocking down three of the others like bowling pins as Jason caught up to the group and began shooting them at pointblank range, shrugging off another plasma hit to his right leg. He kept firing with his right hand as he punched with his left, knocking down and disorienting the remaining lizards long enough that the others could take them down.

At the end he was fighting fully hand to hand, snapping necks when his pistol ran dry and there weren’t any lizard rifles at hand. When the last lizard went down Jason did as well, dropping to his knees as he tried to catch his breath. Weakened as he was, the high gravity was draining the energy out of him at an astonishing rate and he could already feel the faint lightheadedness that resulted when his body began to deplete its ambrosia stores.

Even as he rested, his mind was alert and he was scanning the area for more threats, seeing a few small pockets of lizards being torn apart by the remaining Archons, then he turned to Jaime and looked up at the adept.

“I was using a stinger. Find the ones that are stunned and finish them off.”

“I’m out,” he said, looking around. “Anyone have any ammo left?”

“Use theirs,” Jason suggested, dragging himself back to his feet as he walked over and pulled a lizard rifle out of a pile of bodies before tossing it to Jaime.

“You ok, boss?”

“I will be. Finish up here,” Jason said, walking off.

“Will do,” Jaime confirmed before rounding up a few other Archons to start policing the bodies and weapons scattered across the area.

Jason was halfway across the sandy section headed for the exit back to their initial breach point when Paul caught up with him.

“You look terrible,” Jason told him, seeing the burn marks all across his armor. Some of it had melted and rehardened in little rivulets down the sides, while some craters showed a bit of charred flesh underneath at the very center.

“I’ve been better. What about you?”

“I’m getting away from the maybe dead to where I can keel over in private,” he said as the pair continued to walk towards the exit. “I need an ambrosia recharge bad.”

“I was afraid of that,” Paul said as they got to the archway that led out of the training course and into the normal ship corridors. “The new tissue can’t hold as much as the rest of your body, so you run out sooner. I’ll have somebody run some up for you, but…”

“I can get it on my own, I just need a breather before I head back.”

“Alright. I’m going to scrounge up a few men with ammo and push on down to the next level. Reports from upstairs say it’s a rout, so I doubt there are very many of them left.”

“They probably scared them all down here.”

“Possible. I’ll keep you posted,” Paul said, running a few steps back into the training grounds and picking up a lizard rifle, which he came back out with and tossed to Jason. “Just in case.”

“Keep an eye out for bombs,” his friend warned.

“Last few alive feel like going out with a bang? Yeah, that’s why I want to get down there before they have time to think,” Paul said, running off in a blur back into the lizard strewn killing field.

Jason backtracked to their point of entry, crossing out of the fortified zone as a team of Knights escorting a group of medics met up with him, which he redirected via four waypoints on his recently updated battlemap that now included all but 5 of the previously blank levels. He monitored Paul’s progress on his long walk back to the nearest base camp, with each footstep seeming to get heavier and heavier. With his usual efficiency Paul cleaned out the two levels below them while the other teams finished off the areas above, then the ‘all clear’ came through just as he was walking past the lone Knight guarding the entrance to the recently established supply base about 2 kilometers away from the most recent battlefield.

Jason walked over to one of the tables and pulled his helmet off, setting it on top along with each piece of his armor he disconnected, feeling progressively better with every bit of weight he removed. After a couple of minutes he stood there in his sweat-soaked uniform, blinking away the haze swirling around his head as he looked around for the foodstuffs, finding them off to the side against one of the walls of what had been a medium-sized storage bay. All of the previous equipment had been removed and replaced with Star Force gear, leaving a lot of open room to set up mobile facilities, including a couple of prefab buildings they’d managed to carry in through the corridors in pieces.

Jason grabbed two bottles of water, a handful of ration bars, and 22 doses of ambrosia packed into a stack of cookies. He took his haul over to a crate and sat down, then began to refuel as a scattering of partially wounded Archons began to walk in while the rest of them remained on site for cleanup duty.

The jumpship was finally theirs…assuming there weren’t some lizards left lurking around that they’d missed…and the long interior ground campaign was over. Jason knew it was a major coup, thanks mainly to the Hycre for tipping them off and disabling the ship in the first place, but it was Star Force that had fought their way through deck after deck, and if no one had died today then they’d have a perfect score on this mission, though obviously some of them had suffered some setbacks. It would take a while before Jason could get back to standard training and see how much strength and speed he’d lost, but for the moment he and the others stood as the victors and in possession of a very valuable asset, damaged as it might be.

After he grabbed a shower in the nearby prefab structure and took a badly needed nap he’d find Paul and work on giving it a proper name.

10

October 27, 2264

Epsilon Eridani System

Captured Lizard Jumpship ‘Bounty’

“Paul, get up here,” Morgan said through his helmet a moment before a new waypoint popped up on his HUD, far off into the confines of the jumpship that they were cleaning up and securing. A lot of the damaged areas had to be contained, bulkheads replaced, atmospheric seals checked, computer systems unlocked…there was an enormous amount of work to do, especially considering they were having to learn the lizard systems from scratch.

“What is it?” he asked, setting down a lizard control wand, their version of a datapad.

“Something you need to see.”

“On my way,” he said, taking a cue from her lack of detail. He examined the battlemap as he began to walk, seeing that her waypoint led back into the fortified area of the lizards’ last stand. They’d done a cursory examination of the area at the end of yesterday’s battle, but he knew teams there were still clearing out all the dead.

He was about 3 kilometers away in one of the engineering areas trying to find a way to reset the ship’s gravity to Star Force standard and decided to run his way over to her position, given that the jumpship’s internal transit system was still locked down…yet another item on their very long to-do list. Paul kept trying to guess at what it was she felt he needed to see all the way there but in the end his guesswork hadn’t even come close.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Morgan joked when Paul walked into the small room and didn’t say a word, merely staring at the aquarium that covered the far wall inside of which was a single occupant…that was staring back.

“I think the lizards were keeping her as a trophy,” Morgan speculated. “How do you suggest we get her out?”

Paul walked up to the glass wall and took off his armor’s helmet, setting it on a side table in what looked to be the private quarters of one of the higher ranking lizards, then he put his gloved fingers up against the glass.

A three fingered blue hand reached out and pressed against the glass on the other side as Paul looked up into the Humanoid face and torso attached to a fish-like tail…the spitting image of a mermaid from ancient lore. She even had green, flowing hair and a tiny nose, but it was the eyes that immediately drew his attention. Inset against her deep blue skin they glowed golden in some form of bioluminescence that also was present in tiny patches across her body. Those patches glowed aqua in color right down to the tip of her tri-fin tail.

“We’ll have to build a transfer tank,” he said, pulling his hand back but not taking his eyes off the alien mermaid. “I recognize this race.”

Morgan’s eyebrows came up. “You do?”

Paul nodded. “They’re in the pyramid database. I don’t recall their name, but I have seen that body before.”

“If they’re in the database then a language file should be included.”

“We need to hurry,” Paul urged, putting his helmet back on so he could use the comm. “Who knows how long it’s been since she’s been fed.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Keep someone with her at all times and organize a search for other…trophies. I’ll take care of her transportation.”

3 months later Paul sat on the pier at the abandoned Corvati colony as the Elarioni swam up to the underwater terminal he’d designed based off the data the V’kit’no’sat had on her race…before they decided to wipe them out after the Garas’tox tried to lay claim to one of their waterworlds. The formerly amicable relations between the Elarioni and V’kit’no’sat had quickly shifted to all-out war, with a predictable outcome.

Based on his previous conversations with Ariel, as he’d nicknamed her, survivors of the slaughter had fled to the outer rim of the galaxy in five directions with intentions to reunite after they’d escaped the V’kit’no’sat…but the other four factions never showed at the rendezvous point 132 years later, suggesting that they’d been hunted down and destroyed while her ancestors had somehow managed to elude pursuit.

 Ariel swam up into the three sided submerged bay attached to the dock and said something in her native language which Paul not only heard from the water but felt slightly through the dock itself. The high pitched cascade of tones was interrupted as the terminal translated her words into English above the waterline.

“You have come again. It is good to see you, rescuer. More questions about my people today?”

“You first, Ariel. How does the lake look?” Paul said, his words being picked up by the above water mic and translated subsurface to the Elarioni in her own language. Unlike with the lizards or the Hycre, Star Force had a complete translation program for their race thanks to the V’kit’no’sat, which was a great relief to Paul, otherwise it would have been decades, at minimum, before they’d be able to effectively communicate with her, if she’d lived that long. Her race needed some very specific compounds that the lizards had been reluctant to provide. According to her she’d been within a few months of dying due to malnutrition.

“It is empty, as you said. I have not felt such space in a long time. It feels good. I feel alive again.”

“Was the recent batch of foodstuffs an improvement?”

“They are adequate now. Thank you.”

“We want better than adequate,” Paul insisted. “Tell us how to make adjustments.”

“I don’t think I can without proper analysis equipment, otherwise I already would have.”

“I understand. When I upgrade this terminal I’ll try to include an analysis kit.”

“You needn’t bother. I have what I need now.”

“Except a way home. Have you thought more on making a map?”

“I have tried to remember. I guessed,” she said, pointing an underwater arm towards the terminal.

Paul logged into the upper section and saw that the map he’d given her, which was a copy of the one the Hycre had given him, had been amended to show a series of 5 dots beyond the outer edge, at the back of what would be lizard territory, which the Hycre had never been able to fully map.

Paul sighed, knowing that there was no way that they were going to be able to return her to her people, even if one of their worlds had survived the lizard invasion.

“Very far,” he said, looking down at her as she looked back up at him from a few inches below the waterline. Her race couldn’t breathe air, unlike the V’kit’no’sat swimming dinosaurs. The Elarioni respired through their skin, not their mouths, and sucked oxygen out of the water. For a brief period of time they could survive in the air, but the absorption rate was so much lower that they wouldn’t last long…similar to a person running a race at extremely high altitude. They’d get a little oxygen in but not enough for what their body needed to survive.

Her vocal chords also wouldn’t work in the air, which was why she had to stay submerged to communicate with Paul.

“You have given me a new chance at life. Do not concern yourself with returning me to the old one. It is possible the lizards have killed all my people. I may be the last.  If so, this is a fair place to live out my remaining days.”

“Training will prolong those days, perhaps indefinitely. You may still see your people again.”

The feminine, yet alien face smiled back at him. “Optimistic are you.”

“I’m still having that training course built. I’m going to see how fast you are.”

“You are not built for the water.”

“No, but we’ve learned a few tricks to deal with it.”

“This I wait to see, but have you not enemies still to vanquish?”

Paul nodded. “As soon as the next batch of naval reinforcements arrive we’ll begin assaulting the lizard bases. I may be busy, but I’ll find time to continue our conversations. You know much of the galaxy that I do not.”

“Ask and I will answer.”

“Tell me about the lizard invasion. The more I know of our mutual enemy the better we’ll be able to fight them.”

“They struck lightly at first. Our fleet repulsed them easily, then they returned with greater and greater numbers until we were overwhelmed in orbit and fled back to the waters of our planet. They took our land and established their base there, offering us a temporary reprieve, but eventually they came into the water to slaughter us, but it was us who slaughtered them for many ages.”

“Still they would not relent. They wasted many lives foolishly trying to take our cities. Their plasma could not sink beneath the surface, so it was us that held the technological advantage…but over time they made changes, found new ways to fight us. With the small gains they managed they poured more and more of their people and resources into our destruction, but it wasn’t until they changed their physiology to mimic ours that the war turned against us. Once they learned to swim, millions of them took to our waters and slowly overwhelmed our superiority.”

“During the fall of my city I was rendered unconscious. When I woke I saw my freedom gone, captive of one of their landwalkers. He took me from ship to ship four times, I know not how far we traveled.”

“Interesting,” Paul said, staring down at the Elarioni’s wrinkled image as a slight wind disturbed the water’s surface. “We’ve encountered several different varieties of lizard and recovered genetic seeds they use to grow their offspring, with many varieties. Until now I wasn’t fully convinced they were artificial.”

“What do you mean by ‘grow their offspring?’”

“They are not born from another person. They begin as a genetic sample in a machine that sustains them as they grow into an adult form before waking.”

“A perversion of life we were not aware of. It explains many things.”

“You said you had cities. Is there something we can build for you here?”

“I have little need of such things.”

“I insist. What did you have in your cities that you could teach us to build?”

“Yes, teaching. I can teach you much of living underwater. I would rather help you build for your people than build for myself. I owe you a great debt and wish no more consideration. How can I help you?”

“I have a friend named Lens who builds our underwater ships and cities. He isn’t on this planet because it’s mostly land, but I imagine there is much you can teach him. We have 5 areas of combat. Space navy, small land fighting, big land fighting, air fighting, and water fighting. Water is our weakest area.”

“Then I shall help you strengthen it.”

Paul smiled, not only at gaining a potential new resource, but in the knowledge that Ariel would find a purpose here rather than stagnate in boredom. “We would welcome your knowledge.”

As soon as she finished her sentence a large glob of air belted out of her nose and rose up to the surface, drawing a frown from Paul. “Do you have lungs?”

“I am sorry. That was rude.”

“What was that?”

She avoided his gaze for a moment. “Excrement.”

“It was air.”

“Yes. We excrete gases, do you not?”

Paul laughed. “Yeah, but we have lungs.”

“Elarioni have a small compartment,” she said, tapping her flat chest just below her neck, “that gathers up harmful byproducts from our bodies then releases them as gases time to time. I did not mean to do that now. The moment overcame me.”

“Well, to an air breather, that wasn’t rude at all.”

“I suppose not. But to a water breather we find the air to be harsh and foul. It is toxic. It is death. We must remove it from our bodies, but we do not like seeing it.”

“I understand. On my homeworld there are swimmers that breathe the air, not the water. Would you find them to be offensive.”

“I do not wish to anger, but I do not want to be untruthful. Yes, we would find them offensive.”

“The V’kit’no’sat are air breathers as well. Did they dislike you because you are not? We know very little of the ways of the water dwellers.”

“There was resentment from us, the stories are told, but we did not know of their reasoning, other than they wanted our planets for their own.”

“Tell me one of those stories, about the V’kit’no’sat.”

“I can tell you of the arrival?”

“Please do,” Paul said, listening intently as she recalled the history of her people when they first encountered their mutual enemy, peaceably. He wondered if the initial wellbeing between them was due to the fact that they were water dwellers, like most of the dominant races within the V’kit’no’sat. He’d read the data sent out to him via jumpship from the pyramid records which indicated that the Elarioni had ‘betrayed’ the V’kit’no’sat in some way, upon which basis they were exterminated. The records didn’t go into detail and Paul wondered how much of that was an excuse or if there was a legitimate incident that had occurred between them.

Ariel told him that story and many others in the days to follow, sharing openly about her people, their physiology and technology…she even taught him to swim with his legs locked as if they were a tail, then expanding on his already limited swimming abilities by helping him craft his own prosthetic leg extensions that translated his ankle movements into other, more useful swimming dynamics.

As much as Paul didn’t like killing every lizard they came across, necessary as it was, he felt better knowing that some lives had been saved from their assault on the Bounty, with his regard for the lizards falling even further knowing that they’d taken Ariel as a living decoration. They’d also discovered compartments full of small, fury rabbit-like animals that they bred on ship for food. Those thousands that had survived the lack of feeding when the lizards abandoned that section of the ship were rescued and relocated to a small portion of the planet’s surface where Star Force created them a preserve of sorts, where they could eat as much of Corneria’s vegetation as they liked.

They were kept pinned into a 26 square mile area, surrounded by high concrete walls that kept them from jumping over or digging out of the region as Star Force techs studied them and their capabilities. Over the following years they learned to establish a very basic language with them, limited in intelligence as they were, and began to instruct them to do various tasks in exchange for rewards. While they did well enough on leaves and roots, they especially had a taste for cookies, which Paul and most of the Archons could empathize with.

Thus began cookie-incentive training exercises designed to strengthen both their bodies and minds in an experiment to see if Star Force could help their ‘primitive’ race advance. It would be the first of many such endeavors in the centuries to come, for as skilled as Star Force and the Archons were at war, it was the preservation and advancement of life that was their highest priority.

Paul and Jason had discussed another such project concerning the lizards if they could ever be successfully captured and contained, working not so much in advancement in a physical sense, but in saving them from themselves. They hadn’t had that luxury with the crew of the Bounty, but Paul was glad to have saved another race off that ship, marking it also as a victory for freedom rather than just the slaughter of an intractable enemy.

Melee

1

March 22, 2266

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Paul wacked one of the three lizards directly in front of him with his stun sword as he ran forward, rendering it unconscious within a second, then hop-kicked the next closest into a bundle on the floor, bending the lizard over with his boot in its gut. He flicked his sword down and nicked it in the side of the head, knocking it out as he took half a plasma hit to his right shoulder armor.

The next moment he was on the lizard shooter and dropped it to the floor with a jab in the tail as it spun around and tried to run away. The Archon stepped past all three in the walkway connection between buildings, his eyes focused ahead and out the windows of the enclosure, knowing that they were sitting ducks for a strafing run. Meanwhile the three Star Force security guards he’d collected as he made his way toward the command building in the main Star Force colony, designated as Corneria Prime, shot the stunned lizards with plasma rifles, picking up the targets that Paul was dropping, as had become their standard operating procedure over the past half hour.

The trailblazer paused long enough to let them finish, then sprinted across the elevated walkway tunnel between one of the adjacent structures and the much larger command building, finding yet more lizards on guard at the other terminus, but these hadn’t set up their portable turret yet. In fact they were just unloading the device from a floating shipping crate when Paul caught their attention, punching two back through the air from the entrance to the walkway as they came up to check on the sound of weaponsfire.

Those two hit the ground a split second before Paul jabbed one of the workers in the gut with the tip of his stun sword, releasing the pressure so he could flip it to his left and catch another that was scrambling to grab its weapon leaning against the wall in the small receiving atrium.

Paul jumped over to stun the two he’d knocked out of the walkway just as reinforcements began to pour in from the nearby hallways, apparently unaware that any Star Force personnel were in the area prior to the ruckus, otherwise they’d have had better defensive lines set up. As the first came into view the Archon charged forward, clearing himself out of the atrium and into one of the two opposing hallways, giving the security guards behind him clear lines of fire as they emerged from the walkway.

He heard the telltale sound of their own plasma weapons as he pummeled through a group of six closely packed lizards, one of which panickly fired at Paul and ended up hitting one of its own in the back, then another green plasma blast flew by him and accidentally took down another as the lizards in the opposite hall also began shooting at him.

He dodged side to side on purpose, increasing the odds that the lizards’ own troops would get caught in the crossfire as he cleared out the right side hallway, then turned around, making sure not to get tripped up in the bodies, to help the security guards finish off the others, though he needn’t have bothered. When that group of lizards had advanced to hit Paul from behind they’d walked right into the security guards’ firing lines, leaving only a pair of survivors to contend with.

One of them went down before Paul caught back up, but the second hit one of the guards square in the chest with a plasma blast before it was gunned down by the others.

“Cover,” Paul ordered as he dropped down to examine the wounded soldier. The two guards took up positions on either side, covering both hallways with their weapons, leaving the Archon and downed guard partially blocked between their legs.

“It hurts,” the woman said, partially frozen with either pain or panic as Paul pulled her helmet off and unfastened her charred armored vest, tossing it aside on top of one of the dead lizards. Underneath he found a good amount of burnt skin, but the wound didn’t go deeper than a quarter inch and most of it had been cauterized…still, there was enough blood seeping out to be a major problem.

Paul brought the hilt of his stun sword up, popping open the nub at the base and dialed back the sword’s charge strength before tapping the woman in her wound. She immediately grimaced, then her face fell slack as the majority of the pain disappeared.

“Neat trick,” she said as her head began to clear, though her eyes were still wide with concern as she looked down at her wound.

“Finish the wounded,” Paul ordered the other two guards before looking the injured one in the face, though she couldn’t see his through his armor’s faceplate. “You have to stop the bleeding, and we can’t stay behind with you.”

“I know,” she said stoically, reaching for her plasma rifle that she’d dropped. “Can you pull me over there,” she asked, inclining her head back towards the atrium.

Paul walked around behind her and looped his arms underneath her armpits and across the top of her chest a few inches above her wound. “Brace yourself.”

The woman yipped with pain despite the numbing effect, and Paul made sure to make the move as quick as possible, eventually propping her up against the right side wall where she could watch the left hallway and atrium. He grabbed one of the lizard’s rifles and set it down next to her in case she ran out of ammo.

“I’ve logged your position and tagged you as injured on the battlemap, but there are no medics nearby. You’re going to have to hold out.”

“Might be a medic with Duke,” she said, her lips trembling. “Go get him.”

Paul gently laid a hand on her shoulder then disappeared down the right hallway with the others, leaving her sitting alone on the floor with the dead lizards and a seeping belly wound. She pulled up the hole in her shirt until the lower end covered the burn spot on her skin, then pressed and held it in place with her right hand while grasping her rifle in her left so she could aim at both hallways and the walkway entrance if need be…then waited.

Paul took his two remaining security guards and pressed down the side hallway until they got to a staircase then headed up. According to the battlemap Duke Hightower was holed up in the administrative levels in the top half of the building along with a lot of other ‘civilian’ Star Force personnel and a few security forces trying to hold off a group of lizards attacking from ground level. Paul and his team had come in 15 floors above the lizards’ entry point, hopefully bypassing at least some of them, but the battlemap said there was enemy activity all the way up to at least level 136.

By the time they got to level 84 Paul started to run into lizards using the same stairwell. He ordered the security guards to hold position and shoot anyone coming up from below, knowing that the building’s elevators were already locked down. There was more than one stairwell, however, but this would be the best kill zone available to put the guards in, as well as partially securing an exit corridor when he got to the survivors…hopefully before the lizards overran them.

They didn’t have the insane numbers typical of their hoard tactics, but more kirbies were landing troops in the Star Force city constantly, being ferried in and out by their cruisers as the surviving defense towers hammered away at their shields. They’d detach from the larger ship once they were over the city, fly down to the surface between the buildings and unload within 30 seconds, then fly back up and dock to the larger ships as they blasted away at targets of opportunity or the defense towers, then they’d zip back off across the forest to one of their 3 intact bases, load up more troops and repeat the process.

The assault had been going on for the past 3 days, but the incursion to the command building had occurred less than 2 hours ago. Up until then the lizards had been dropping troops in the northeast and southern sections of the massive city along the periphery, but once they knocked out one of the central defense towers they moved in closer, weathering the plasma storm with their shields and choosing to take the damage to the hull that the heavy lachars were doing to them in exchange for the 2 min runs in and out.

Another defense tower had been taken down from within the city an hour ago, blown up by troops infiltrating the structure on foot. Paul had intercepted a second group headed for another tower when the call came through that the command building had come under attack. While it wasn’t the command center for the city’s war effort, it did hold the economic and administrative offices that Star Force’s senior leaders on the planet frequented, along with a lot of their personal quarters.

The Archons had been evacuating people into the underground bunkers since the attack began, for fear of the cruisers just blasting away at buildings, but once it was clear that wasn’t their aim the evacuation efforts had started to focus on the invasion sectors of the city and getting people out of harm’s way, which Hightower and others had been helping to organize from the command building.

Paul didn’t know if the lizards’ knew it was a primary site of operations for the city or not, but he’d left his troops to protect the defense tower and began fighting his way across the city solo to get to Hightower, picking up stray troops he encountered along the way through what now felt like a ghost town with everyone either evacuated or taking sheltered, hidden somewhere inside the city’s massive buildings.

Paul hooked his stun sword to the back of his armor, swapping it for his plasma rifle as he charged up the stairs moving far faster than the security guards had been capable of running. He killed a pair of lizards he caught up with from behind, then raced ahead to find more of them as sounds of a firefight could be heard a few levels above.

He still didn’t know what the lizards were after, aside from trying to take the biggest building in the city. They had succeeded in bypassing most of Star Force’s troops, which were geared up and engaging the primary invasion points on the perimeter. Maybe that had been their aim and they’d just gone straight for the city’s center…but the fact was they were moving directly on the Duke’s position and he couldn’t rule out the possibility that they knew more about Star Force than he’d previously given them credit for.

He was unsure of how that could have happened, unless they’d intercepted their communications and managed to piece together data from computer and verbal languages that they’d never encountered before. Paul found that unlikely, but the unfortunate truth was they were heading directly for Hightower whether they realized his importance or not.

This whole attack had been a last gasp of defiance from the lizards after several Star Force jumpship runs had ferried additional warships into the system and Paul had taken out another of the lizard bases through orbital bombardment. He’d had enough ships on site that the lizards hadn’t made more than a few hit and run strikes with their cruisers, seeking to preserve them in the face of an unwinnable battle in low orbit.

Paul’s fleet had then been distracted by the cruisers making a flurry of raids against their orbital facilities, most of which hadn’t been manned. After evacuating those remaining personnel in danger he effectively conceded 80% of Star Force’s orbital stations to the enemy if they chose to attack them, preferring to mass his forces for a subsequent bombardment campaign that wiped another lizard base from the surface of the planet.

Before he could set up a third the lizards had struck again but this time it wasn’t in orbit, it was against their strongest surface base, making Paul think this was them resigning themselves to doing as much damage as possible before their were wiped out, and in doing so they had exploited the greatest weakness in Star Force’s surface defenses.

The lizard cruisers could fight in atmosphere, hovering mere meters above the surface, while most of the Star Force fleet couldn’t. One defense turret couldn’t stop a cruiser, nor could it take its shields down. They had to work in conjunction with one another to destabilize the lizards’ resilient defenses, and the first thing the enemy had done in the assault was send two cruisers out around the perimeter of the city engaging isolated turrets. After that they’d sacrificed one of their capital ships to cut a path through the rest of the turret field to get into the city, through which 3 other cruisers continually ran routes, sucking up most of the damage Star Force could throw at them while sheltering the kirbies inside their shields.

Each time they came through they knocked out another piece of infrastructure with their plasma cannons, and when it was a turret tower it decreased the amount of firepower being thrown back at them…but they still didn’t want to take on the turrets directly, almost as if they didn’t want Star Force to consider everything to be a loss and call down orbital bombardment on their own city. As long as the cruisers kept on the move the orbital guns couldn’t effectively track and hit them like they could with their motionless bases.

All together they’d identified 5 active cruisers, one of which was drifting hundreds of kilometers away over the forests of the planet smoking something fierce as the crew attempted to contain the turret-induced damage all the while keeping the ship moving. Returning to the nearest base was impossible, given that Paul had ordered the third assault to begin piecemeal, even though he didn’t have enough ships in place yet. So far the base’s shields had held up to the incoming rail gun slugs, but the cruisers hadn’t flown up to orbit to engage the smaller fleet…instead they kept to their ferry runs, intent on doing as much damage to the Star Force planetary capitol as they could.

And they were doing plenty. Already over 200 people had been confirmed killed, though that was extremely low considering how bad things could have been if the cruisers had hit them directly instead of aiding the ground incursion. The airfield had been trashed, with damage done to most of the bunkers. Fortunately they were well armored, giving the crews inside time to evacuate before they were breached. Most of the aircraft not already in the air at the time of the assault were subsequently damaged, leaving those that had made it up without the ability to refuel or rearm…which meant they had to divert to other bases, leaving the lizards with a longer span of air superiority.

Reinforcements were coming in from the other Star Force colonies as well as the Clans on a continual basis, but neither the skeets nor the gunships had enough firepower to down a fully shielded cruiser. The mechs encircling the base were another matter, but their hangars had also been hit, pinning a lot of the chassis under the rubble. Those in the field attempted to unload on the cruisers making their forays into the city, but given they were only making hit and fade runs to deliver the kirbies they weren’t parked over the city daring the mechs to shoot at them like they had been in the previous fighting up north.

Most of the weapon impacts on the cruisers’ shields were for naught, because they’d just retreat back out over the forest and recharge their matrixes. Only the lachar-equipped mechs were doing any damage, and had succeeded in taking out 3 batteries between all the active ships, but for the most part the cruisers simply ignored the mechs and continued ferrying their troop-laden kirbies inside the city perimeter.

Paul knew it was only a matter of time before they started bringing in predators…or just parking over the city and blasting away if they got all the defense towers down, which was obviously part of their aim. They couldn’t afford to let that happen, though with each subsequent cruiser run they’d hit a tower with a few plasma shots before retreating, gradually wearing down their defenses until one fell, even without the aid of the ground troops.

When Paul got up another 10 levels he ran into a bottleneck of lizards pinned behind a desk on the stairwell, on top of which had been piled a heap of other furniture blocking the path upwards. Some of them were trying to disassemble the pile while others were abandoning the stairwell and spilling out into the hallways, probably looking to cross over and move up another one if they weren’t all blocked by now.

Paul fired up at the tails of the nearest three, then bullied his way past the falling lizards and fired rapidly at the group ahead of him, targeting any and all that turned around trying to sow as much confusion as possible before retreating back down a level and sliding out a side door to wait in ambush.

As expected the lizards followed him down, half of them continuing to take the stairs down further while the other half waited on the small platform for one to poke its head out the door to see if Paul had gotten off at this level. Situated behind the door in a nook against the wall the lizard couldn’t see him, so after a few long seconds it closed the door and the other lizards continued down, figuring that was where the Human had went.

As soon as the door shut Paul leapt out and pulled it back open again, firing into the side of several lizards and the backs of others headed down, hitting several in their scaly heads that were now at chest height. He turned right and punched another, doubling it over and firing at the one behind it before bringing a knee up into the first one’s chin and knocking it unconscious with the ferocity of the blow.

He left it where it lay and jumped up three stairs as those below started to turn around and come back up. Paul finished off one more above him then had the stairs ahead clear and to himself for the moment, so he turned around and started walking up them backwards, sniping at any of the lizards coming up from below until he reached the bottom of the debris pile. There he made his stand, checking to see that there were no more lizards at his back and dropping to a knee before sliding up against the side of the wall so he could aim downward and not be in the center of the stairs for the lizards to shoot at on reflex.

As predicted they charged back up at him spaced evenly, giving him enough trigger time to sight and down each one with a single shot, followed up by a brief twitch check, during which he walked back down the stairs, stepping on and over the bodies looking for any signs of life. Where he found it he delivered cleanup shots, then he headed back up the stairs and onto the trail of the lizards further ahead of him cutting across the level.

2

Hightower was crouched behind an overturned table set just inside the double doors to the conference room nervously waiting with stinger pistol in hand as he listened to the distant sounds of battle further out in the building as their few security guards did what they could to hold off the lizards working their way up from below. Beside him were two other civilians armed with stingers, but the rest of the 83 people holed up in the room had no weaponry at all.

The Duke’s pistol had come from his desk, and he only kept one on hand because Paul had demanded that he get into the habit of stashing a personal weapon away years ago, and despite the fact that he was no longer Marquis of Clan Saber he’d kept to the Archon’s advice.

He was certainly glad to have it now, but against the lizard hoard he doubted it would be enough. Hightower had helped the rest of the civilians pile whatever furniture they could into the stairwells to block the lizards from getting up to the higher levels of the building, but from the weaponsfire outside it was apparent that they’d broken through at least one of the barricades. There was a small chance that they might continue on up the stairs and bypass this room entirely, but as the sounds of plasma died out he lifted his pistol towards the doors expecting the worst.

The rightmost door flicked open and Hightower pulled the trigger on reflex, sending the stun-laden glob of paint into Paul’s silver armor, splattering his chest plate with a blue glob.

Paul’s helmet glanced down at his chest as he felt the armor suck the faint tingle of stun energy out of his body. “Nice shot.”

“Sorry,” Hightower apologized, standing up behind the table. “Are we clear?”

“Hardly,” Paul said, waving at everyone to get up and moving towards the doors. “We’ve partially secured an evacuation route. Is this everyone?”

“Not counting security, yes.”

Paul walked over to the table and pulled it right side up…then punched down into the middle of it, breaking it in half with a loud crack. He slid half of it aside and punched the small lean-to three more times, breaking off a roughly rectangular piece before snapping the legs off and handing the impromptu shield to Hightower. “Cover up and stay close to me.”

The Duke took the heavy piece of table, gripping it from the metal frame still attached to the backside and holding it in front of him with both hands.

“Like this,” Paul said, giving another piece of the table to the other two armed men, one of which he pressed it up against his shoulder. “Hold it one handed, weapon in the other.”

“It’s heavy,” the third man said, sagging a bit under the weight.

“It’ll soak up plasma. If you can’t carry it find someone else who can and follow me out. Everyone else stay behind them and whatever you do, please don’t shoot me in the back. It tickles.”

Hightower suppressed a smirk and followed Paul out of the conference room and over to the debris-strewn remains of one of the barricades on the stairs. Two security guards were covering it, but there were bits and pieces of furniture everywhere having been blasted apart by some sort of explosive.

“You two are a last out. Get me on the comms if you so much as see a scaly tail.”

The two armed, but armorless men nodded and stepped aside, making room for Paul and the table holders to pass by…but after taking a step forward Paul suddenly backtracked and ran a few dozen meters down the hallway and pried a squarish box off the wall. He returned and thrust the emergency medical kit into the hands of one of the evacuees.

“Carry that for me,” he instructed, heading down the stairs at the head of the line.

The Archon still had his plasma rifle in hand, though his remaining ammo count was running low. If he could manage to get this group out of the building then he could start backtracking through areas they’d already cleared and hopefully wouldn’t encounter many more lizards along the way. If they did he still had his stun sword, but the charge on it had to be below half by now as well.

One level down and Paul passed another security guard stationed at the exit of the stairwell onto that floor, clapping him on the shoulder as he went by. The man stepped aside and waited till about half of the throng of civilians passed then mixed in with the flow as they descended as planned, just in case the lizards hit them from the flank on the way down. They didn’t want the civilians to get hit with all the armed personnel at the front and back of the line, so at least this way there would be someone with a weapon nearby if they did get flanked.

Paul ran down the stairs well ahead of the table shield bearers, making sure each platform was clear and then waiting up for the line to come down before repeating the process. Only twice did he run into any lizards, which he dispatched before they got within sight of the civilians, but the lower he went the more occasional plasma blasts he heard from down below.

Suddenly the stairs below him filled with lizards and the two men he’d left to guard the ascent were firing down into the pile, out of which an orb of green plasma came up and shot past his head. A moment later he realized that most of the lizards he was seeing were dead and heaped together in a pile at the right turn in the descending stairs.

“Coming through,” Paul yelled before jumping over his men and onto the stack of bodies. He only got partially tangled up in the mess of limbs that broke his fall, landing face to face with a live one.

Paul punched it back with a quick jab, then shot it in the chest twice to burn through its body armor before kicking it back down the heap and diving forward after it.

He landed at the bottom of the stack and took a plasma shot right into the chest with his armor absorbing it in a wicked looking crater…but that was the last bit of damage the lizards would do to him. Two minutes later they were all dead and he was pulling bodies aside to make room for the civilians to come down.

“You two, get down here,” he told the security guards that had been responsible for creating the pile of dead lizards.

“Are you alright, sir?” one of them asked after they’d made their way down, referring to the obvious damage in his armor.

“Just a little crispy,” he said, jerking a thumb to the side door onto the current level. “Stay here and keep watch. I’m heading on down. Follow the end of the line out of the building.”

“Will do,” the guard said, stepping out into the hallway to avoid the lizard corpses and the civilians picking their way through them as they tried to descend the stairs through the bottleneck.

Paul tucked his plasma rifle onto his back, knowing it was almost out, and pulled out his stun sword, pointing it tip down in front of him and flipping on the charge switch in the hilt. He heard the distinctive crack/pop as the blade invisibly lit up with energy and preceded to move down the stairs slowly, knowing that it was going to take a while for the line to get past the dead lizards and he didn’t want to get too far out ahead of them.

He didn’t get down two levels before he ran into another group coming up and littered the stairs with their stunned bodies. Picking up one of their plasma rifles he finished them off just before another group came up, making Paul wonder just how many of the damn things they could stuff inside one kirby.

He fought through that group and five more before he brought Hightower and the head of the evacuee line to level 16 where he held his position.

“I need guards on the descending staircase to cover our flank,” he said into his team comm that now included all the members of his security forces that were wearing a helmet, then he turned to Hightower and the other table shield bearers. “Stand here and shoot anyone coming up from below until security relieves you. We’re almost out of the building.”

“Be quick,” the Duke urged, wedging up against one of the other men and slightly overlapping their shields as they took a knee to cover their legs, then dropped the shields down one stair to get the proper height to both cover themselves and shoot over if and when the lizards came up.

Paul led the head of the line of civilians through the area he had recently cleared on his way into the building then sprinted ahead to the walkway atrium, intent on clearing out any lizard presence before they got a line of fire on the evacuees. With so many cross hallways it was impossible to defend them all, so he figured the best chance they had was for him to play rabbit and see what incoming fire he could draw.

He made it all the way back to the atrium without incident, finding the wounded security guard still sitting where he’d left her…save the right side of her head now had a plasma burn on it. Paul also noticed three more dead lizards on the floor directly in front of her position, as well as the fact that the rifle she’d used to kill them had slid out of her grasp and was laying a few inches away from her bloody right hand.

The Archon looked around for more threats, but finding none he waved back at the leaders in the line, signaling them down the long hallway when they emerged and didn’t seem to know where to go, then he knelt down next to the dead soldier and looked at her closed eyes.

“I’m sorry. I should never have left you here,” he whispered, putting a hand on her shoulder in further apology before standing up and resigning himself to deal with the living.

He stepped back out into the hallway and saw the people were walking…didn’t they know what an urgent waving hand meant?

“Move it people!” he yelled, amplified by the external speakers in his helmet.

A bit of movement to his right caught his attention…and to his disbelief the woman opened her eyes and looked up at him, tears welling up. “I…knew you’d be back,” she stammered, the burnt flesh on her face making it difficult for her to speak.

“Damn it girl,” Paul said, dropping back to a knee beside her. “I thought you were dead.”

“They tried…but I got them. Guess I blacked out afterwards.”

Paul pried open the hilt of his sword again, dialing the stun charge back, but not as far as last time.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he said, ever so lightly touching her midsection with the blade, then her head.

The woman’s eyes rolled back into her head for a moment but she remained conscious, barely.

“I love you,” she said in sarcastic relief as the pain almost completely vanished.

The first of the evacuees appeared beside Paul, coming into the atrium. He turned to face them but didn’t stand up. “Give me the kit.”

The man with the emergency medical kit walked over and handed him the box as more and more civilians began to spill into the atrium, including the first of the security guards.

“Check the walkway,” he ordered, prying open the box and finding a can of spray foam.

“I hope this is already numb,” he told the woman as he pulled her blood-soaked shirt off her wound, mentally cataloging a future upgrade to add a numbing agent to the foam itself. He covered her abdomen with the stuff, double thick, then administered a painkiller injection that would supplement the stun charge he’d given her.

He hesitated a moment, inspecting her head, then decided to spray a thin amount of foam over the burn mark, shielding her bloody right eye from the aerosol spray with his other hand.

“You two, carry her,” he said, pointing separately to the two largest men in the group of civilians as he closed the lid on the med kit and handed it to a random person before he made his way over to the walkway where the civilians were waiting. At the far end he could see the security guard waving back.

“All clear,” he reported over Paul’s comm.

“Let’s go,” the Archon said, leading them out at a jog through the suspended walkway, glancing out the windows and seeing a cruiser to the north unloading a fresh set of kirbies as small explosions were popping up across its hull from brief flashes of light that he recognized as lachar blasts. Meanwhile large lances of blue plasma were hitting the side and upper hull of the cruiser and being deflected by its intact shields as the yellow/tan troop-laden transports disengaged from the underside of the hull.

Paul knew that their lower shields had to have been dropped to release them and wished they had a few mechs walking the streets to target the underside.

Just then a blur of motion shot by underneath the walkway and hit one of the plasma cannon batteries on the underside of the cruiser, taking it out with one well-placed rail gun slug. Paul couldn’t see it passing by in any detail, but from the tell-tale damage he knew what had hit the ship.

A gout of green plasma from another cannon flashed back the opposite way, also passing under the high walkway, making Paul’s skin twinge with goosebumps at being so exposed in the tiny tube suspended between buildings.

“Hurry!” he yelled, running faster as he looked to his right to see where the plasma had hit.

Far down the street but running forward with a smooth gait was a madcat mark II equipped with a pair of rail guns in the arms, one of which fired off another slug straight under the walkway. A few moments later it ran directly underneath them and Paul could hear the impact tremors from its footsteps. He stopped at the end of the walkway as the people ran out and watched both those coming across and the mech as it continued to attack the cruiser, dodging to the right and scraping its arm against one of the walls to avoid another plasma blast that hit the ground a few dozen meters in front of the walkway on street level.

Fortunately they were 15 stories above and unaffected but the bright green light swallowed up everything for a moment, then the madcat launched all its missiles simultaneously…or as simultaneously as it could. It took 4 seconds for it to unload both missile boxes in a flash of smoke that partially obscured Paul’s view…then the next thing he knew the glass in the walkway shattered in numerous places as the cruiser’s anti-air batteries opened fire to take down the missiles.

One man in the civilian line took a hit to the chest, vaporizing his midsection and dropping his disconnected arms and head to the side while his pelvis and legs fell out the hole on the far side that the potent plasma shard had cut straight through the walkway. A woman behind him froze in fear, then registering the gruesome death barely three feet in front of her as she bent over and puked on the floor before getting knocked down by others running for their lives behind her.

“Move, move, move!” Paul yelled, ducking back behind the cover of the building but staying within a meter of the walkway. The anti-air missiles cut out a few seconds later and Paul snuck a peak back out into the now windy walkway with the warm outside air flowing in through multiple sections of broken glass.

He saw the mech fire again…but it was missing its left missile box, having been sheered clear off presumably by the cruiser’s return fire. Its rail gun slug smashed into the underside of the now smoking ship as a few kirbies started to redock, already having unloaded fresh troops onto the battlefield.

Suddenly another blast from what was left of the cruiser’s underside weaponry hit the mech square on, blasting apart its stocky body and knocking the machine backwards onto the ground, the impact from which Paul could clearly hear through the broken windows. He could see that the round nose of the central body had been blown open and the mechanics inside severed, which had made the mech’s legs go limp…but there was a bit of a glint from the dense Herculium armored cockpit showing through the blast damage, meaning that the pilot was probably still alive.

The mech didn’t move, however, and the cruiser left it alone, picking up the kirbies and then fleeing the city as the defense lachars continued to blast away at it through its intact shields as wave after wave of plasma tried to beat them down. One of the docked kirbies exploded from one of the hits, then the cruiser passed out of Paul’s view behind several other buildings as it fled the city, heading back to base to pick up more troops to deliver.

As if on cue a swarm of lizards came around one of the street corners below and swarmed into the command building they were just now leaving, hundreds strong with a few maulers among them.

“Keep moving,” Paul yelled at the last few civilian stragglers as four security guards brought up the rear just behind the civilians that were carrying the foamed-up guard. He ran back out onto the shattered glass of the walkway and pulled one woman up who was bodily shaking but unwounded, and pushed her towards the exit before running on.

He helped the security guards pick up two more wounded personnel, one of which had lost his left leg just above the knee from an anti-air blast, cutting and cauterizing the leg in the same instant. Paul picked the staggering man up like a rag doll and ran him back across the walkway and called for the med kit from the group milling about on the other side as the security guards in the lead held them back until Paul gave the word to move on, and in which direction.

The Archon used the last of the spray foam on the man’s half leg then gave him an injection to numb the pain, then one to knock him unconscious.

“Carry him,” Paul told a man and woman beside him who seemed to be keeping their wits about them.

“Control,” he said, using his helmet’s comm system to radio for assistance. “I need mantises to evac 100 or so survivors with medics on hand. We have some seriously wounded.”

3

Two medium-sized mantises landed on the street a block away from the command building and the lizard incursion, retracting their blade-like wings into the hull and lowering down to the ground on anti-grav engines as the civilian survivors rushed to board from their cover inside the nearby buildings that extended well up into the skyline, constricting the transports maneuvering capabilities while shielding them from the nearby ground troops. As the boarding ramps lowered one of the mantises offloaded three Archons carrying an assortment of equipment packs.

As they stepped off a pair of medics followed them, quickly spotting the wounded and getting them onboard as a third mantis flew in and settled down on the street, accepting another two dozen or so passengers.

“Thought you could use some backup,” Harrison said, tossing a heavy bundle to Paul as the other two Sabers went inside the building and deposited their satchels before coming back out with weapons drawn and their gaze alert. So far there hadn’t been any lizard activity on this street, but that could change at any moment and they knew better than to get caught off guard.

“How do things look?” Paul asked, setting the bundle down and pulling out pieces of replacement Archon armor.

“Last I heard we’ve clipped most of the cruisers’ underside weapons batteries, but they’re still using them to ferry in more troops. I don’t know what their aim is besides finding as many of us as possible to kill but it looks like this is turning into strictly a ground campaign.”

Paul tossed Harrison his rifle. “Reload that, will ya?”

Harrison didn’t answer, but walked inside the nearby building and set his other gear down, then pulled out an ammunition satchel and began to feed shells into Paul’s weapon as the trailblazer pulled off his damaged chest plate and replaced it with a new red one. The color didn’t match the rest of his silver armor, but soon that wasn’t going to matter for in a few hours’ time the sun would go down and the battle would be turning into another round of night fighting.

The other two Archons watched as the last of the civilians squeezed into the three transports and they lifted off, hovering low through the city streets and disappearing around the next corner, making Paul frown as he considered why they were doing that…they’d come in from directly above.

After he clicked his new chest piece into place he toggled his battlemap and got his answer.

Another cruiser was just arriving, making the local airspace too hot to risk flying through.

Suddenly the sun was blotted out as the massive ship passed overhead, slowing to a stop just east of their position but still blocking out their view of half the sky. From underneath more kirbies dropped down and disappeared between the buildings as washes of blue plasma were collected on the ship’s shields as the cruiser blocked the brunt of the attack to protect the transports.

“What’s the plan?” Fred-498 asked.

“Run and gun,” Paul said, also replacing a shoulder piece in his armor before carrying the bundle of spare parts off the street and over into the building. “We’ll establish a depot in this building for our gear and anything useful we can scavenge. We head out, rack up a kill count, then circle back here to regroup and reload as many times as we can. The lizards are hitting the command building hard, so there should be plenty to play with.”

“Any of them in this building yet?” Harrison asked as he handed back Paul his now fully reloaded plasma rifle along with a replacement power pack for his stun sword.

“A few followed us across the walkway, but I don’t know if they’ve moved in in force,” he said, quickly swapping out the component.

“The fighting’s getting pretty heavy in the northeast,” Kali said, crossing in front of Paul to guard the door back out onto the street. “And I think that cruiser just added a few hundred more troops to the fight.”

“How’d you guys get free?”

“Jason had us hunting a rogue group of lizards in the northwest, then redirected us here along with additional supplies. He says the lizards are up to something but he hasn’t figured out what yet.”

“What were the rogues doing?”

“Planting explosives,” Harrison answered.

“Where?”

Harrison toggled his battlemap and sent an icon over to Paul.

“Damn it, I know what they’re after,” he said, opening a new comm line.

“What?” Harrison asked.

Paul held up a wait finger.

“Guys, you there?”

“A little bit busy, Paul,” Morgan answered.

“Here,” Greg answered.

“What’s up?” Jason asked.

“I think the lizards have figured out that we control our navy by remote and they’re trying to cut off our orbital bombardment by severing our uplink.”

“That’s nuts,” Cora said over the all trailblazer teamcomm. “We’ve got dozens of transmitters around the planet.”

“It may not be their only objective, but I’m sure it’s on their to-do list. Suggest you keep a close eye on all comm facilities within the city.”

“They’ve already knocked out a relay,” Rafa said. “Southern zone. They took down the whole building with cruiser fire early on, so I didn’t suspect it had anything to do with just the comm gear.”

“Damn it,” Jason said. “It’s not the naval communications they’re after. They’re trying to cut off our battlenet. I’m showing 7 relays down within the city, and we’re close to getting a dead zone in the northeast if we lose another one or two.”

“They may be after both,” Paul suggested, realizing that without the Excalibur in orbit the only transmitter stations they had for their fleet were on the surface. But unless the lizards were planning on taking out all the Clan colonies they weren’t going to be able to cut them off from their ships.

“I think they’re up to a lot of things,” Ace added. “I’m seeing a lot of tech gear being offloaded. Looks similar to their det packs only bigger. They’re also trying to take buildings rather than…”

Paul cringed as a loud screech pierced his ears before all sound cut out. He also noticed that his battlemap had frozen, giving him the last known positions of all troops thanks to the memory chip in his helmet, but the map itself was glazed over indicating no live signal was incoming…save for three dots around his own position on the map.

“Guys, sound off if you’re there?” he asked, just checking even though he knew they wouldn’t be so when no one responded he switched frequencies to his local teamcomm with the three Archons standing next to him.

“Are you guys up?” he asked through the comm, cutting off his external audio.

“I lost my battlemap,” Kali reported back, “but I can still hear you.”

“Ditto,” Fred said.

“I can’t get control,” Harrison added a moment later. “White noise?”

“Looks like it,” Paul said, still toggling his battlemap and comm gear, trying to isolate the source without success. All their various signal routes were being flooded with randomized data, making it impossible for their comm systems to filter out what was signal and what was junk. Normally they had backups to prevent this sort of thing from happening, but according to Paul’s armor’s self-diagnostics all the backups were being flooded as well.

“Kali, sing a song and take a run down the street.”

“Any requests?” she asked, heading out the door as Harrison moved over to take up her sentry position.

“No Ilva Sesteren,” Fred said, knowing that Kali was fond of that particularly annoying singer.

“Buddy you’re a boy make a big noise playing in the street gonna be a big man some day,” she sang as Paul watched her tracking dot move on his battlemap hugging the building and running away.

“You got mud on your face, yo big disgrace, kickin your can all over the place, singing…we…rock…will…you…” Paul heard before her audio completely cut out, followed by her dot a moment later as it froze in position, glazed over marking her last known position.

“She does know to come back, right?” Fred asked as Paul measured the distance to be approximately 70 meters before signal loss, meaning that their local transmitters were strong enough to punch through the rest of the signal, allowing their comm filters to pick up the pattern despite all the rest of the white noise. Star Force had gone to great care designing their comm systems to be nearly unjammable, and he was glad that they at least retained some functionality in this digital snowstorm.

“you’re an old man, poor man pleading,” Kali’s voice came back along with her dot as she ran back to the door.

“Got it, Kali,” Paul said. “Looks like 70 meters or so. As long as we keep close we shouldn’t be affected.”

“Where we headed?” she asked, coming back inside and bumped the other Archon out of her spot.

“It can’t be coming from the cruisers,” Harrison suggested, “or they’d have used it by now.”

“The new arrival brought a transmitter with it?” Fred guessed.

“No, Harrison is right,” Paul said, walking over to the door and looking up at the big lizard ship as it continued to sit in place soaking up weaponsfire with its shields as kirbies buzzed around underneath redocking. “They could have put one in place days ago. They have to be using one of ours…and I know the first place we’re going to look.”

“Let me guess,” Fred asked. “The command building?”

“Big transmitter and they attacked it directly,” Harrison commented. “But it’s small compared to the orbital relays.”

“Misdirection,” Paul said, stashing the bundle of armor parts into a nearby closet along with a host of other clothing and accessories that the store in this building supplied to the local Star Force personnel, and would one day sell if and when the mass civilian colonists from Sol would ever be given clearance to start arriving. “They’re probably going to hit those later, but as a stepping stone, and to keep us off balance, they seize one of the smaller ones.”

“And blow others up?” Harrison asked. “Sounds like a bit of a stretch.”

Paul fervently shook his head. “No, it’s typical lizard thinking. They may use mass tactics, but they still think they’re superior and can out think us. They started out bold, and every time we’ve made them pay for it they’ve gotten more and more devious. They know our ability to take out their bases with orbital bombardment is the one advantage we have over them, and now that we’ve got enough ships in system to hold off their defensive raids we’ve got them beat and they know it. They have to take away that ability, and the only viable way to do that is to cut our comm link.”

“You’re sure?” Harrison said, seeing the wisdom in his words but not the evidence to back it up.

“They also want to kill as many of us as they can, but then again that’s also window dressing to make us think this is one last, desperate attack. We know they can grow new troops in a matter of months to replace any they lose here, and they can repair and refit their cruisers in even less time, so the only damage that truly counts is what we do to their bases.”

“Ok, I’m sold,” Harrison said, adding another equipment satchel to the closet before dragging a low shelf over in front of the door to keep the casual wandering lizard out. “What’s our plan of attack?”

Paul just stared at him through his faceplate. “Kali, what does putting that in front of the door suggest?”

“That there’s something behind it we don’t want people to see,” she answered.

“Stick with anonymity,” Paul said, motioning for him to put it back.

“Ok, you have a point,” Harrison said sheepishly as he dragged the shelf back to where it had been.

“Grab any lizard weapons you come across and stash them at various points around the building,” Paul said, walking off further into the structure with the other Archons falling in line. “We’ll need them if we run out of ammo and I’d rather the lizards not have access to them. Follow my lead and pick up what I drop. They were establishing defensive lines last time I came through, so they shouldn’t be hard to find.”

Paul led them up through the building towards the walkway, racking up a team kill count of 56 before they got to the entry atrium. There they ran up against two portable turrets, a ring of barricades, and several dozen more lizards. They hit and destroyed one turret then fled off into the building in pairs, hoping to draw off some pursuit.

Kali and Paul did, with a group of 8 lizards chasing after them, which left Harrison and Fred free to double back and hit the defenses again. They knocked out the other turret and took possession of the first two rows of barricades before they got stopped up by reinforcements coming across the walkway. Of the three rings of barricades, each of  which were about chest height, the pair of Sabers held position on the outside of ring 2 and were firing on the inside of ring 1 where five lizards were hunkered down, trying to hold on to that defensive position until reinforcements arrived.

Several green plasma blasts flew overhead as the incoming lizards took some long range shots over top their own troops, nearly hitting one of them when it popped up from cover to fire. Harrison ducked to the side, then fired a couple of lances of blue plasma back into the approaching lizard troops, taking two down as the group had nothing to hide behind on the walkway. He saw one jerk to the side out of reflex and fall out the broken window…then reach back up and grab the leg of another, pulling it to the ground before the two of them managed to get the fallen one back up into the walkway.

Harrison didn’t get another shot off because the five lizards on the barricade all came up at once and started laying down suppression fire in sequence, each taking their turn so that they couldn’t be caught off guard during the recharge period between each shot. That kept the Archons pinned down before Kali came back into the atrium firing as she crossed over to another exit in the room.

“Fall back,” she said, providing them some cover as she shot one of the lizards on the barricade.

Harrison and Fred scooted across the ground then hopped over the third ring of barricades at different points. Harrison took a glancing blow on his left leg as he flew over the top, then the three Archons retreated out of the atrium and further into the building.

“Split up and ambush at will,” Kali told them before ducking down a side hallway.

“Adios,” Fred said before heading off a different direction.

“Run and gun,” Harrison reminded himself in a whisper as he settled into a jog and began working his way around a figure eight section of the level they were on and camped out there until lizards started to come his way in twos and threes…which were easy pickings for an Archon.

Back in the atrium Paul emerged a few minutes later carrying two lizard rifles, one in each hand, and running at full speed towards the barricades. He shot one lizard before he got to the outer row, then hurdled it and shot another upon landing. With the ease of an Olympic athlete he cleared the next barricade and fired again when his feet hit the ground, nailing another of the few guard lizards left in place while the others were out searching the building for the other Humans.

Paul sailed over the last barricade and kicked one lizard aside while shooting a second, then quickly finished off the first. He paused for a moment, then fired off two shots down the walkway, both of which made it to the other side without hitting the walls. Turret fire answered him and he ducked aside, disappearing back into the corridors of the building and waiting to see if they had any more reinforcements to send.

Two more waves would come, then the lizards stopped sending troops. Paul and the other Archons rearranged their barricades and began pushing one slowly across the walkway, using it as cover against the turret all the way up to the other atrium, from which they sprang out and took down the light defenses. Only 1 turret and 4 guards had been posted on the far side, but more lizards were quick to show up once the firefight started.

The Archons split up two and two again, each taking one side of the hallway and fighting down it until they came across good ambush positions. From there one Archon in each group would run off and start killing everything in sight until they drew a sufficiently large response, then they’d run back to the other and draw the lizards into their improvised kill zones. They kept that up until their ammo began to diminish, then they retreated back to the atrium and across the walkway, disappearing into the other building again.

The next assault they made was on ground level, having broken in through some of the lower windows and bypassing the guards at the doors. They went on another killing spree, thinning the lizard numbers as night fell, along with which came another cruiser and more kirbies landing right outside the command building, delivering more troops to hold the structure than the Archons had managed to kill in the previous hours.

Knowing that their best bet to thin them down would be to draw them into the other building the Archons staged small raids all night long, but only succeeded in drawing a few dozen off initially, then the lizards changed their tactics and no longer went beyond the boundaries of the command building. From there they began beefing up their defenses with additional turrets and barricades the kirbies were also bringing in, making it harder and harder for the Archons to enter the building to make their hunting runs.

Midway through the night the foursome took a break to get a few hours of sleep, taking turns on watch and getting something to eat, as well as additional ambrosia doses to replace what they’d burned off. With all other troops busy at multiple invasion points, and their communications still down, Paul’s group had the command building all to themselves and a lot of work to do the coming day.

Patience, he knew, was key to their longevity and kill count…and as long as their supplies held out they were going to take out as many lizards as they could, hoping that meanwhile the rest of Star Force was doing likewise and the lizards didn’t have any more surprises for them planned during the shroud of this comm whiteout.

4

March 23, 2266

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Paul’s eyes snapped open as Kali’s hand jostled his shoulder. He looked up into her helmeted face as she gestured to the right and headed over to Fred and woke him up in the same manner, followed by Harrison. None of the three Archons said a word, but all grabbed their helmets and weapons and followed Kali outside the third floor interior office they’d claimed as their rest zone.

She crossed over to the edge of a commons area and crawled up to the edge of the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the street. Paul did likewise while the other two Archons held back and stood watch over the approaching hallways. When he pulled up into view he saw a dimly lit street with harsh shadows being cut by the rising sun eeking through the slots between buildings…and a line of lizards marching from left to right following one of their assault vehicles.

“That’s not a good sign,” Paul said over the comm.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to jump them…but we’ve got to find and disable that jamming signal.”

“Still think it’s in the command building?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s go. I didn’t want to tangle with that tank anyway.”

“Are these the first to come through?”

“The first I’ve noticed, but I haven’t been at the window the whole watch.”

“Any movement inside?”

“Not a peep.”

Paul crawled back from the window with Kali following him until they were far enough out of sight to stand up, then they walked over to join the other two Archons.

“What’s the plan?” Harrison asked.

“Same as before. We keep hitting the command building until we can punch a hole inside.”

“Ground or walkway?”

“I hate to be predictable, but let’s try the walkway again.”

Kali smiled beneath her helmet where the others couldn’t see as an idea occurred to her. “Let’s hit the walkway…from the top this time.”

Paul cocked his head her direction for a moment, then nodded as he caught her meaning. “Grab our gear on the way out. Let’s see if we can’t permanently relocate across the street.”

Half an hour later Paul stood on the semi-flat roof of the walkway that stretched between the 16th floor on both massive buildings, carrying his rifle in one hand and a gear satchel in the other, balancing carefully against the light, but erratic wind gusting through the gaps between the city structures. They had a meter-wide flat section of roof to work with, then a taper down to the edges and a very lethal fall after that, armor or no. Below them the lizards had reinforced the broken walkway with additional turrets and barricades, but there was no way for them to see or reach the top, for unlike the glass-covered sides it wasn’t transparent.

On the opposite side was a bank of windows a meter and a half up from the roof. They reflected the now bright sunlight back into Paul’s face as he walked out of shadow, catching the reflective angle just right in order to blind him…but fortunately his faceplate cut out the harshness of the bright flash and he was still able to see his feet in front of him and keep his balance.

“Watch the glare,” he warned, crossing the midway point and continuing on ahead of the others to the far side where he carefully turned around and set his satchel down on the roof. He got a two-handed grip on his plasma rifle and aimed at the lower edge of the window and fired three shots in a flat line across it.

The panes melted and cracked, but didn’t break free as they had when the lizard anti-air plasma had hit the walkway. To remedy that fact Paul walked up and introduced the butt of his rifle to the cracked safety glass and tore open a hole large enough for him to crawl through. He looked inside to make sure the area was clear then pushed his weapon through before climbing up. From the inside he broke away more of the glass and accepted his satchel as Harrison passed it up to him, then his own.

Paul pulled both bags inside and tossed them to his right then grabbed Fred’s two satchels after Harrison came up. Kali came last, just in time to get to her feet in before a firefight broke out in the hallway just outside the office they were standing in.

“Stay or move?” Harrison asked, firing at a pair of lizards coming their way down a narrow hallway.

“Both,” Paul answered, running over to the door. “Fred and Kali, stay and guard our gear. Harrison, you come with me and we’ll lead them off. Once you’re clear, reposition our gear to another hideaway.”

“Have fun,” Kali offered as Paul nudged past Harrison who was half blocking the door. Once outside he charged toward the one remaining lizard and nailed it in the head as it popped out of cover to fire at him. Five seconds later more appeared, coming out of a room further down the hall, but Paul lit them up at range and sprinted forward, knowing that standing in the narrow corridor was akin to camping out in a death zone.

Harrison followed close behind, but couldn’t get a shot off past Paul until the trailblazer busted through three of them and landed on the other side. The adept shot two on the ground, then a third coming out of the room as Paul flipped around and shot the one closest to him as both men closed in on the doorway and fought their way inside, killing 4 more lizards in the process.

“What the hell is this?” Harrison asked, seeing a lot of lizard tech spread around the room. There were also even larger piles of computers, chairs, pieces of desks, video screens, and all other assorted items piled around, along with three cubes of metal lying on the floor next to one of the devices.

“Son of a bitch,” Paul said, motioning for Harrison to watch the door. “They really are moving in. This is recycling equipment,” he said, tapping a boot against one of the cubes. “Bet you a hundred credits they’ve got some sort of portable factory around here somewhere.”

“To make what?”

“I don’t know, but this definitely isn’t a smash raid,” Paul said, circling back to the door.

“You think they figure the only safe place from our orbital guns is in one of our own cities?”

Paul tapped Harrison on the shoulder, sending him back out into the hallway and to the right with him following a step behind.

“Set up their own colony inside one of our cities…they might just be bold enough to try,” Paul said as they ducked into an intersection and split up, taking a step to either side as they each covered a hall, finding both clear, then continuing on.

“Could explain why they’re not blasting everything in sight.”

“I hate to say it, but I have a bad feeling you might be onto something.”

“So much for the desperate lizard theory. Up or down?” Harrison asked as they turned a corner and came to a familiar staircase.

“You take up, I’ll head down. Keep on the run until they signal we’re clear, then go to ground.”

“Copy,” Harrison confirmed as he hit the stairs. Paul went the opposite direction and began circling around, dropping down two levels before getting off and running through what he knew to be a heavy lizard zone from yesterday. He got through three turns of the hallway before running into his first opposition, gunning the lone lizard down at range then having three doors open up in response to the sound and start spewing lizards all over the hallway.

Paul didn’t hesitate and ran right into them, firing as he went. He plowed through their wounded or dead bodies as they fell, shoving others aside and all the while making progress down the corridor. When he finally broke through to clear running space on the far side he emerged into a large lounge with 20+ lizards scurrying about, some with weapons, some without as they worked to set up a makeshift barracks complete with the foul smelling foodstuff slices they heated on small powered plates.

Paul jumped right into the middle of them hoping to catch several off guard as he shot those with weapons first, then pushed a Human-made shelf over, dumping all kinds of lizard supplies onto the ground, some of which appeared to be liquid. He shot two more before running out another door, leaving a lot of dazed and angry lizards behind him.

The trailblazer didn’t give them a chance to regroup or catch up to him. As fast as they were Paul had gotten a few steps on them and that’s all he needed. He zigzagged across the level then ducked down a different staircase to three below, sowing as much confusion and alarm as he could and drawing attention away from Kali and Fred until he ran up against stiffer defenses, then rebounded back across the level in a different direction, collecting a huge army of pursuit trailing him.

Knowing that he was quickly getting in over his head he switched tactics, gapping his pursuit long enough to get out of eyesight and duck into a supply room. Calming himself he climbed up to the top rack of supplies on a somewhat shaky shelf and laid down in between a pair of boxes, holding his rifle across his chest as he faced the ceiling less than half a meter above his face, making sure to pull his elbows in so they wouldn’t hang over the edge.

Then he waited. The room was dark save for the light coming in what had been an open door when he arrived, so he left it open at the same angle to avoid drawing suspicion. Never the less a few minutes later a lizard walked in with weapon drawn, glanced around seeing nothing, then walked back out and closed the door behind it.

Taking a few deep breaths Paul studied his battlemap, noticing that his teammates were no longer showing up, as he’d expected. He’d gotten out of range by going lower in the building, but he hoped that Harrison was still in range to contact the others.

Studying the frozen battlemap he took a closer look at the level he was on and what was around him both up and down, planning out his next move as he recalled the lizard positions from yesterday. The bottom three levels had been the heaviest infestations, with the enemy setting up operations at ground level and working their way up in force, but having sent expeditionary teams up to the walkways and a few other locations, along with having roving security teams moving about once they realized that Star Force had been able to infiltrate the building.

Apparently overnight they’d moved more troops up into the middle levels while maintaining a strong hold on the roof where the transmitting gear was. They’d tried to get at it yesterday, but the lizards had made good use of the barricades that the Duke’s people had put up earlier and had kept the Archons bottled up long enough to whistle up reinforcements…which were now apparently using the elevators that had been locked down the moment the building came under attack.

That shouldn’t have surprised Paul. If they could hack their comm gear why couldn’t they also hack the elevator controls. It made him wonder how much more of their technology they could interface with, and was it because they’d studied samples of their tech for a long time or because it was so primitive by comparison that it wasn’t all that hard for them to figure out.

Star Force had been able to learn enough to work some of the lizard technology, but they hadn’t been able to hack into their computer systems because they hadn’t established an interlink program. The lizards, on the other hand, didn’t have access to any Star Force tech to begin with, unless they took it in those early raids. Regardless, the stupid bastards were proving to be more and more intelligent as time passed, despite their brutish combat philosophies.

After giving the lizards more than 10 minutes to look elsewhere for him, Paul carefully climbed down the shelf and cracked the door open, listening for sounds of movement before poking his head out. To his right he saw the back of one lizard walking down the hallway, but his left was clear so he snuck out and sprinted down two sections and turned right…running into two other lizards.

He grabbed one by the throat as he kicked the other one to the floor, then pulled the choking one close and wrapped his arms around its head and jerked, snapping its neck before it could fire its weapon.

The other one dropped its rifle as it fell, then bounced back up off the ground like a cat and dove forward trying to reach its rifle. Paul leaned forward and dropped to a knee, catching its clawed hand at the wrist and pinning it to the ground before bringing his right fist down hard onto the back of its head. When the body went limp Paul got up and ran on down a few more lengths of hallway until he got to another stairwell, one he hadn’t used recently, and shot a pair of lizards coming down just as he got to the entrance.

Knowing that the plasma fire was going to draw attention he dragged the bodies off the stairs and tossed them down the descending case, hoping to make any pursuit think he was headed that direction.

Running upwards he made it two flights before getting caught up in a firefight with four more lizards that slowed him down. All around him he could hear the screeching calls of the enemy as they verbally coordinated their hunt, trying to pin him in one place where they could amass the numbers necessary to take him down.

Knowing exactly what they were trying to do Paul retreated back down the staircase one level, knocked aside and killing another lizard in his way, then sprinted across half the building to find another staircase.

5

“There he is,” Harrison whispered to himself as he saw Paul’s tracking dot reappear on his battlemap three levels below. The Archon left his concealed post and headed over to the stairwell he thought Paul was headed up and caught a lizard from behind on the way, taking it down with a shot to the back of the head before jumping over the body. He got to the stairwell three seconds before Paul came into view motioning him backward.

Harrison complied, stepping back and letting him pass him going up the steps, then Paul turned around and fired back down at the hoard of lizards following him up. Harrison opened fire as well, surprised that there were so many so close to the trailblazer.

“Hold here,” Paul said, dropping to a knee along one side of the entryway, obscuring half his body from view.

Harrison did likewise on the opposite side and the pair held position, mowing down two dozen of the lizards before the flow finally stopped, then Paul leapt up out of his position and ran back towards the tracking dots of the other two Archons partway across the level.

“Kali, you secure?” Paul asked over the comm.

“We’re good. This level is mostly quiet.”

“Bring me in.”

A moment later a waypoint materialized on Paul’s battlemap, leading him to a position 20 meters away from Kali’s and Fred’s tracking dots. Apparently they had positioned themselves just outside their newly acquired base.

When he and Harrison got to the waypoint he almost laughed, noting that they’d chosen a restroom to hole up in this time. “Nice locale.”

“Saves us from making extra trips,” Kali commented as Paul pushed in the door and saw a double row of urinals transitioning over into stalls. The opposite end of the long room had another exit, meaning it would be difficult for the lizards to pin them in if they ever discovered their location.

“Third on the left,” Harrison suggested.

Paul walked down to the third set of stalls and opened the door on the left, finding their gear satchels stacked neatly on the floor. He opened the one containing their plasma rifle ammo and pulled out several small disposable boxes that held 9 rounds each, then sat down on the floor in the middle of the room and began to reload his weapon.

“Now that we’re in…” Harrison asked.

“Thin their numbers,” Paul answered, still loading. “Randomly. Hit above and below this level, but don’t try to carve out any territory. See what kind of reinforcement rate they have and if we can bleed them dry. If we can’t, then we move our base up progressively until we get near the barricades, then we find or make a hole to get through.”

“Before or after we run out of ammo?”

“Depends how many lizards they’ve got to throw at us. If need be we use their weapons, but the more we kill here the less they have to redeploy elsewhere. And you’ve already seen that they’re setting up this building for a long term occupation. The more we disrupt that the better,” Paul said, finishing his reload and standing up.

“Pairs?”

“Singles. Kali, Fred, make a run through the two higher levels. Keep it random and a straight shot and shoot what you can on sight, but don’t get pinned down. Harrison, you’ve got this level. I’m going back the way I came for a weapons grab.”

Harrison walked past Paul and headed out the far door while Paul backtracked through the half mile wide building to the staircase he’d come up, finding the stack of bodies where he’d left them. Listening for sounds of activity further down he began rifling through the corpses and pulling out their plasma rifles, tucking a stack of four under his left arm before retreating one section over and stashing them in a random office, hiding them under a desk.

He repeated the process in other rooms across the level, killing two more lizards who had the misfortunate of running into him. He left those bodies and the others where they were for the other lizards to find, not wanting to give them the impression that he cared about this level more than the others by cleaning it up.

Afterwards he conferred with his fellow Archons and began following up their raids with sneak runs to grab up the lizard weapons. He wasn’t always successful, as more lizards began moving into the areas they were cleaning out, but later on that day his captured weapon count surpassed 120, which he used to create small weapons caches around the building that he marked on the battlemap for the others to find should they run out of ammo without being able to return to base.

The next day the incoming flow of lizard reinforcements coming up from below suddenly stopped, with Paul thinking they’d finally bled them dry until Kali happened across a group of lizards coming down from above and heading straight through the 10-15 levels that the four Archons were terrorizing without even bothering to get off the staircase. Paul found that odd so he caught up with and followed the lizards down all the way to the lower five levels, noting that all others in between had been empty as far as he could see.

The usual check points, barricaded halls, and guarded rooms were devoid of lizards. Paul even made a side trip over to what they had identified earlier as a lizard stronghold, finding the room full of lizard gear but completely empty of occupants. Frowning, he retreated back over to the staircase and followed the lizards on down, wondering what they were doing…and hoping that they hadn’t decided to blow up the building.

To his surprise blue dots began popping up on his battlemap when he descended to the 4th floor, suddenly explaining why the lizards had been moving down en mass.

Abandoning his recon run Paul charged down to the third level, then the second before he caught up with any of the lizards, running up on the back of a group of six that were holding a barricade checkpoint near the stairwell as others were retreating back to their position in ones and twos.

Tucking his rifle onto his back Paul whipped out and activated his stun sword, running up behind the lizards and getting the drop on them, jabbing and slashing them into unconsciousness until he claimed the checkpoint barricades for his own, then he switched over to his rifle again and began shooting the retreating lizards from cover, sparring a shot now and then for those on the ground around him.

After clearing out the hallway Paul abandoned his position and ran forward, searching out the closest firefight. He caught two more lizards in retreat before he came up on an intact barricade defense onto an overlook of the building’s main lobby that was the size of several football fields. As he got closer dozens of blue dots began popping up all around him, with most of them centered on that open area…and all of which were tagged as Canderians.

Paul switched weapons again and ambushed this barricade from behind as he had the last one, then he kicked aside one of the sturdy, but not incredibly heavy, plastic-like obstructions and ran out onto the walkway ringing the lobby. One level below him there were knots of lizards holding out against the Canderians, but only because they’d been cut off from any hope of retreat. To his right and left there were more defenses set up, but many of them were pulling back as Canderians in full green body armor were popping up at various positions on the second floor perimeter and flanking the turrets and gunners firing down on the invading troops.

Paul did likewise, running off to the right and taking down a lizard manning a more beefy, manually fired turret that was blasting away parts of the floor below. Paul kicked it out of the small gunner’s seat and shot it dead, then moved on to a knot of snipers, taking two down before the other three even noticed he was there. He continued running the edge of the 3-sided box all the way up to the windows on the front of the building as the Canderians swarmed over the lizard defenses, then he backtracked and met up with a group coming up one of the stairwells, killing a retreating lizard in the process.

Paul waved the four Canderians forward and led them across the level to the nearest knot of resistance and helped them take it down before his helmet comm activated.

“Sir, Arc Tribune Raines reporting. We are at your command.”

Paul located his signal position on the battlemap and started jogging towards it through the hallways.

“Glad to have the backup, Tribune. The lizards have been reinforcing this building periodically, so I need you to establish a defensive line in the lobby and all other level 1 entrances. I’ve got three other Archons on the higher levels and we’ve been thinning their numbers for the past two days, but they’ve got the upper part of the building locked down and that’s where we need to go,” Paul said as he rounded a corner and saw Raines’ ID tag pop up over one of several identical green suits of armor roaming the hallways.

“What do they have up there?” the slightly taller man asked as they met faceplate to faceplate.

“They’ve been redecorating the entire building with various pieces of equipment, but I think they’re using the comm systems to send out the jamming signal messing with our battlemap.”

“There’s more than one signal, I’m afraid. Control had identified a minimum of 4 sources before we entered the dead zone, and that was 4 hours ago.”

“What’d you come in on?”

“Assault shuttles, but we had to ground several blocks away and fight our way up here. The lizards have mobile anti-air vehicles roaming the streets along with what we’re calling ‘chip’ missile launchers mixed in with their infantry. Something new, I think, as far as the intel reports have indicated.”

“How many men have you got?”

“Four centuries on the ground, with the others being flown down as fast as we can get them here. We would have liked to have landed on the roof, but the lizards have it full of anti-air emplacements. If we can take those down my men won’t have to hoof it several kilometers over here after landing.”

Paul nodded his agreement. Four centuries meant approximately 1000 soldiers in play, which should be enough to hold the building at ground level, but if the lizards were using the landing pads on the roof it was possible they could have been reinforcing from that direction…though to date he hadn’t seen any kirbies flying that high, probably due to the fact that they didn’t want to risk being taken down by the defense towers.

“How many defense towers are down?”

“Two more since yesterday, both ground affairs, but their cruisers are so beat up we’ve still got air superiority at altitude, just not down in the trenches. Skeet and gunship assaults are being fended off by their anti-air assets, but they were able to provide a distraction for our landing.”

“Any mech support on the ground?”

“Yesterday six dropships of reinforcements from up north were intercepted by a lizard cruiser. Two were shot down while the others were able to retreat. That cruiser is still lingering about, out of turret range, and preventing any of our larger transports from getting to the city. I think they know our mechs will eat up their vehicles and don’t want us getting more in play.”

“Damn it,” Paul said, looking around at the growing number of Canderians standing and listening to the two men. “I want sweeps on the ground level immediately, with checkpoints on all stairwells and elevators. Once cleared, we move up and repeat on the next level. I also want your best evocaton released to me to push upwards. Keep one stairwell with a man on each level to act as a relay for our comms and battlemap.”  

“I’ll have your evocaton here within 3 minutes,” the Tribune promised, getting in contact with his men as Paul headed over to the nearest stairwell and waited, switching his comm gear over to relay status. In addition to his own identification signal his armor’s built in gear now began transmitting his battlemap data out as well as serving as a data relay for short range signals passing between distant targets. Normally transmitters within the city or on mechs and aircraft would handle those duties, but given the extreme short range the troops were facing with the whiteout they were going to have to link up their armor systems to stay in contact.

A few minutes later the 43 troops of his evocaton arrived. 6 Triarill, each composed of 6 troops and their leading Triarii, made up the larger Canderian unit, led by an Evocati that Paul’s HUD tagged as Lila-A623-34. Like the Archons all Canderians only had one name with an identification number to follow. In their case the first sequence identified their orisect, which was the family unit they’d been raised with, followed by their ‘familiar’ number used within that orisect, ranging from 00-99. Canderian converts, made up of initiates who did not enter their training programs at birth, had their orisect number listed first, followed by the letter, while those who joined through periodic or individual training had a sequential number bracketed by Rs, such as R236R, indicating that they were of ‘rogue’ origin.

“Lila,” Paul said as she arrived with the others. “We’re going up to rendezvous with 3 other Archons. Follow me by twos and keep it close. Have all your men set their helmets to relay mode.

“Lead on,” she prompted before giving unit commands that Paul couldn’t hear to her Evocaton.

He took to the stairs, sword in hand, and led them back up to their base of operations, dispatching 20 of their men by 5s to guard the four walkway access points to the surrounding buildings on the way up. As soon as Kali’s dot appeared on his battlemap he got on the comm.

“Switch to relay mode, we’ve got Canderous reinforcements. That’s what the lizards were running towards. What’s the activity level been up here?”

“A few passing groups headed down,” she answered as Fred and Harrison’s dots popped up on separate sections of the map, adding them into the teamcomm. “Other than that it’s been quiet as a tomb. Harrison went up to check the floors above.”

“Quiet all the way to the barricade line. Drew some fire there, so they haven’t abandoned their positions. Looks like you made some friends?”

“There are 1000 more downstairs and more on the way,” Paul said, finally seeing Kali as she stepped out into the hallway from her hiding place. “They’re going to execute a floor by floor sweep and keep the walkways covered. In the meantime we’re poking a hole into the upstairs.”

Paul turned towards Lila. “Give her a Triarill and assign two more for the other Archons. You and the remainder stick with me.”

The green armored Canderian made two quick hand gestures and a group of seven troops broke off and advanced to Kali’s position.

“Are the elevators functional?” Lila asked.

“We cut the power feeds a few hours ago so the lizards couldn’t use them,” Paul said as he ran off toward Fred’s dot elsewhere on the same level while Harrison was coming down from one above. “They hacked the controls from the upper floors where the Duke had locked them out and I don’t have the gear with me to override from down here. Besides, they’d be stupid if they didn’t have the exits guarded with those portable turrets of theirs.”

“Stairs then?” she asked, dispatching Fred’s men with another quick gesture as the Archon came into view. Paul took a quick turn and headed a different direction, reducing the Canderians following him down to 9.

“They’ve upgraded the furniture piles the Duke made with additional junk, leaving only one route clear and that’s heavily guarded.”

“We have men with explosives downstairs,” the Evocati offered.

“We’ll save that as a fallback. We’ve got a few options already laid out, we’ve just been low on manpower.”

A few steps later and they were at another staircase, meeting Harrison as he came down.

“Take your men and hit point 5,” Paul told him as they ran by and he took to the stairs with only Lila and one other Canderian following him.

“You taking 4?” Harrison asked over the comm as Paul disappeared up to the next level.

“We’re keeping 1 honest and redeploying as necessary. Issue your troops lizard rifles, two each.”

“On it,” Harrison said.

Paul ran up three flights of stairs before making a detour to the south, hopping over a dead lizard that the others hadn’t bothered to pick up yet, and darting into a residential block consisting of only 4 quarters with doors all facing one another. They were used either by high ranking staff that migrated from location to location on a temporary basis or by those regulars that didn’t work a standard shift and spent repetitive, irregular hours in the building, such as Duke Hightower.

None of these four were his, and two of them were currently unused. Paul led his pair of Canderians into one of them and back into the small bedroom, placing his stun sword on top of the geometrically shaped bed as he knelt down on the other side and pulled open a storage drawer from underneath it.

“Extra firepower,” he said, tossing the Canderians four lizard rifles from one of the Archons’ many stashes.

6

Paul ducked behind what was left of one of the lizard barricades, trying to contort his body around the holes the plasma from their portable turret had melted out. He and his two Canderians had managed to take down the first line of lizard defenses around point 1, eliminating their guards on the first row of three barricades in two opposite facing hallways. Getting up to them had been problematic, but Paul was now positioned on the outside of the first row as the turret was blasting away and eating through the barrier trying to get at him.

A particularly close blast lit up his faceplate with a flash of green as he patiently crunched down, waiting for the others to attack from the opposite side.

It took the pair some time to run around the flank, having to retreat quite a ways to get around the block and come in opposite their previous position. They’d already hit that side earlier, but the lizards had reinforced it with additional personnel…one shy of what they had earlier, which he took as a sign that the others were drawing off a lot of attention. That had been his job, which meant they needed to hit this position harder, hence his one man assault on the turret.

“It’s spinning,” Lila said through his helmet as she fired off both her captured lizard rifles from the opposite side, nailing one of their troops in the head on accident as she aimed for the armored turret. Her plasma missed wide and high at first, given the length of the hallway, but she caught a few hits on the gunner’s seat shields, which flashed opaque as they protected the lizard from behind. The plasma turret started to spin around with a decidedly slow rotational speed then fired at the Canderians down the length of the hallway.

The green orbs that came their way were more than three times as large as the ones coming from the rifles of the lizards behind the barricades. The turret was elevated to fire over their heads, so Lila had to keep around the corner behind cover to avoid getting mowed down, but poked one of her arms around to keep firing plasma their direction, hoping to grab their attention and not accidentally hit Paul on the far side as he leapt over the first line of barricades firing away with his Star Force plasma rifle.

He wasn’t aiming for the turret, however, despite the fact that the shields had to be near depletion. His aim was on the pair of lizards behind the second row of barricades. He had to take a hit to his right arm to get at them, but he shot them down inside of 1.5 seconds and hurdled the barricade.

He knew he should have slid down behind it, or at least the third one and fought it out inches away from the others, but his objective was knocking out the turret and drawing up more lizard reinforcements. Other than the hit on the shoulder his armor was in fairly good condition, with only a few nicks here and there, so he decided to get reckless and jumped over the third barricade…and the lizards kneeling behind it.

He landed on one’s tail, then spun kicked the nearest one in the head, knocking it out with one blow just before he shot the one next to it, taking a shot in his back at the same time.

Paul rolled forward and twisted over, shooting back over his head and downing the last two lizards there as the turret spun and tried to shoot him…but he was now under its depression angle and it couldn’t lower the weapon low enough to target him. Before the other lizards stationed in the stairwell niche could fire at him he scurried across the floor and positioned himself between the turret and the wall opposite the stairs, then fired into the backs of the lizards on the opposite barricade as the Canderians were continuing to exchange fire with them, of which a few plasma blasts were hitting the turret.

One got through and blew out a shower of armor-dust sparks over Paul’s head just as one of the lizards he was shooting managed to spin around and hit him in the side of his helmet with a nearly pointblank shot. Paul felt the heat soak through and suddenly his battlemap went offline, but that was the worst of the damage. He shot the lizard and the one beside it, then had the area around the turret and between the three barricades all to himself, though there were still lizards on the opposite side of the stairwell barricade trying to get a shot off at him.

With the turret blocking their firing line Paul dropped his plasma rifle on the ground near his feet and put his hands on the front of the turret as it fired another shot directly over his head, blasting into the wall two meters away from him. His hands hit the shields at first, then broke through as the already weakened matrix snapped under the pressure. The turret rocked a bit as Paul’s contact was momentarily broken, but then his hands found the armored front panels surrounding the plasma muzzle and pushed again.

Suddenly the lizard in the gunner’s seat jumped out and to the left as Paul lifted and tipped the portable turret over, then the Archon ran and dove over the first line barricade he’d come in by, not having time to grab his rifle as a line of four lizards from the stairwell began shooting at him. He almost took another hit as he slammed down on the hallway floor behind cover and slid into the gunner as the plasma blasts flew over his head.

Neither one of them had a weapon, but Paul had the advantage in strength. He wrestled the lizard to the ground as it scrambled for one of the dropped weapons, then he got hold of one himself and awkwardly shot it in the head before spinning back around and taking up a shooter’s position on the innermost barricade.

Meanwhile the two Canderians were advancing up the opposite hallway, taking out the distracted lizards on the front two barricades as Paul overturned the turret. They came forward firing their Star Force issue plasma rifles with a much higher cycling rate, burning holes into the top of the nearest barricade along with the upper torsos and heads of the lizards, half of which were turned around and firing at Paul.

The Archon flashed them some quick hand signals as they got to the third barricade opposite his position and hunkered down. The far right side of his faceplate was melted and distorted, but he still had about 90% of his view unobstructed, and the lizards were on his left anyway. That didn’t bode well for his battle longevity, but it was a tradeoff he was comfortable with, now that they’d eliminated the turret.

Lila slid out along the barricade and into view along the box-like perimeter they were pinned on. All three sides of the box were inset from the walls, meaning it was difficult to shoot to the other side because the corners would get in the way, offering Paul, the Canderians, and the lizards plenty of cover where they needed it…though if both Star Force groups slid out their overlapping fields of fire would leave the lizards without a covered angle.

Paul had another idea, though. Instead of shooting it out across the barricades he stood up close to the wall and walked back to the second barrier, which was actually two sections latched together. Paul reached down and disconnected the two with some wiggling, then picked up one of the heavy pieces and put it on his shoulder like a stubby, thick beam. He walked it forward, hugging as close as he could to the wall for cover, and brought it up to the first row.

Dropping it down he attached it to the top of one of the others, sliding the prefab pieces together as they were designed to, giving him a barrier he could stand up behind.

He stooped down and slid his fingers under the other half and disconnected it with considerable effort while trying to keep his head down. Once it was free he pulled back and began shoving the taller half of the barrier forward a few inches at a time.

Plasma blasts began to pour into the barrier as the lizards figured out what he was doing. The Canderians moved out into firing range, spraying plasma their way to diminish their focus on Paul as he swung the wall-like barricade around until it blocked off half of the lizard’s firing arc. Once that was done the Canderians had enough cover to jump over and enter the square along with Paul. Lila took up position behind the downed turret and fired into the stairway gap that had numerous lizards pouring down into it, though only a few had room enough to fire at the Humans.

Sensing their weakness the lizards chose to charge forward, hopping over the barricade half that wasn’t covered by Paul’s improvised wall two at a time and getting shot almost before their feet hit the ground.

Before their swarm tactics could prove effective Paul took his captured lizard weapon and turned it on the downed turret, blasting into the control panel and taking it out of the battle even if the lizards could find the strength to right it. Lila slid him his Star Force plasma rifle across the floor with her foot and the threesome began to retreat back behind the half barricade on Paul’s side, killing more and more lizards as they poured out as they retook the ground they’d lost.

Paul held position on the half barricade as the Canderians retreated back to the second row, then he ran back and jumped over it to join them, dropping on his damaged shoulder with a crunch as tiny bits of melted and rehardened armor broke off on impact.

They held there, knowing that the lizards only had half a barricade to hide behind. The hallway didn’t offer them a lot of flanking room, so between the three of them they were able to down so many lizards that their bodies began to stack up and interfere with the movement of the others. Eventually they got the point and stopped rushing them, instead retaking what defensive positions they had and continuing to guard the entrance to the upper levels.

Paul thrust a thumb backwards and the Canderians began retreating back down the hallway, first hopping over the last barricade and pausing there, then running down and turning the nearest corner to get out of view. Paul kept up firing on the lizard positions to keep them pinned then turned and ran after the Canderians, hurdling the barrier and pulling out of the hallway within a few long seconds.

“That’ll keep ‘em busy,” Paul said, leaning back against the wall so he could keep his peripheral senses trained in both directions as he faced the Canderians. “My battlemap and comm are out. Are any of the others through?”

“Archon Fred’s team is currently on the move above us.”

“Good. Let’s get over to their breach point,” Paul said, running off to the left. “Inform Fred that I’m offline.”

It took a few minutes to get across to the stairwell that they’d broken through and Paul just caught a glimpse of green armor shooting up the stairs ahead of them. He jumped over several broken and smoking pieces of furniture cluttering the hallway, chopped into bits by plasma fire and discarded to the sides, then stepped over a pair of lizards at the foot of an even larger pile that had been trampled down as the other teams had climbed over it.

Paul followed them up and found a pile of lizard bodies just outside the next level where Fred’s team had pulled them off the stairs. Further into the level he heard sounds of weaponsfire but he didn’t head that way. Instead he headed further up the stairs, hoping to flank the lizards, then came up behind Kali’s team two levels higher, cursing his luck for not having his battlemap up and running.

“Make way!” Paul yelled, getting the Canderians’ attention ahead of him on the narrow staircase. He pushed his way through until he was right behind Kali as she took peeking shots around the corner and further up the stairs simultaneously. “What have we got?”

“Where’d you come…oh,” she said, seeing the damage to his helmet. “You alright?”

“Comm’s out,” he said, ducking as a plasma shot hit a meter above his head coming down from upstairs.

“I’ll take the stairs if you can go right?” Kali suggested. “Harrison is coming around that way in about 20 seconds. Time it right and you’ll catch them from both sides.”

“Say when,” Paul said, switching places with her on the third stair below the doorway onto that level. He fired a shot up the opposite side as a lizard poked out around the switchback, discouraging further curiosity for a few seconds.

“Three, two, one…go,” Kali said calmly, running up the three stairs in sync with Paul. She crossed the short landing and hit the opposite bank of stairs just as he hung tight to the turn and smashed himself up against the right side wall of the hallway, facing a group of five lizards with more milling around behind. He exchanged shots with one, hitting it in the chest armor and dropping it to a knee but not taking it out of the fight. Its shot hit him in the left pectoral, but the next few bursts of plasma missed to his left as he slammed into the wall.

The shots hit the inside of the stairwell just before the first Canderian came through. By then Paul had another two lizards down and had gotten up close enough to take the fight to them hand to hand. He was moving so fast it appeared as a blur to Lila as she came through in third position while half of the others followed Kali upstairs. Paul knocked a lizard back her way three meters through the air with a single punch, then Lila finished it off with a shot to the head as she advanced.

Several furious seconds of fighting later and the lizard line was broken, with Paul running forward and bagging more lizards with his bare hands as Harrison’s group appeared from a side hallway, pushing another four lizards back in retreat. Paul got one of them in a headlock, which he then snapped with lethal efficiency as his fellow Archon gunned down the other three.

Lila picked up Paul’s rifle from where he dropped it and brought it over to him.

“Thanks,” he said, placing it on his back and pulling off his stun sword. He thumbed it on and started to head back to the stairs.

“She’s already through,” Harrison said, stopping him. “This way.”

Paul turned about and followed him, with the Canderians keeping their distance from his sword, which waved back and forth in front of the Archon as he ran a couple steps behind Harrison. He led the now growing group of Canderians to another stairwell, this one completely unguarded, and charged up another 8 levels until they met up with another set of barricades, not set on a stairwell, but in the middle of a hallway.

“They’re guarding something,” Harrison explained as they ducked across to another hallway out of the lizards’ line of fire. “Fred’s on the other side. Give me a 10 count then take these,” he said, running off another direction and turning a corner out of sight.

Paul started counting, and by the time he got to 8 he heard a firefight start down the hallway. Two more seconds and he did a blind turn around the corner and started sprinting towards the barricades.

Only one of the lizards was looking in his direction. The other three had turned around and were firing at Fred’s team down the long hallway as they broke through from the right side. Paul ducked right, dodging a plasma shot, then Harrison broke through from the left, adding further confusion. The lizard aiming at him suffered through his weapon’s recycle time then got one more shot off at Paul, which he successfully faked his way out of, twitching to the left right before jumping right and bouncing off the wall as he ran.

Paul leapt over the barrier and swiped his sword around from his left, catching the lizard in the head and smashing it up against the sidewall from the force of the impact. Harrison had already gotten two more of the nearby lizards, but Paul got the last one with a poke in the back, giving them a moment of calm in the hallway before Fred’s team broke into another chamber and the sounds of plasma fire renewed.

Harrison walked over and shot the lizards Paul had stunned. “You out of ammo?”

“Yes,” Paul said, following him up to Fred’s position. As they ran down the long hallway Kali appeared from the right, all of them converging on the same area. “What’s the room?”

“Maintenance area,” Harrison said as the plasma fire stopped again. They jogged the last 10 meters up to the entrance then carefully stepped inside with Paul letting Harrison’s plasma rifle lead the way.

“That looks important,” Harrison said sarcastically as they spotted two large pieces of lizard tech standing as tall as a phone booth, one wedged up and attached to a bank of the building’s computer systems…the other attached to a thin pipe heading up into the ceiling.

“Transmitter,” Paul said, pointing to the top of the pipe that he surmised led up to the roof of the building.

“Permission to get acquainted with the device?”

“Granted,” Paul said with a wry smile.

Harrison waved Fred and his triarill aside as they came back from the other end of the large room, then fired six shots into the lizard device, melting/exploding the outside in several spurts of sparking components, then all the glowing control nubs went dark.

“Bingo,” Harrison said, seeing all the Canderians below him in the building suddenly appear on his battlemap.

“Jamming gone?” Paul asked, doing a lazy sweep around the room looking for other devices or lingering lizards.

“Locally…but I can’t access any signals more than 3 blocks away. They must have more than one jamming device in play.”

“They do. Get rid of their other toy then get to the roof and take out that anti-air. There are more Canderian assault shuttles on the way and they’d prefer to land here if they could.”

“I like the sound of that,” Harrison said, shooting the second lizard device.

7

March 25, 2266

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Paul stood on the roof of the command building, a wide, flat, square plain that stood higher than any other structure in the Star Force colony. From his perch on the north side he could see out over the tops of the rest of the buildings, but not a lot of what was going on in the streets below. He could see the 7 defense towers they had left, each of which co-tied for the city’s second tallest buildings, and were mostly spaced around the perimeter along with six closer ones in what he thought of as a second ring of defense. Four of those were down, one thanks to a cruiser and the other three to lizard ground teams.

The two that were operational were keeping the cruisers off the command building. The lizard ships would fly over them, once directly over, to deposit more reinforcements elsewhere in the city but they wouldn’t linger. The plasma from those towers was potent at the closer range, doing more damage than the lachars if and when the shields came down but to date Paul hadn’t seen that happen. Granted, he’d been incommunicado for a great deal of that time and inside the urban structures most of the rest, but it seemed the lizard naval crews were being smart about their reinforcement raids and only braving the city defenses if they knew they could keep their shields up for the duration.

The damage the lachars were doing to them, however, was significant. Many of the shield-penetrating blasts had been targeting the cruisers’ heavy plasma batteries, reducing their available kill power when they flew over the city. After the majority of those had been hit they began sniping the harder to hit anti-air batteries, as well as the docked kirbies the cruisers were carrying in.

To compensate for this the cruisers began flying lower and lower, trying to eek out some cover from the various buildings and picking landing zones along the perimeter so at least the underside of the giant ships wouldn’t come under fire from the towers, that way their kirbies would be safe while docking and undocking. The cruisers had also got in the habit of rapid approaches and departures, minimizing the time the towers had to poke at them.

As Paul zoomed in on the northeastern combat zone with his helmet scope he could see the top nubs on one just sticking up above two midrange buildings. One of the remaining perimeter towers was hitting it from the flank, but he didn’t think it had a shot on the underside. Several small flashes were visible as the long range plasma streaks hit the shields, doing less damage due to the dispersion factor associated with range, let alone the atmosphere it had to travel through. The lizards’ plasma cannons didn’t have such a limited range, nor did they fire in squirt gun-like streaks. Somehow they managed to hold their plasma together in a compact orb past its departure point from the cannons.

Paul wished their techs had figured that one out, but they had to work with what they had available. Despite the city’s size, the ranges involved were considerably smaller than a naval engagement, but the air was proving to be the biggest detriment, especially when it was windy. Like a bullet-firing sniper rifle, they had to account for the wind when aiming, and snow or rain serious hampered their efficiency the further out the plasma got from the turret.

Today was good weather, however, and Paul had a clear line of sight out to the grassy perimeter surrounding the city…which he truly wished was filled with mechs, but the lizards had been doing a surprisingly good job of keeping their larger transports away. The small assault shuttles the Canderians were using to ferry troops down from their seda were slipping past, but anything large enough to carry a mech was being pursued by their local guardian cruiser, which was right now hovering above the forest to the east.

Paul could just barely make it out with his scope, and it was hard to find since it was constantly moving…no doubt to keep his orbiting fleet from blowing the smithereens out of it. He hadn’t had contact with them since the comm whiteout began and he seriously wondered if the lizards hadn’t tried to hit them after they took down one of the comm relays. The city had three transmitters, one primary, one backup, and a second smaller backup used to issue commands to their orbiting fleet all the way out into the star system via line of sight. As such, they had to be extremely powerful transmitters.

The lizards had managed to destroy the backup in explosive fashion, then just yesterday managed to disable the primary. It was outside of Paul’s communication range, but he could see from his perch that the transmitter had taken damage from small arms fire, possibly even their anti-air weapons. He could tell it was offline, and thanks to the extra powerful jamming signal that had blanketed the command building a few hours ago he’d figured that they’d also captured and repurposed the secondary backup.

It was the only one powerful enough to cut off their communications within 10 meters of each other, making their armors’ comms all but useless. Fortunately Paul had a fleet of assault shuttles at his disposal that could run messages up to orbit and to some select locations within the city, though the lizard anti-air ground troops were everywhere, making low level flight dangerous and high level runs almost suicide. The command building, being the tallest in the city and a half mile wide, gave them a narrow approach vector from directly above to travel down through, otherwise they’d have to land on the outskirts and send their reinforcements over ground, which they had initially.

With the direct link to the seda established Paul had ordered them to bring down an army of techs to repair the building, most notably the comm and computer systems. The lizard augmentations had mostly been add-ons, so they’d gotten the building systems operational in short order, allowing fiber optic communication options from floor to floor. It was a bit inefficient, but by posting comm guard units on each level to relay messages out to the nearby troops Paul now had the building fully under his control and he could be alerted up on the roof of any incursions at ground level or at the walkways.

With the influx of Canderian troops Paul had swept the entire building and set up a proper command and control facility, bringing down a host of equipment and supplies, including a new set of acolyte armor that Clan Saber had sent down via the Canderians along with a handful of lower ranking adepts to help augment their excursion teams that he had probing the surrounding buildings.

So far they’d managed to capture, sweep, and secure three of them. Harrison was currently working on the fourth that had a connection to the command building while Kali and Fred were out working on non-connected neighbors, extending their safe zone and gathering up any wandering Star Force units in the area. Yesterday they’d collected a limping raven mech that had had the crap kicked out of it by the lizard ground vehicles. Paul had ordered replacement parts to be shipped in via the assault shuttles to get it back in the fight, the first of which had just arrived less than an hour ago.

He’d also sent a messenger up to the seda to then be dropped back down on the city outskirts and make contact with Jason or whatever other trailblazer he could find, updating them on their current position and numbers. He didn’t expect him back for more than a day, at the earliest, but the messenger had been for their benefit, not his. He had a feeling that this fight was going to tip one way or the other very soon, and he figured his command was going to have to fight this out cut off from the others…he just wanted them to know where they had a safe zone to work around and hopefully connect to at some point.

The lizard cruiser to the northeast suddenly rose up just above the buildings and zipped away out towards the forest, taking a few hits along the way as it crossed into another tower’s line of sight. Paul knew they had the ability to grow new troops in a matter of weeks, but the cruisers had been bringing in reinforcements nonstop since the assault began, making him wonder just how many thousands they now had in play.

A bright flash brought Paul’s attention to a building off to the northeast several blocks away. It disappeared before he could pin it down, then it appeared again in a sequence of three. Paul adjusted his scope and zoomed in on the spot, catching another three flash sequence before he finally spotted a group of armored troops on the top of the building.

“Raines!” Paul turned around and yelled, looking for the tribune on the roof. Off in the distance there were four assault shuttles on one of the pads, one of which was still offloading gear, but he’d kept the Canderian nearby when he’d come up here to look around.

“Yes, sir,” Raines said, stepping out from behind one of the lizard anti-air batteries that they’d installed on the roof. A few of them were still operational, but most of them had been damaged during the fighting when the gunners had swung them around and used them to fire on the troops…except that they couldn’t depress below horizontal. After discovering that the Canderians had literally crawled up on turrets and taken them out with grenades.

“Get one of the laser relays over here, quick.”

The green armored soldier nodded and took off running, not wasting the two seconds to form a verbal reply. Paul turned back to the lower building and zoomed in again, then raised an arm up and waved back at the signal. It flashed twice more then cut out, recognizing the receipt of the contact wave.

Raines came back over with two other Canderians carrying a crate which they set down next to Paul and began to unpack. Clan Saber had sent over four of the units, along with the message that the other Clans were doing the same in an attempt to get around the jamming signals, but this was the first one he or any of his men had been able to spot.

The unit came out in three pieces. The bottom one was a wide tripod with vibration buffers at four points. The second, middle section was the laser transmitter, and the third was the targeting sphere that inflated from a small tube out to three quarters of a meter in diameter. Once they had the unit assembled and inflated Paul used a built in scope to target the first laser transmitter. The unit had four so that it could form a nexus within a grid system, but for the moment he only needed to align one of them with the other building.

It took him well over a minute to find the position in the small scope, given the distances involved. Once he found the building top it didn’t take long, but the width of the viewing aperture was narrower than his helmet scope and it was easy to get the zoom lost in the various buildings when he couldn’t pull back as far. The unit was designed to work over insane distances, and one item on their to-do list was to test a link between Corneria and Dxun once they got a drift protocol stablished…otherwise even if they did manage to locate the other unit the spin of the planet and the orbital velocity of the moon would misalign it immediately.

Use on the same planet required firm, locked positions, hence the need for vibration buffers in the tripod. A mech walking past could easily misalign the laser over a distance of a kilometer, let alone 10k or 100k. Atmospheric conditions came into play, but if used in space or on an airless moon the range was almost unlimited.

Paul finally got the laser trained on the opposite target sphere and locked the transmitter in place, then stood up and looked at the display panel, seeing that there was already an incoming signal. He flipped on the audio and immediately heard a voice.

“…you receiving?”

“Copy,” Paul answered. “You got me?”

“Copy,” the voice answered. “This is Archon Miranda-943 of Clan Samus.”

“Paul-024. What’s your status?”

“We’re part of a hunting team sent out to track down rogue lizard units and simultaneously set up a comm grid. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they’ve got teams sneaking around everywhere, half of which we don’t have a clue what they’re up to.”

“We’ve been beating back a major assault force with Canderous and have retaken the command building. They had a jammer installed but we took it out, then the big one went up and we’ve been forced to use couriers and the building’s intercom hard lines.”

“Too bad somebody didn’t think to include running those between buildings,” Miranda commented dryly.

“Hightower set up the larger buildings as self-sufficient units,” Paul guessed, knowing how the Duke worked. “That probably meant he put down an edict stating no interconnecting lines. The comm systems I’ve come across in the building have multiple redundancies, just no hard lines. It’s a design oversight I’ll chew him out for later, but the up side is there’s no main power core for the lizards to knock out and we’ve got most of the building’s functions online, including the rooftop landing pads which are just outside the range of the lizards’ anti-air ground batteries, so we’ve been able to bring in supplies and troops via the Canderian assault shuttles.”

“Yeah, we’ve noticed a few coming and going. I’m surprised the cruisers haven’t taken them out.”

“I’ve been watching them and they only seem to be concerned with the larger transports, plus it’d be hard for them to hit the shuttles without flying into range of the turrets. How far have you set up your grid?”

“We had a link all the way back to what’s left of the airfield and Rafa but we lost one of the intermediaries, so we’ve got 4 buildings linked up now, counting yours.”

“How many men have you got?”

“14, all Archons.”

“How are you set with supplies?”

“Running low and our armor is chewed up.”

“You can resupply here, and we’ve got spare parts.”

“Ambrosia?”

“Plenty to go around.”

“We’ll definitely be heading your way, but there are plenty of lizards between here and there to get around.”

“I’ve been keeping an eye from up top here, but I can’t see much other than the one street. How thick are they in your area?”

“They’re up to something and have large, mobile units moving about to discourage attention. At least three armed transports, but they’re never together. We can building hop, but they’re starting to plant booby traps so we’re having to take it slow.”

“What kind?”

“Proximity mines…shrapnel and plasma. Unless we step on one they’re not so bad, but some of us are starting to look like porcupines.”

Paul frowned. “Where exactly are you coming across them?”

“Multiple buildings, both at the entrances and further in.”

“Which buildings…be specific.”

“We’ve been bouncing around so much I don’t remember them all, but one was residential and two were industrial.”

“What did you find inside?”

“Not much, but we didn’t stick around too long. Killed a few lizard teams but didn’t find anything else of interest.”

“I’m guessing the building with the downed transmitter has more than a few lizards in it. They were redecorating the command building with the intent to stick around for a few decades. I’m guessing they’re setting up similar sites around the city. You probably stumbled across a few…except we didn’t come across any booby traps here.”

“If you were dealing with a lot of troops maybe they thought they didn’t need them. The most we’ve come across at any one moment was about 30, so maybe they’re fortifying their holdings with the devices in lieu of the troops they don’t have.”

“Why can’t the damn things just stay still,” Paul commented, realizing just how serious their enemy was about moving in for keeps. Smart actually, because even if Star Force evacuated and Paul bombarded the city from orbit the lizards would have succeeded in getting him to destroy one of their own cities.

“I’m assuming command of your team, Miranda. Get over here as soon as you can. We’re making building by building sweeps, and it looks like that’s the only way we’re going to make any progress against the strays.”

“Agreed. How close are your lines?”

“One block radius.”

“Do you have control of the streets?”

“For the moment. There’s been some attempts to retake the building from the south, but we’ve got enough rocket launchers in play to make them think twice about bringing in vehicles.”

“Want a couple of mechs?”

“Please.”

“We’ll have to backtrack a bit, but we came across a pair hiding out in a courtyard parking lot. They’re non-Archon mechwarriors, survivors of the mainline unit that the cruisers tore up that first day. They said they’ve been corned by ground troops no matter which way they go so they decided to hold ground and let them come to them. They didn’t so they’ve just been waiting until Morgan could get to them with a ground offensive, hoping to hit the lizards from the front and use the mechs to flank them from behind, but since the comm whiteout they haven’t known what to do.”

“They’ve been in their mechs the whole time?”

“No, they’ve been rotating out and living in a nearby building, but their nerves are frayed and their mechs look just as bad, but most of the weaponry is still intact. Not sure how much heavy fire they’ll stand up to, but as far as infantry support goes I’d rather have them at my back than not.”

“You have their position marked?”

“Yes.”

“Once you get back here I’ll send out a retrieval team and we’ll bring them in.”

“With your permission I’ll head back and stay with them until it arrives, my team can bring the coordinates to you.”

“Permission granted and good idea. Keep their heads level and their mechs intact. We’re going to need them both.”

8

March 27, 2266

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

“Where we at?” Paul asked.

“Teams just finished sweeping these two buildings,” Raines said, comparing notes with the Archon on a holographic map inside one of the parked assault shuttles on the command building’s roof. “Forward elements are engaging here and here,” he said, pointing at two streets that spread out like a ‘V’ from the edge of their current safe zone.

Paul nodded, shifting the weight of the extra pack he wore slung over his right shoulder. “Anti-air?”

“Everything we could find has been neutralized within the predetermined radius. You should be clear to go.”

“Alright. Mind the store while I’m gone.”

“Store?” Raines asked.

“Figure of speech. Keep clearing buildings and pushing our lines to the south. Leave the other vectors to the Archon teams and focus on taking pressure off that tower. If we lose that we’re hurting.”

“We’ll get there,” Raines said, stepping back outside the shuttle and clapping his fist against his chest in a quick salute as the boarding ramp rose up and closed Paul inside the hold by himself. He grabbed a ceiling handhold, choosing to remain standing as he stared at the wall.

“Pilot, let’s go,” he half yelled up into the cockpit. A few seconds later the shuttle lifted off the pad, but Paul couldn’t feel the acceleration due to the internal dampeners. Less than a minute later the pilot remote triggered the boarding ramp to lower, depositing Paul on the rooftop of another lower building…as far out as they could dare fly without running into enemy anti-air ground units.

Paul jogged off and the shuttle quickly departed. After a glance around the immediate area to make sure it was clear he turned around and watched the Canderian craft fly back across the safe zone and up to the top of the command building, which now rose up behind him like a giant mountain…a mountain that Star Force now controlled and was reconquering their city out from.

The building Paul was standing on now was not in the safe zone. It was two blocks outside it, but the surrounding streets had just been cleared of anti-air troops and the roof of this and the surrounding buildings hadn’t shown any signs of the lizards, making for an adequate drop point into enemy territory. How much of the building and the surrounding area the lizards controlled they didn’t know, but it didn’t appear to be a dense occupation area.

Wasting no time Paul ran across the sparse rooftop to a stairwell entrance, spying the larger building off to his right. That was his target, but he was going to have to get there on foot and hopefully avoid attention while doing so. Hefting around a large gear satchel wasn’t exactly the way he wanted to go into combat, so stealth was his greatest asset at the moment.

Paul took the stairs straight down to the ground floor, not encountering any resistance in what appeared to be a completely deserted building, though in truth he’d only seen a tiny piece of it. Still, there were no guards or defensive barricades set up on the southern set of doors which Paul cautiously peeked out of.

The street to his left was clear as far as he could see, but to his right there was an anti-personnel vehicle creeping along several blocks down headed the opposite direction. With it were ranks of ground troops, apparently on patrol for there were too few to be an assault force. They also had their tails towards his position, so he ducked across the street and up to the doors on the building on the far side, but when he tried to open them he found that they were locked.

He was so surprised he almost laughed. Every building he’d come across in the city had their exterior doors unlocked, as was standard protocol. A lot of them didn’t even have locks built into them and this one in particular, given that it was comprised entirely of glass, looked almost pathetic being locked. He wondered if the building manager had done so as a last thought during the evacuation.

Paul brought his boot up and kicked the door near the handle, but the glass held firm. He kicked a second time, harder, and was rewarded with a small crack. Glancing around to make sure he was still in the clear he set down his gear satchel and took a step back, setting himself before he launched forward into a side kick that punched straight through the safety glass, pinning his foot in place.

He wiggled it free of the hole and reached inside to open the door from the push handle on the opposite side with a muted click, then he ducked into the building reshouldering his gear satchel and ran across the ground floor to the exit on the far side where he street jumped again, this time coming up to an open door and signs of looting.

Knowing that meant the lizards had been through the area at some point he walked slowly through the hallways, listening ahead and trying to stay out of sight. He didn’t know if they were still in the building or not but there was no visible security so he took a straight line path across the building and arrived at the other side just in time to see another patrol pass by, this one with several lizards driving small hover carts with anti-air batteries on the back.

Paul could have jumped them easily enough but that wasn’t his mission, so he let them pass and waited for another 20 minutes for an opportunity to building jump again. This time he did meet up with a rogue lizard inside and dispatched it with a quick jab of his stun sword before it could get to its weapon. He didn’t kill it, but rather let it lay unconscious on the floor as he moved on, not wanting the sound of plasma fire to give away his location.

Paul passed through another three buildings with minimal resistance until he finally got to his target…which of course had to be one with a lizard guard at the door. He could see at least half a dozen inside behind a pair of brand new barricades. They wouldn’t be hard to take if he left his satchel behind, but drawing attention to himself was going to make more trouble than he wanted so he chose to move across to an adjacent building, then one up further so he could come around and observe another entrance into his target.

It too was guarded, but the third side he later checked wasn’t and he managed to slip across and into the building unnoticed. He took to the stairs and quietly began to ascend the medium-height building up to the roof, having to pause and wait out several close encounters with lizards milling about erecting gear that indicated to Paul that they were setting up shop in the building for more onsite industrial use. Fortunately he wouldn’t be sticking around for long.

When he finally made it to the roof he encountered two lizards putting together an anti-air turret and took them down with four well placed shots before taking cover and waiting, wondering if there were any more on the roof along with them. After a few minutes of silence he did a slow perimeter sweep and eventually came up with nothing. His insertion had been a success.

As he made his way back to where he’d dropped his satchel he saw an Eagle-class dropship scoot across the forest edge and dip down into the grassy clearing ringing the city. Paul did a double take, wondering if he was seeing things until another followed it up from a different approach angle before dropping out of sight. He was still well within the center of the city and the perimeter was a ways off in the distance but there was no way his eyes were misjudging the sight of the dropships on approach.

By the time he got his helmet scope engaged a Falcon-class dropship joined them and he was able to confirm that they were landing in the clearing, but the perimeter buildings were blocking his line of sight so he couldn’t see what they were offloading but he knew it had to be mechs. Up until now their guardian cruiser had been intercepting and driving off all attempts to reinforce the city via dropship, which made him wonder where exactly it was now.

Scanning the horizon with his scope he did a full half turn before the command building blocked his view, then he skipped over it and got another partial turn in before he spotted it even further away than it normally was, and on the opposite side of the city from where the dropships were coming in. A flash of blue impacted on its shields and Paul followed the plasma streak back to a grey rectangular cube…no, three cubes, all cutter-class by the looks of them, that were engaging the cruiser at close range.

At the same time he noticed a scattering of dots crossing his vision, which he soon realized were more dropships heading in from that direction, under the cover of the three naval ships that had dropped down into atmosphere to take on the wounded cruiser, who’d lost most of its offensive plasma cannons over the previous days. Paul didn’t know which side would win out in that fight, but get enough mechs on the ground and it wouldn’t matter…which is exactly what this Clan had planned, though he couldn’t tell from this range who the dropships belonged to.

Even if they were flying over the city he wouldn’t have been able to spot the small icons on the hull, but he knew that the remote pilots flying those warships had to be transmitting from one of the Clan colonies on a beam signal, otherwise the jamming coming from the city would have overwhelmed their control receivers. It was possible that they’d sent the ships in on autopilot with the cruiser pre-tagged as their target, but Paul found that unlikely as he watched the distant battle unfold based on the way the ships moved about to gain maximum advantage.

The shields on the cruiser eventually went down and the plasma lances cut into its hull just as a large glob of green plasma found one of the cutters and broke through its Herculium armor, resulting in multiple internal explosions that dropped the ‘brick’ out of the sky and down into the forest where it dug up and sprayed a massive plume of vegetation into the air. The cruiser didn’t stick around, however, and began to retreat to the left but both cutters stayed with it, pounding its aft arc with plasma and then launching a huge missile salvo from both ships that completely obscured Paul’s view for a moment with all the smoke and impact debris fouling the air.

Then all of a sudden the back end of the cruiser dipped below the cloud and hit the forest canopy, sinking down in with its front end still suspended up in the air. Paul knew instantly that the rear gravity drives had been knocked out, meaning that the ship was all but doomed. Unless they could get enough power to the forward units for it to limp up off into space, or at least up higher into the atmosphere, it was going to be a sitting duck for the cutters to finish off or, if they couldn’t, would be an applicable candidate for orbital bombardment, given its distance from the edge of the city.

As Paul watched he saw more and more flocks of dropships skirting the top of the forest as they zipped into the outer edges of the city. They were merely dots from his perspective, but he knew they contained dozens of fresh mechs that would at minimum help them clear the streets of the lizard ground vehicles, and if they got enough mechs clustered together they might even have a chance of downing or driving off the cruisers bringing in additional lizard troops.

Paul didn’t know what Clan had pulled this off but he was proud of them, especially for that bit of naval strategy. He watched a bit longer until he saw the rest of the lizard ship crash into the ground and the two remaining cutters swarm over it, firing their plasma barrages directly down on top of it with maximum cohesion and intensity. From his perspective they were just flashes of blue, but he could imagine the carnage they were unleashing on that ship and he was more than glad to have it eliminated from the engagement.

Remembering why he was here Paul deactivated his scope and carried his satchel over to the southwest corner of the building and began unloading its contents onto the rooftop a few meters in from the railing that was the only divider between flat roof and sheer drop off on the other side. He pulled out the varying components and reassembled his rocket launcher, along with adding on the guiding matrix and scope before loading the first of four smart missiles into the wide barrel.

He hefted the heavy tube up onto his shoulder, feeling the appropriately placed padding mold to fit his body and provide stability for the weapon. It was so heavy that only an Archon or Knight could wield it, and Paul had had it shipped in from Clan Saber specifically for this mission, knowing that he was going to need the heavier firepower and range compared to the launchers the Canderians were using to great effect on the city streets.

Bracing against the weight Paul slowly took a knee and steadied himself as he looked through the scope across several lower height buildings until he found the one he wanted. It was a bit higher than those immediately around it, but lower still than the building Paul was on. Unlike his, however, the target had a large apparatus on top looking like an elongated version of one of the Archons’ personal shields. It was suspended above the rooftop several meters and beveled at the edges while the interior was completely flat with a long center swipe having been cut out.

Paul could just make out the roof below through that swipe and chose to aim further to the side in case he accidentally hit the gap and missed the orbital transmitter that was his target. He pushed a small button on the side of the launcher near the trigger and a laser shot out, marking the spot he intended to hit. Paul aligned it exactly where he wanted and activated the missile’s navigational system, getting receipt of laser recognition as a small icon on the launcher’s scope HUD.

The Archon pulled the trigger and the thick missile shot out in a cloud of smoke that covered him from all angles to reduce the recoil of the launch, save for the front of the launcher where the scope and laser ended. Paul kept his concentration on the target as well as the laser dot as the missile swooped across the rooftops at a shallow angle, crossing to the target and ramming into the topside of the transmitter where it detonated.

Paul waited for the debris to clear, glancing up at his still inactive battlemap, then back down at the hole the weapon had torn in the transmitter…but the array was so big that it was going to take more than one to knock it out.

Pulling his head back from the scope Paul set the launcher down on the ground and loaded a second missile into it, checking again to make sure that the roof was clear of lizards behind him. Being patient enough to forestall any mistakes he hefted the launcher back up onto his shoulder and repositioned on his knee to get the correct angle before dipping the tip of the long tube over the top of the railing and sighting in on a different segment of the transmission ‘table’ covering the other building’s rooftop.

Another trigger pull and the second missile fired off, streaking over to the target and blasting another hole into the opposite side, but still it wasn’t enough to knock it out. Paul had wondered if two would do it, but had brought four along just in case not wanting to come up short, but now he was starting to get worried. He loaded up the third missile and aimed for the biggest section of intact transmitter that he could and fired it off…then a split second after it hit his battlemap lit up with new data, showing all but three areas of the city with a huge number of Star Force unit signals.

Paul smiled, not having realized how much progress the others had been making. The three remaining dead zones had to be from smaller jamming transmitters, but from the looks of it most of their defensive forces were now in communications range…included a large number of mechs assembling in five locations out in the grassy perimeter zone.

Paul adjusted his comm to the trailblazer only teamcomm. “Anyone online?”

“Paul, I hear you,” Jason’s voice answered back. “My battlemap just lit up. Did someone take out a jammer?”

“Guilty as charged, but it looks like there are still three smaller ones in play.”

“Nice work,” Morgan commented. “I especially like the little naval engagement you’ve got going on.”

“That wasn’t my handiwork. I’ve been with Canderous working out of the command building and incommunicado aside from courier runs. Whoever arranged that, I’m glad we’re finally getting more mechs into play.”

“What? No, I meant the engagement in space.”

“What engagement?” Paul asked, frowning.

“I thought that was you too,” Jason added.

“What engagement?” Paul repeated.

“It’s still going on, but we’ve downed two cruisers that tried to hit our shipyard,” Jason explained. “Another pair are still going at it with our fleet, but they’re losing badly.”

“Where are you getting that feed from?”

“A mantis laser relay back to colony 4. I thought you’d hooked into the link and were organizing things upstairs.”

“I’ve been blind for days…and at the moment I’m behind enemy lines,” he said as a small flashing icon indicated that he was receiving a signal on another frequency. “I’ll get back to you later.”

Paul dumped the missile launcher onto the rooftop as he adjusted his comm. “Paul here.”

“It appears you were successful,” Raines said. “Our comms are no longer jammed and we’re getting requests from new mechs on the field to link up with our ground units.”

“Organize and secure a conduit straight in to the safe zone. We’re sticking to the plan and pushing out, sector by sector. Add them into the fold until I get back.”

“Same extraction point?”

“Negative. I’ll call for pickup when I get in range. I’m not heading back by the same route I came in on. I might as well scout out the enemy positions a bit while I’m here.”

“I’ll leave a shuttle standing by with pilot and extraction team onboard.”

“Copy that,” Paul said, ending the conversation and walking up to the railing so he could see the streets below that made an ‘X’ directly underneath his position. Three of the directions were clear, but there was another patrol coming his way from the upper left portion of the ‘X’ so Paul loaded up his last missile and sighted in on the anti-air vehicle trailing the anti-personnel vehicle a few meters in front of it. Both were hovering less than a meter off the street as they moved down the wide lane between buildings with ground troops flanking them on the sidewalks.

Paul pulled the trigger and held the launcher steady until there was a small ‘puff’ of an explosion in the distance, then he stood up and chucked the launcher over the edge of the railing, hoping it might hit a passing lizard on the way down. He pulled out his plasma rifle from the rack on his back and headed over to the stairwell entrance, then disappeared inside the building and lizard territory, slowly making his way back to Star Force-controlled streets.

9

April 3, 2266

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Paul stood side by side with Jason in the back of the mantis as its boarding ramp lowered into open air. Behind him stood Morgan and Rafa, each loaded up with weapons, explosives, and ammo, especially Morgan who was carrying an insanely large pack. As soon as the ramp locked into place Paul walked off the edge and dropped half a step ahead of Jason and fell to the upper hull of the lizard cruiser a few meters below.

He caught himself as his feet hit damaged armor plates and tried to roll over, then he walked out of his stumble and clear of the drop point while the other two trailblazers came down, then the mantis roared off into the city skyline, taking a bit of anti-air fire from the ground as it left, but it wasn’t enough to take the transport down.

All around the downed cruiser the lizards were making their final stand. Dozens of assault vehicles were battling it out with mechs as thousands of lizards dug in to the surrounding buildings, but the Archons didn’t have time to look around. As soon as they were boots down on the hull Paul ran over a few meters and hopped into a hot and recently cut breach point and dropped inside. Jason followed quickly, a few steps ahead of the trailing pair. Two seconds after Morgan slipped through last in line the cruiser’s shields reformed a meter and a half above the hull in a brief shimmer, then disappeared into their standard invisibility.

Over the past week Star Force had systematically swept through the city sector by sector as the lizards continued to land more troops, but with the mech reinforcements coming in they hadn’t been able to hold the streets and had been forced to either retreat or stand their ground and fight it out in a long, losing campaign, making the Humans earn every block and building they retook. Then 3 days into the mech-backed counteroffensive one of the lizards’ remaining cruisers had landed within the city, crushing several small buildings underneath it as it sank down into the cityscape and out of targeting range of the remaining defense towers.

Its shields had then been reconfigured to cover not only the ship but several surrounding buildings as well, all the way down to ground level in some cases. In addition, some of the cruiser’s weaponry was still intact, which made mech assault problematic. They could weather brief exposure to their strong anti-air batteries, but one square hit from a main cannon was all it would take to knock a mech down, and given the narrow confines of the streets they were fighting on several of the approaches were all but death traps, which forced the mechs to attack through a limited number of approaches that the lizard ground troops had heavily reinforced.

The other remaining cruisers were now dropping reinforcements directly onto the downed cruiser and pushing back forcefully to carve out a niche within the city that they could hold against the mechs. Meanwhile, they’d discovered the underground network of tunnels and chambers that ran beneath the city and beyond and had been fighting desperately to push down into those areas, knowing that they stood their best chance underground where Star Force air and orbital power couldn’t get to them.

The mechs still could, however, and had been stalling their subterranean advance, but with more and more lizards being poured into the effort it was only a matter of time before they broke through, especially given the amount of anti-mech equipment being brought in. Larger and larger portable turrets were popping up on the streets, almost as if the lizards were custom designing them to meet the needs of the battle.

Booby traps were also beginning to pop up on the defensive lines and had forced the ground teams to move cautiously around the perimeter, buying even more time for the lizards to press underground. Paul knew they were pushing the enemy to the breaking point, but their adaptability and industrial resourcefulness still posed a significant threat should they be able to establish a secure base of operations to work out of…and if they did manage to get set up underground it would all but disable their primary weapon against the lizards, that being their orbital bombardment.

Taking the grounded cruiser out of the equation was critical, so Paul and the other three trailblazers had opted to try something a bit reckless. Skeet and gunship assaults on the shield had successfully brought it down, but only after a massive salvo of missiles…something they couldn’t maintain indefinitely. While the skeets then tried to disable as many shield generators as they could the mantis had sped them down to the hull and into one of the newest breach points, intent on getting them into the ship before the shields regenerated and closed over the hole.

“Well we went nowhere fast,” Morgan commented as the four of them were crammed into a deep, but unopen crater in the hull, the bottom of which Paul and Jason were standing on as they dug through melted and sheered components, pulling out what they could pry loose with their armored hands.

“Patience, young Jedi,” Jason said, ripping out a long section of pipe and seeing it catch on fire as the contents spilled out onto a hot piece of metal. “Whoa,” he commented as the entire section became a flame thrower until the pressure ran out a few seconds later.

“There,” Paul said, ignoring the bits of burning liquid that were dripping down onto his armor as he pulled and pried his way through more bits of the ship until he got to a solid, flat panel. “Morgan?”

The ranger set her pack down and reached inside, moving various contents around until her hand came up with a small explosive bar which she tossed to him.

Paul set it into the position he wanted then smooshed it down into a flatter ‘pancake’ to give them a wider breach point rather than a deeper one…or so he hoped. He also didn’t know what was below them, exactly, but there should have been a series of rooms based off the schematics they’d recovered from the Bounty, and he was fairly sure that the flat section below him was the ceiling of one of them.

Paul set the timer chip imbedded into the explosive playdoh for five seconds then backed away from the spot a couple of meters, pushing Jason a bit farther away until he bumped up against Rafa’s leg. Both of the higher situated Archons on the sloped crater covered their packs with their armored bodies and waited for the blast.

When it blew several pieces flew out and hit Paul and Jason in the armor, scratching and bouncing off randomly, but most of the blast was directed upwards into the shield. It flared into a cascade of tiny bright speckles then returned to invisible as if it were nothing more than a bug zapper that had just caught a gnat. The pieces of that ‘gnat’ rained back down on the Archons, covering them in a wash of dust and smoke.

“We through?” Rafa asked as Paul moved back over to check the blast point.

To answer his question both Paul and Jason pulled their rifles off their backs and fired down at a lizard looking up through the newly formed hole. A moment later Paul dropped through the tight fit, followed by a pair of rifle shots, then everything went silent as Jason followed him through.

“Clear,” Paul reported, then Rafa and Morgan began to wedge their packs through the breach.

Jason headed for the nearest door in what looked like a service area with tables full of partially assembled components and bins of replacement parts and took up guard duty. Apparently there had only been one lizard in the room, which made sense if most of them were fighting down below the ship, but there was no way of knowing how many more were nearby.

Jason held position while Paul found another entrance on the other side as the other two Archons hauled their cargo through the blast point, which in Morgan’s case had to be partially unloaded and passed down to make it small enough to squeeze through. After her pack came down the ranger followed and quickly repacked everything she’d taken out, then moved up behind Paul and tapped him on the shoulder.

He lead her and Rafa out into a smaller hallway than those they’d encountered on the jumpship as Jason ran to catch up, abandoning his position at the other doorway. The foursome traveled together down a third of the length of the ship, only seeing and shooting seven lizards on the way before they split up into pairs with Jason and Rafa heading for the primary shield power generator and Paul and Morgan headed over to the twin reactor that powered the main weapons.

The third major power generator on the ship fed the propulsion systems while other smaller ones serviced support systems, essentially giving the cruiser three ‘hearts’ as opposed to the single power sources that fed all Star Force ships, save for backups. It was yet another design variation that Paul was interested in studying after all this was over, along with several other ingenious designs he intended to steal from the enemy.

When he and Morgan got to the power core they had to fight through several guards…or engineers, he couldn’t be sure which because they were all armed. A lot of lizards on the jumpship hadn’t been, so he wasn’t sure exactly what these had been positioned here for, but they were all the ‘standard issue’ variety.

With Paul covering the area Morgan began unpacking several large explosives from her bag of goodies and positioning them around the room for maximum effect, most of which went along the wall that butted up against the reactor. She didn’t use all of her stores, for the idea was to knock it offline rather than trigger an overload, seeing as how they were still inside the ship. The lizards might not have a problem going kamikaze, but for any and all Star Force troops that was one of the few taboos they had.

Killing yourself might serve a purpose today, but you wouldn’t be around for the battles to come tomorrow…and given how long Archons lived, ‘tomorrow’ could be hundreds, if not thousands of engagements. With that in mind, passing up a kill or victory to stay alive made much more tactical sense when you considered the long term implications.

With their battlemap functional on the cruiser, and everywhere else in the city now that they’d hit and eliminated the other jamming sites, the two groups met up again in the lower aft section of the ship, well away from the explosives they’d just planted. It felt odd to Paul to be running around an almost empty ship, as far as crew were concerned, but he wasn’t about to complain about their good fortune…though he was double checking every turn they took, waiting for some nasty surprise that seemed to be lurking at the edge of his senses.

Morgan pulled out her detonator and held it in the air until Rafa did the same, then both triggered their charges simultaneously as Paul mentally crossed his fingers.

A sharp jerk shook the ship, knocking Paul into Jason and Jason into the wall, but that was the worst of it. Several vibrations followed, probably resulting from secondary explosions, but power to the section of the ship they were in remained steady and the four Archons looked around for a few seconds, waiting for something else to happen, but nothing did.

“Next?” Morgan asked.

“Propulsion and comms,” Jason answered, “but let’s hold off detonation and see if we can’t take control of the ship. There don’t seem to be very many onboard,” he said, glancing at Paul who nodded back, thinking the same.

“I’ll go with Morgan,” Rafa offered. “You two go do your thing.”

With barely a nod of recognition Paul and Jason headed off to the right while Rafa and Morgan went left, both knowing that the faster they got control of/disabled the ship the better it would be for their assault forces fighting outside.

Cora fired off both plasma cannons from her Neo’s forearms sending two streaks of blue into a lizard anti-vehicle hovering tank as she darted across an intersection, popping into view for a couple of seconds then passing behind another building on the other side. Both shots hit true and took down its shields, kissing the hull beneath with a warm bath of air but doing no damage. As Cora slowed her running mech to a halt a madcat walked out across the intersection from behind her, torso twisted to the left, and fired off its larger plasma cannons, one of which missed high but the other hit dead center on the plasma turret up top and decapitated the machine.

It didn’t explode or drop to the ground, but its primary weapon was gone making it no real threat to the mechs unless it tried to ram them in the legs.

“Cora, I think the cruiser’s shields are down,” Jasmine said as her mech also finished crossing the intersection into cover. “One of my shots missed high and I could have swore it hit the hull.”

“Did you take a hit?” Cora asked, passing the raggedy mech as she turned around and headed back to the intersection.

“Just some spit from the small ones,” she said, referencing the pair of anti-personnel vehicles that had what amounted to a pair of plasma gatling guns on top sitting side by side giving it the appearance of an old fashioned police car. The plasma shards were very small, smaller than the anti-air vehicles they had roaming around and barely bigger than the lizards’ rifles…except that these could fire nonstop, pumping out 5 shots per second, and with two of them per vehicle they made for quite the killer of infantry when they were stupid enough to come out of cover. Fortunately Star Force infantry wasn’t stupid, and the Canderians had gotten quite adept at taking out the dangerous vehicles with shoulder firing rocket launchers.

Cora poked the left side of her mech out into the intersection and raised her arm up, aiming above the lizard blockade and fired off a quick plasma lance into the cruiser…which did in fact bypass the shields and hit the hull.

“They are down,” Cora said, pulling back behind cover for a moment as the ‘coppers’ hit the building with dozens of rounds of plasma fire, putting a trio of scratches on her mech’s arm. “Jason, what’s your status?”

There was a long pause, during which Cora got set up with Jasmine at her back for another attack, this one of a more direct variety.

“Bridge secure,” Jason finally responded.

“Good,” Cora said, flexing her hands that were now free of motor control since the plasma cannons in her forearms were active. “Did you take the shields down?”

“Yeah, long time ago.”

“What…give a girl a heads up next time, jeez.”

“I thought it would be rather obvious…hold on, how’s this for a heads up. Paul thinks he’s got their helm control worked out.”

“Copy that,” Cora said, walking forward and turning the corner. “Let’s go,” she told Jasmine over the comm, then started firing at the rightmost copper with both cannons while holding to the right side of the street so Jasmine could have a firing line down the left.

The mechs were more than 250 meters away from the blockade, but Cora’s neo crossed that space rather quickly. Jasmine’s madcat caught up soon enough after she negotiated the turn and got up to a cant legged run, hopping with each step as she fired off both her plasma cannons and the few missiles she had left. Both of the coppers were taken out before Cora got up to the blockade and started pounding the infantry stupid enough to remain out in the street…then a bolt of green plasma flashed by her mech’s head and hit the madcat in one of the missile boxes, sheering it off with an internal explosion, courtesy of the remaining missiles inside.

Cora kicked one of the vehicular barricades aside and made room for the less agile madcat to pull up behind cover at the next intersection as the second lizard blockade down the street started to punish the mechs for their frontal assault. It was located halfway down the road to the next intersection where there was a third blockade standing guard over a longer stretch of road that led to the cruiser, which was sitting on several crushed buildings with a narrow gap underneath for infantry traffic and the coppers to get through…the rest of their vehicles were too tall, apparently, and had to skirt around the perimeter of the ship to get to the other side.

As Cora ducked to the left side of the intersection, firing back and hitting the shields on the ‘shade’ that was firing at them, for the vehicle’s design gave a fair imitation of a sundial, there was a mild earthquake that she heard rather than felt rumble across the area. When she ducked her neo back out and fired off another volley of plasma she could see daylight expanding beneath the cruiser as it very slowly lifted off from the buildings it had been sitting on.

“Aim for the pyro behind the shade,” Cora told Jasmine.

“Which one?”

“I only saw one…hit whichever you can. I think we’re about to get some air support.”

“Copy,” Jasmine said, walking her mech out and kicking the smoking remains of one of the dead coppers aside as she fired simultaneously with Cora as her Neo came out and crossed behind her larger mech. Their combined plasma salvo hit the pyro on the left and got at least something through its shields, but Jasmine couldn’t be sure if it was out of commission or not.

Another green orb flashed by, nicking the madcat’s left arm but not cutting all the way through the armor. One good thing about the shades was the fact that they were slow firing and didn’t track well when rotating, designed more like a mobile artillery unit than a tank, but made all the more deadly by the confined streets they were fighting in. They’d already lost two mechs in Cora’s unofficial unit, leaving only the pair of Archons left to probe this side of the cruiser’s defenses while the main mech assault was occurring on the far side.

By now the lizard cruiser was well up into the air and climbing higher by the second, lifting straight up, Cora thought, because Paul probably hadn’t figured out where the throttle was yet. That part didn’t matter, so long as the ship was out of the way, and as predicted a squadron of fast moving skeets flashed over their mechs and took out the shade with a hail of plasma fire and at least one bomb being dropped. She didn’t know what they were loaded with, but whatever it was did the trick nicely and even took out the pair of pyros and the infantry around them.

Her sensors did spot one of the skeets pull up damaged, so apparently the pyros had gotten off some return fire. That skeet crisscrossed with dozens of others coming from the far side after making strafing runs there. The immediate area was filled with aircraft for a few moments then they dispersed out to the fringes before circling back around to begin a second wave of support strikes.

“Let’s push on,” Cora insisted, seeing that the blockade ahead of them had partial damage, but at least one copper there was still active.

“Right behind you,” Jasmine confirmed, slowly kicking the wreck of the shade out of her way before bounding off down the street again. “They are so toast now.”

10

August 13, 2266

Epsilon Eridani System

Corneria

Paul watched from a command nexus in his Clan Saber colony as the rail gun rounds fell from orbit onto the last lizard base on Corneria, pummeling through its already breached shields and laying waste to their infrastructure. A ground team was standing by to insert after the deadly rain ceased, waiting in a fleet of dropships and mantises that Paul had given the go ahead signal to launch ten minutes ago. By the time they arrived the majority of the base’s defenses would be down, as nearly all the buildings would be, but there was always something left intact after bombardment and Star Force had gotten lots of practice over the past months executing just this sort of a cleanup operation.

With the Bounty captured and this last base being taken out the lizard invasion was grinding to a halt. No new reinforcements had entered the system, as far as they could tell. They did now have access to the jumpship’s sensors so they weren’t completely blind to lizard naval incursions, but its sensors were still line of sight and limited in range, which Paul had thoroughly tested using their captured cruiser once they’d patched up the hull and made other repairs.

The jumpship now sat in a lazy orbit far above Corneria where it could watch over all but a small approach vector as an army of techs worked to repair the extensive damage to the ship while learning more about the enemy’s technology…especially their seed-like industrial capability, which allowed them to produce, Paul had discovered, an entire tech tree all the way up to building new jumpships if their inserted colonies were allowed to grow to a sufficient level.

Already Paul had built several of their ground vehicles and aircraft using just that technology in his own lizard base situated a few hundred miles north of Clan Saber. Disassembling and reverse engineering the tech was proving to be much harder, so for the sake of study Paul was following the lizard’s path and using the intact pieces they’d recovered to build new ones, both to give the techs more samples to tear apart and to give him and the other Archons pieces to field test new weaponry and tactics against.

Next to their lizard colony was a large section of forest that had been cleared out and designated the ‘battle range’ where they could conduct their weapon tests. Thanks to some handiwork on Jason’s part all the lizard vehicles could be remote piloted by a dummy mechanism placed inside each vehicle and aircraft that would relay control prompts in Star Force terminals to mechanical arms and button depressors that would act as if they were a lizard sitting at the controls.

Rigging up Star Force tech to remote control their own craft was much easier, and once they had the kinks worked out Jason, Paul, Greg, and every other trailblazer on the planet began devoting a portion of their time to the war games, feeling out weaknesses in the enemy’s and their own tech, prompting redesigns and altogether new models as they prepared for the day when the lizards would return in what everyone mutually agreed would be much greater force.

That’s why they hadn’t waited to begin experimenting until all the lizards were gone from the planet. Taking down and cleaning out the remaining lizard bases was time consuming and costly in terms of manpower and hours, all the while the rest of the planet was still on alert but had nothing else to do. Multi-tasking was one thing Star Force, and especially the trailblazers, were good at so even as the last lizard base fell another one was growing on the other side of the planet under Star Force’s control.

Today’s orbital bombardment was going as expected. Though they never did get a full count of how many cruisers were in play, none had been seen over the past 2 months. The damage done to those remaining had rendered them visible on short range sensors, at minimum, and Star Force had made a point of hunting them down across the vast tracks of the planet’s forest as they tried to escape and lay low rather than returning to base to effect repairs.

Oddly enough none made a run for space, even though Paul figured that was probably their best alternative. It was true that they had nowhere to go, for the gravity drives in the cruisers were too weak for all but a very slow retreat across the stars without the aid of a jumpship, during which it’d take them dozens, if not hundreds of years to return to their homeworld. If one or more had escaped the system by that means Paul was willing to let them go, knowing that by the time they whistled up any support Star Force would be ready to fight the war they’d be bringing back with them.

“How we doing?”

Paul half turned around inside the nexus, glancing behind him even though he recognized the voice.

“I didn’t realize you were here. They’re showing almost no signs of movement at all.”

Jason walked inside the holographic barrier and suddenly the sensor scans from orbit became visible, along with several side views from scout craft they had flying around the perimeter over the forest.

“Think we exhausted their reverses or they scurried off elsewhere?”

“A few vehicles escaped into the tree line,” Paul said, pointing at the virtual screen in front of them. “But I haven’t spotted a single kirby, gunship, or fighter taking to the air.”

“Burrowing again?”

Paul shrugged. “We’ll find out shortly. I’d like to think this is the end of their rope, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they changed the game again.”

“Who’s to say the Hycre found them all?”

“Exactly. I’ll concede this is probably the last of their major bases, but if I was them I’d have created a few subterranean ones elsewhere after it became evident that we could target and take their shields down from orbit.”

Jason rubbed his chin distractedly. “I don’t think they were ever playing defensive, and while you might consider that to be a long term offensive strategy, I doubt they’d agree. They’re too aggressive. Cagey, I’ll give them, but their general mindset seems to be hit rather than cower.”

“They’re adaptable,” Paul differed. “They may prefer to bust in through the front door, but take that option away and they’ll go in through a window.”

“As far as subterranean bases go…”

“Clan Saber is holding off construction until we eliminate this base. I’ve got three sites tagged but I don’t want to give away their location to prying eyes. You?”

“Clan Sangheili is expanding underneath our current facilities and will branch out from there, but we’re not establishing any separate sites. I want the option of reinforcement and evacuation retained for all our bases, including camouflaged bolt holes on the surface. The lizards are too good at frontal assaults for us not to have a means of flanking them.”

That they were good at their initial, mass strikes. Paul had personally headed up numerous hunter teams scouring the remains of Corneria Prime for lingering lizard presence, getting much more widespread view of the battle damage in the process. Most of the city’s buildings still stood, but two thirds of them had received significant damage, the worst of which was the area where the cruiser had landed, crushing several underneath.

The insides were another story, for the lizards had trashed and gutted every building they came across, funneling the raw materials they desired to their onsite factories to produce the barricades and turrets that they had quickly spread out across the city, while leaving other materials strewn about in a very untidy fashion.

Jason’s assertion was correct. The lizards did favor the frontal, ‘we will dominate’ assault profile he referenced, but it was their secondary tactics that were the more impressive. Paul didn’t doubt that they’d had many long centuries, if not millennia, to iron out their battle regimen and tweak it against dozens of races. They were a formidable enemy, more so than he thought Jason gave them credit for, though he would never suggest that his friend was taking them lightly. He knew better than that, but from a purely strategic perspective Paul was growing more and more convinced that there was additional levels of depth to their cunning that weren’t made readily apparent, hidden beneath their often distracting aggression.

“How long do you think we have?” Paul asked.

“I would hope decades, but I get the feeling you think it’ll be sooner than that.”

“I think we just earned ourselves a breather…and that we have far too few jumpships to feed us the reinforcements we need to shore up the planet before they come back.”

“Can’t argue with you there. What are the techs saying about getting the Bounty jumping again?”

“On their own, nil. The only chance we have is to build new parts for the gravity drives, which we can if we expand their captured infrastructure far enough to include an orbital shipyard.”

“Not soon enough then?”

“No.”

“Alright then. Assuming we finish up here without any unforeseen problems I’m hitching a ride on the next jumpship back to Earth. Someone needs to bring Davis and the others up to speed in person, and I want to get back before round 2 begins.”

“We need to halt all other expansion until we can solidify our supply lines,” Paul reminded him. “As much as I want to be charting new systems, we can’t spare a single jumpship right now, let alone start setting up new colonies we can’t defend. We’re lucky the lizards only hit us here, and hopefully it’s here they’ll hit us again. We’re more vulnerable than it seems and I’m glad they’re not in a position to exploit that vulnerability.”

“Is that your way of saying we need to focus our jumpship shipments to local industrial growth?”

“That would be on my wish list, yes, but make sure Davis understands that we need Sol building jumpships by the dozens, no matter how drastically he has to rework our shipbuilding infrastructure.”

“I’ll get it done,” Jason promised as a man walked up behind the nexus.

“Sirs,” the control room officer interrupted politely.

“What is it?” Paul said, turning away from the view of the continuing orbital bombardment as it shattered the debris piles that were all that was left of the lizard buildings.

“The Hycre artifact is…acting up again.”

Paul and Jason exchanged glances.

“Finish them off,” Jason said. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Keep me updated,” Paul said as his friend walked off with the man and left the control room. Two levels up and a few hundred meters to the east they came to an empty room that had been rededicated to the study of the Hycre probe after it had been moved from Corneria Prime during the first day of the assault on the city.

“You weren’t kidding,” Jason said as the artifact floated in the center of the room, flashing like a strobe light from alternating crystalline segments in a fast and erratic pattern. Two other techs were present, one of which shrugged when Jason looked at him.

The trailblazer walked forward and touched the main body…with no effect. Frowning he proceeded to touch each of the tendrils until finally one contact stopped the light show by turning on every component’s glow at the highest setting, and all in vivid pink.

“What did you do?” the control room officer asked.

“Not a clue,” Jason admitted, then a long screech sounded, quickly followed by a holographic line forming that started just above his head and extended down to a half meter off the ground…then a second one began at the top next to the first one and continued the pattern.

“Where’s the damn mute,” he complained, realizing that they were receiving a message directly from the Hycre, which meant they had to be somewhere in the system.

“I don’t know,” one of the techs said walking up to the device as if to look for the off button, but Jason put a hand on his arm to stop him. “Rhetorical question.”

“Oh,” the man said, retreating to his seat as the sound finally stopped. The text line continued on for a few seconds, catching up with the audio, then stood glowing in deep purple characters as Jason tried to read it, but he couldn’t pick out more than a few words. He hadn’t spent much time with the device, and his Hycre wasn’t nearly as good as his lizard…which also sucked.

“Can any of you read that?”

“A little,” one of the techs said walking up closer to better see the intricacy of the tiny symbols. “Communication…agreement…enemy…food fight…travel.”

“Wait…food fight?”

“That’s what it says, I think.”

Jason turned to look at the control room officer. “Comm,” he said, holding out his hand.

The man took his comm piece off his ear and handed it to the Archon, who slipped it on and ran through the audial menu.

“Paul, get over here. I’ll switch off with you if want someone in the booth, but it looks like we’ve just received a message from the Hycre and I need you to translate.”

“Aren’t there language techs there?”

“They came up with ‘food fight.’”

Paul sighed. “Stay there, I’m on my way.”

He typed in a last few commands, one of which was for the ships in orbit to fire off two more rounds each then to cease bombardment, then he gave Morgan the go ahead for the ground op before powering down the nexus and heading over to the artifact room.

“Just this?” Paul asked as he walked in and saw the lines of text floating in between the probe and Jason in glowing holo.

“It came through in audio, which we had to suffer through, then recorded it in text.”

Paul bit his lip as his brain started to work overtime trying to recognize and align the symbols. Each had different connections that imparted different meanings, similar to verb tense without there actually being any words. All their symbols were nouns, sort of, so it was quite a brain teaser to try and reconstruct their script into an English sentence.

“Anything?” Jason asked when Paul started to rub his forehead.

“I don’t recognize half of the vocabulary, but I can look it up later. The gist of it is that they want to formalize terms of an alliance against the lizards…and I think they’re sending ships. A lot of ships.”

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