Star Force: Empire (SF58) (4 page)

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

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

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

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

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

4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Timothy marked the one firing at him as his priority
target, then gave the other four mechwarriors their own to deal with as he
fired another lachar shot, peppering the same area of the tank with successive
hits and avoiding the cupolas where he knew the crew were even as they fired
back with their more potent plasma. Eventually he hit the anti-
grav
in the forward section and the tank’s front end dipped
and rammed itself into the muck, leaving the other part still in the air and
the whole thing askew.

Meanwhile the ravens moved up and went right for their
tanks, coming up on them and weathering the plasma storm before firing their
own tiny plasma blasts into key points on the flat hulls, blasting apart the
internal mechanized components and disabling them to the point that they were
no longer able to fly as more tanks flooded into the battle. Eventually there
were so many peppering them that the shields on the mechs began to weaken, with
Timothy again taking the lead with his larger bushwhacker and walking into the
middle of them.

He pulled the power on his mauler back considerably,
then launched the tiny orbs from his mech’s boxy right arm, with the blue
blasts melting into the tank hulls and exploding outward, ripping the vehicles
in half with a single shot as if they were made of nothing more than wood and
paint. The internal components that were being compromised made the explosions
erratic, and more than once Timothy saw the cupolas get hit, often with the
occupants being thrown out with the debris. He didn’t know if they were still
alive or not, but he at least tried to keep from stepping on them as he moved
forward towards the other tanks that were swerving left and right to try and
throw off the mechs’ aim.

It didn’t buy them much time and eventually the last
few tanks turned and tried to run back to base, but the ravens didn’t let them
go, running up behind them at about half their speed and maintaining target
locks long enough to gun them down with either plasma or a few of their
missiles for when they got around one of the bends. Thanks to the battlemap
they were able to fire up and over the forest, hitting the fleeing tanks and
knocking them down in various states of damage, but keeping all of them from
retreating back to base and reinforcing the defenses there.

“Cleanup crews, you’re a go,” Timothy reported to the
dropship along with location tags for each of the downed tanks and some of the
pilots and gunners that were trying to flee across the marshes and into the
forest on foot.

Back in the dropship Veronica waited on her speeder
bike with two passengers seated behind her, finally getting the ‘go’ order and
accelerating out of the bay along with several others. Unlike the mechs the
swampy ground didn’t bother them and they shot out across the waterway on anti-
grav
and quickly caught up to the big warhorses after
several twists and turns in the geography, with the first thing Veronica saw
was a pair of pirates making for the forest to her left.

She veered that way instantly, leaving the other
targets of opportunity to those coming up behind her and wanted to get to these
two before they disappeared in the trees, otherwise they’d have to go on foot
and track them down…something she’d prefer not to do.

The Australian version of a commando lined up her
speeder with the first of the pair and flew straight at him/her/it while
popping out the stinger turret on the front of the bike. The four little
barrels descended out from the otherwise smooth underside and began spitting
the stun-laced paintballs in a flurry, mowing down the first runner and
dropping him into the water.

Veronica swung the bike around quickly and made a
second attack run, likewise stunning the other pirate before flying her
passengers up to where the first went down and dropping one off, who quickly
ran to the unconscious pirate and pulled the
Critel
out of the water before he could drown. Veronica got her other passenger in
position to do the same then flew a lazy circle around the location as the two
got to work, ensuring that their prisoners weren’t dead and having to do a few
chest thumps on the
Gavrosan
to get some water out of
his airways.

Once they were squared away breathing wise the
commandos bound their captives and Veronica picked them up, latching them to
the speeder then flying her unconscious guests back to the dropship for proper
processing. After dumping them off there she returned and picked up her pair of
wranglers and moved on, looking for more to round up and eventually having to
dig through some of the tank debris to pull out those injured while the mechs
continued to move on towards the base and out of sight.

When Timothy came around the last bend the pirate base
came into view just in time for him to see a large transport take off from the
nearby pad and slowly rise up into the air, underneath of which a hail of plasma
fire hit his mech from various ranges. He targeted the closest of the defense
batteries and fired back with a mauler blast that melted the stubby little
turret set into the last of the water to his right before the marsh
transitioned into what had been the tank dock.

There, along the water’s edge, was a straight pier
with a half dozen more turrets spread out, behind which there were more distant
towers and a half dozen other starships that were hurriedly prepping for
launch. Timothy ignored them and the one now gaining distance overhead, knowing
that the navy would deal with them. Right now he had base defenses to take down
and he was walking right into them, meaning he didn’t have a lot of time to
work with before his mech started taking damage.

The other batteries on the pier were outside of mauler
range, so as Timothy walked his mech through the sloshy marsh he took aim at
one of the towers with the rail gun in his left arm and tried for a ranged
shot, nearly missing but clipping the side of the tower and knocking a chunk
out of it as the metallic projectile shot straight through the concrete and
blasted it into a shower of little chunks that rained down on the crews
scrambling about below.

As he did the mechs in the other star began to
approach from a different marsh entrance 90 degrees around the perimeter to the
north and Timothy saw the towers on that side begin to open fire. There were so
many he wondered exactly what the pirates had been planning to defend against,
but they weren’t going to keep the mechs back. Even as a shield warning flashed
in his cockpit the other bushwhacker targeted the same tower with its rail gun
slug finishing the work he’d started.

The entire top half came crashing down, its stalk
severed, taking that battery out of the fight and likewise removing one of the
anti-air turrets that had been on top. That diminished the firepower being
thrown at Timothy only slightly, with him turning to the right and running up
on some of the ground turrets and slagging them with his mauler as the ravens
ran forward drawing fire towards them as they hopped up on the dock and began
crossing solid ground shooting at anything that shot back at them, including
infantry.

As they pressed inward across a large open deck area
that could have accommodated ten times the number of starships that were
present, tiny missiles began sprouting from random points and fired into the
mechs from infantry with portable launchers. The ravens ignored them at first,
mowing down a few more turrets and making sure Timothy wasn’t going down, then
they left the remaining big guns to the pair of bushwhackers and went after the
infantry, firing a mix of stinger barrages and short range energy blasts that
looked like a sprinkler of stun energy delivered via a bubble gum pop. They had
to be very close, but any infantry stupid enough to run up near the ravens got
the energy bubble in the face and went down like someone had hit their off
switch.

Those further away were stitched with a hail of
stingers, of which the mechs could carry a lot and fire with decent accuracy
over range…and what they couldn’t accurately hit they took down with sheer
numbers of projectiles. All across the landing pad/dock area the infantry began
to pile up, both those with weapons and those fleeing to the ships. The
mechwarriors didn’t care who they were, they were all getting stunned and let
the infantry deal with them afterwards.

Timothy’s armor-damaged mech was still fully
operational and he worked with his twin to target and take down the remaining
towers and turrets in their area save for those at the far end that bracketed
the entrance to the base. They were obscured by a ship still sitting on the
deck, with others spaced around similar ‘solid’ areas surrounding the base,
whether it be artificial surface or just hard packed dirt above the waterline.

All of them had to be taken out, so with one of the
fully shielded ravens going first Timothy walked his mech around the parked
starship and pounded the fairly large plasma turrets with his mauler as the
raven played bait and got whacked for it. It lost all shields and got a kiss of
melted armor before Timothy and the other bushwhacker took down the last of the
wall-mounted turrets, then all three began to redeploy around the perimeter of
the base and pick off the others while the two remaining ravens patrolled the
area hunting more pirate infantry and crewers…all the while careful not to step
on those they’d already rendered unconscious.