Star Force: Resurrection (SF84) (Star Force Origin Series) (6 page)

“There are 283 races that we have discovered here,
though we have not visually inspected them all as of yet, and some of them were
being kept strictly as a food supply and some of those will need sanctuary
status. Priority has been on eliminating the lizards and making sure they
didn’t kill off the prisoners. Thankfully that hasn’t happened, but we couldn’t
take chances. All the races here are in bad physical, and especially mental
states, but they’re worth salvaging.”

Paul sighed. “You might think I’m just getting
sentimental, but I’m not. We have a huge opportunity here to reshape Star
Force…not that we need it, but this is too good to pass up. We already have a
lot of wards, and this will more than double the count, but I think we can get
some full factions out of the Kvash and others someday down the road and I
think we should be gearing them towards that immediately, not using a ‘wait and
see’ system.”

“We didn’t know these guys would be here, so we’re
already a step behind. I want this to be the last lapse and I need you to work
your magic on this. We’re going to have to evaluate the new guys, but as far as
the Kvash are concerned this is what I want to do…”

6

June 7, 3204

Krachnika
System
(lizard capitol/homeworld)

Semtric

Greg-073 sat on a stool in the nexus onboard his
command ship, looking down at the lizard world of
Semtric
as his fleet bombarded the surface relentlessly in the face of hundreds of
cleansing beams and a scattering of new lizard weapons that packed even more of
a punch. He was losing drones rapidly as the
lizards
targeted individual ones with multiple strikes, but Greg had so many in play
that it was only a matter of time before one of the shields on the surface
collapsed.

That happened about 20 seconds later, with him
adjusting fire to the few key facilities in that newly exposed area, then on to
the next closest intact shield. One of the new big beam gun batteries fell
silent but the onslaught coming up from the surface continued. This was the
second primary planet in the system to be assaulted, with troops already on the
surface of
Kennfrit
battling to remove the lizards
from that rock. Star Force wasn’t waiting to cherry pick these one at a time,
and as long as the fleets were here they might as well strip the defenses off
the other planets ahead of freed up ground troops being ready to assault the
second world and shipyard ring simultaneously.

Another shield and battery went down under the fire of
Paul’s fleet, then two more fell to Rio’s and Olivia’s. The longer it took to
punch a sizeable clear zone down to the planet the more drones they would lose,
so the trailblazers had decided to mount a huge fleet action and pound this
planet’s defenses as fast as possible to minimize damage taken. The assault on
Kennfrit
had cost them heavily in terms of drones due to the
unforeseen damage of the new lizard weapon systems and they didn’t want to
repeat that, so they were literally throwing everything they had at this one
and giving the lizards too many targets to choose from.

The big beam weapons were packing a considerable
punch, but their rate of fire was low. Still, each time one fired they were
hitting the smaller drones in the fleet and killing one with each shot. Destroyers
on up could survive a hit, but their shields would be gone as well as most of
their armor. It was a tradeoff that Star Force was having to make in order to
get through the intense surface defenses that the planet contained…and had Star
Force tried to eliminate all of the anti-orbital batteries on a single world
from orbit, they would have lost most of their fleet in the process.

That’s how well defended these capitol worlds were,
and the homeworld of
Yamitar
looked to be no
different…save that it was some 38% larger than this one. That meant even more
guns in range and a lesser curvature to bring others out of line with the
targets in extreme low orbit. All six of these worlds were nightmares, but
nightmares that had to be taken down and Star Force was going to get the job
done slowly but surely.

The shipyard ring around this world had already been
plucked of defenses, but there were no ground troops onboard yet. They were all
down on
Kennfrit
expediting that invasion as much as
possible. Its shipyard ring had gone to make the minefield, so in that way the
lizards had saved Star Force some time, not requiring them to conquer it first or
splitting their numbers with the ground assault.

With a hole now for his fleet to expand upon, Greg had
a group of drones suddenly dive towards the surface. The lizards knew what was
coming and several cleansing beams readjusted their attacks to target them,
missing most but nailing a destroyer and a frigate that were covering for the
single special drone inside their tightly packed formation. There was also a
shield ship with them providing extra protection in addition to the speed they
were coming down into the atmosphere with.

When they got close enough the secondary surface
defenses opened up, adding a lot of shield loss and damage to the drones but
they managed to get their charge down to the cityscape of the mildly wrecked
target that Greg’s fleet had first hit. Most of the buildings were intact for
the simple reason that they didn’t waste time targeting them when they had
other nearby massive shield plates to take down.

The drones stuck with their special cousin with another
destroyer dropping to the ground and ramming a building as it was knocked out
while the group angled into a horizontal direction that was skimming over
building tops and heading for the edge of the clear area. They kept low enough
that the big guns couldn’t target them, having to fly between buildings part of
the time all the way over to the next closest city, one that wasn’t under
attack yet. It had a plate shield up high overhead ready to absorb a lot of
punishment with its rigid design, but it wasn’t protecting laterally.

The drones slipped under that shield height,
delivering their demolition twin to the edge then turning back, staying down in
the buildings and beginning to shoot targets of opportunity now that they were
on the planet. A minute later there was a huge explosion underneath that shield
dome near the city center that leveled hundreds of buildings…but more importantly
the shield plate dropped thanks to the kamikaze drone. The time and firepower
needed to take that shield down conventionally would have cost Star Force
hundreds of drones, so economically the tradeoff was worthwhile, even though
Greg didn’t have very many of those drones left. Most had been used against the
first planet.

Neither he nor the others wanted to wait for a lot
more to come, so as soon as they had a decent supply of them they’d decided to
attack, sick of having to tolerate these guys nearby as they assaulted another
world.

As Greg oversaw his portion of the bombardment he
raised an eyebrow when he saw the
Excalibur
dive down towards the surface with a flock of drones in tow. A lot of them
didn’t make it, but his big donut did and parked itself over the city as a few
cleansing beams nicked the top of it before it had blasted the buildings below
it low enough for the ship to depress far enough to be out of the firing line.

The drones with it did the same, lowering into gaps
between buildings and firing into them without bothering to worry about the
lizards inside. A surrender offer had been given prior to the attack, and
subsequently ignored. The lizards would have many opportunities to surrender
going forward, but for right now Star Force was going to forcefully blow a hole
in the lizard planetary defenses and it looked like Paul was taking a more
direct approach than the others. He was using the tiny bit of his fleet that
had made it down to the planet to chew apart the buildings and expand the area
of destruction that would eventually connect to Greg’s region and others
nearby, fully forming the ground invasion corridor that would then be used to
establish a foothold on the planet.

He watched what Paul was doing off and on, noticing
that he was overly pounding the same ground rather than moving on once the
nearby buildings were down. That did make the rubble shield against
subterranean lizard tunnels and structures more even and compact, but he
guessed Paul was doing it because he hated the idea of trapping lizards under
the rubble to slowly die…so he was blasting everything so hard that it was
unlikely that anything would survive from the upper city.

That was one way of going about it for sure, and
typical Paul, with Greg noting that he was going to end up being more efficient
with his grounded warships than his own demolition drone attack had been so
long as Paul didn’t encounter stiff resistance from ground defense turrets. He
doubted that, but could see a lot of fire coming from the surrounding city that
Paul’s shields were shrugging off, including occasional explosions that he knew
were not coming from Star Force weaponry and were far larger than lizard
infantry missiles could account for.

He hadn’t noticed those on the first planet, and they
were nearly one third of the way across its surface.

What other
little surprises do these guys have waiting for us?

12 years later…

“Liam?” Paul asked over the comm.

“Just about ready. This beast is fat and fighting the
accuracy needed. She’s not ready for this, you know?”

“Doesn’t have to be pretty.”

“It won’t be,” Liam assured him from onboard the
hastily constructed
Devastator
-class
weapons platform. Back on Earth they’d take one of the existing Bra’hem defense
turrets and brought it up to orbit, stuck it in a shipyard, and built a warship
around it. It wasn’t fast, agile, or efficient, and had to be helped here with
the assistance of several jump cradles to get the necessary speed to cross the
distance from Star Force capitol to lizard capitol in relatively decent
time…but it was the most powerful weapon Star Force had at their disposal, not
counting the V’kit’no’sat pyramid defenses.

“Think the lizards even suspect this is coming?”

“Ha…I didn’t even think this was coming until Roger
suggested it.
It’s
nuts, you know.”

“Totally,” Paul agreed.

“Good thing we like nuts. Alright, we’re ready,” he
said as the Devastator sat in very high orbit over the third lizard primary
world. The first one had already been conquered and the ground troops were
heavily engaged on the second. “Keep your fingers crossed.”

“It’ll work,” Paul insisted.

“Yeah, we’ll you’re not the one sitting in it in case
it blows up.”

“How’s it going to blow up?”

“You know what I mean. Everyone clear?” Liam said
unnecessarily, as he could see the battlemap well enough. “Here goes.”

Paul watched from an external view as the huge ship
fired what looked like a tiny green beam down at the planet. It stretched out
farther than any of the lizard weapons could even hope to reach, traveling some
149,000 miles to where it hit the first lizard defense shield on this planet
while the fleet also sat outside of anti-orbital defense range.

A close up view of the surface showed that green
needle hit the shield plate. It hesitated ever so slightly then punched
straight through and melted the building beneath it. The vaporized material
mushroomed out and exploded into nearby buildings, looking like a water balloon
smash from afar only save the fact that this was actually solid rubble and not
soft liquid.

Paul smirked. A one shot kill. Perfect.

“Not bad,” he told Liam with a bit of skepticism. “You
blow up yet?”

“
Noooo
,” he said
sarcastically as he studied various readings as the weapon recharged.
“Adjusting for second target. Ready to fire in 32 seconds.”

Paul waited and watched as the second green needle
popped another lizard balloon and detonated a building beneath much like the
first…both of which had been the shield generator towers, ensuring that they
would not be regenerating to cover those cities again.

“Well done,” he said in all seriousness.

“The Bra’hem is performing as expected. Odd that this
is our first live firing test.”

“Of one this size anyway.”

“Like Davis said, no need to blow up a perfectly good
ship to just to test it.”

“We could have found a lizard jumpship easy enough,”
Paul differed, having wanted to test the weapons on Earth but getting overruled
on that idea. Davis had said he didn’t want to clean up the debris in orbit
after they got done playing and told them they could test fire them all they
wanted when they build one on a Clan world.

“I’d say this is better,” Liam noted.

“Agreed.”

“Nice shot,” Taryn said, joining in on their little
virtual conference. “So we have a lumpy Death Star now?”

Liam laughed. “I’m surprised someone else beat Paul to
that.”

“I’m glad we beat the lizards to it,” Paul said,
deferring their joint merriment. “It’s going to save a whole lot of drones over
the coming years.”

“It’ll be the first thing they target with their
fleets,” Taryn cautioned.

“We don’t have to bring it in early,” Liam differed.
“Wipe out the defenders then bring it in with the ground troops.”

Taryn’s hologram feigned shock. “You mean you
don’t
want to snipe ships with it?”

“If they had an invoker or assault pillar sure,” Paul
answered, “but cruisers would be like swatting at a swarm of mosquitos.”

“Agreed. Nice work you guys. Glad the naval geeks came
through on this one.”

Paul and Liam both glared at her as she smiled and her
hologram disappeared.

“Prick,” Liam pronounced humorously.

“Her braid’s probably too tight,” Paul said as Liam
fired the Devastator again, knocking out yet another of the ‘small’ shield
segments blanketing the planet. “Any negligible variation?”

“Not yet. We’ll see how long this can last. Davis
really should have let us test fire these on Earth.”

“I think he didn’t want us putting on this big of a
fireworks display.”

“People are going to know now,” Liam pointed out.

“Should we edit this bit from the news vids?”

Liam considered that as he set up another firing
angle. “We’ll seal it classified and send it to Davis. He can decide if he
wants to make our possession of the
boomstick
public
or not.”

“
Boomstick
…that’s way better
than Death Star.”

“I have my moments. Too bad Roger isn’t here to see
it.”

“I’m sure he’ll manage to find a way to gloat from
afar,” Paul said smugly, referring to the other piece of their naval
triumvirate that was off hitting smaller lizard worlds low on the galactic
plane. “And he deserves it this time. I didn’t even think about trying this.”