Star Force: Shame (SF59) (2 page)

They could hide in the system, for sure, just by using
their binary drives and going out beyond the furthest planet where the lizards
couldn’t follow, but they couldn’t make an interstellar jump from out there.
That meant they had to come back in in order to jump out…and give the lizards
time to set up ambushes for them and you were as good as dead in a system packed
this full of warships. That meant Kara had to get her ship out of here before
they had a chance to set up, and with the ship’s capacitors not fully charged
they couldn’t make the same sneak jump as before because they needed more
gravity intensity to make up for the less available power…and that meant
getting a lot closer to the star.

“Damn,” she whispered a moment before they made their
emergency microjump, pulling on multiple planets to get the necessary line
given how they were out of position for a natural jump. With the active sensors
engaged briefly the hologram of the planet they were fleeing gleamed with
detail, most of which Kara missed as the
two
massive rings around the planet caught her attention, previously obscured in
the mass of ships and stations surrounding a world that was half ocean, half
land…with that land covered with lizard infrastructure from shore to shore.

Then the active feeds cut out as they made their jump,
moving over to another planet and pulling a similar navigational feat to come
out of it near the stellar jumpline. They didn’t bother opening up the active
sensors again, for if there was a chance they could make a quick bounce off the
planet’s gravity without being detected then Kara wanted that advantage. The
sensor intensity was not so strong here so there might have been a chance they’d
accomplished that bit of sneakiness, but the Ma’kri didn’t stick around long
enough to find out, making a second microjump at much greater speed 3 seconds
later, just long enough to store up a bit of energy without lowering the main
capacitor charge.

Doing the math en route, they determined how close
they needed to get in order to make the interstellar jump at decent speed and
picked their destination system…an empty star that was on the other side of a diffuse
nebula, but one that she knew the
Ma’kri’s
shields
could protect them from. It was the best option without taking the time to
bounce around the system to a preferable jumpline, and Kara had the feeling
that if they stayed any longer than necessary their odds of surviving this were
going to diminish drastically.

When they came out of their microjump they had to
position around the star slightly, meaning lateral movement that wasn’t speedy.
Kara had them dip into the main capacitor a bit to reduce their time in the
system, but when they came around to their jumpline they could see a cluster of
lizard ships forming up in blockade formation across it, with many more
hurrying in on different trajectories.

Luckily they were further in on the line than where
the Ma’kri was heading, suggesting that for the moment they weren’t being
picked up on sensors…or at least the lag hadn’t transitioned back yet to the
receivers, and from the receivers to the lizards in charge who then had to
issue new deployment orders. They didn’t know the Ma’kri could make jumps
further out, so from their point of view they were quickly bottling up the
system along all available jumplines so they couldn’t get out.

Kara cursed herself for burning this new advantage right
off the bat, but there was no other choice. They had to make this outer jump,
and when the lizards saw them do it, even if on replay weeks later when they
scanned every bit of sensor records they had, they’d learn Star Force had a
greater jump range and not make the same mistake twice.

As the Ma’kri got into position the capacitors that
held an enormous amount of energy for nearly instantaneous release into the
gravity drives opened up and channeled their power into producing the repulsion
necessary against the somewhat weaker field to get them up to speed,
accelerating and shooting them out of the system on what would otherwise have
been a normal/slow jump. That wasn’t altogether a bad thing, for it would
reduce the power required of the shields to protect them from the thin nebula
by decreasing the collision speed with the widely spaced molecules.

But they wouldn’t get there for days, during which
Kara was going to go over every bit of the sensor recordings they’d collected.
She didn’t think they’d be back here anytime soon, nor did she think they could
assault the system unless the lizards left it
underdefended
,
and even then it’d be one hell of a battle if Star Force brought a massive
fleet of drones with it.

No, right now this system was beyond their ability to
hit, let alone take, but at least they knew where it was, and potentially
someday down the road that would allow them to set up a backdoor attack on
those ring shipyards to knock out a significant part of the lizards’ ship
production capability…if she could figure out
how
to take them down.

That was a mental exercise she spent a considerable
amount of her time on during the return trip to the ADZ and still she had no
answers by the time they got back, with Kara filling in the others as to what
she’d found before heading back out again.

2

June 9, 2657

Unnamed System
(Skarron territory)

Regional Capitol

The lizard invoker broke off from its escorts, dipping
lower in orbit and carrying its rainbow energy arcs around it like a giant
shield that obscured view of most of the massive ship. Leaving the cruiser
shield that had been running interference for it, one of the 28 centerpieces of
the lizard invasion quickly moved towards one of the Skarrons’ massive orbital
defense platforms that was even now targeting another invoker with a mass of
heavy lachars and rail gun slugs that were penetrating the destructive cocoon
and making hull impacts.

The other invoker was nearly into physical contact
range, with its energy arcs ripping through Skarron ships that had positioned
themselves in the path of the big ship to slow it down, for their plasma
couldn’t touch the hull given the range of the energy arcs, leaving it little
more than spit by the time it reached the ship, and most didn’t, for the
fluctuating rainbow scattered the plasma where it collided with them.

Already massive hull breaches were occurring on the
other invoker, but it didn’t pull back. The station it was closing on had
already been damaged by an assault pillar that had since been destroyed, with
the attacking ship being the smaller of the two. The Skarron double orb-shaped
construct was larger than both the invoker and assault pillar combined and was
one of six defending the heavily populated Skarron planet. The lizards knew if
they could take this one out now it would save a lot of their smaller ships
later, hence they were tearing at it and willing to sacrifice their bigger
ships if necessary in the tradeoff.

But they weren’t stupid, and seeing that the invoker
wasn’t going to get the job done on its own the other closest nearby abandoned
its fleet to destruction in order to join up with the other, making the tiniest
of microjumps down to the defense station and moving through a scattering of
defensive ships, none of which could do anything to stop the giant chess piece.
It came in on the opposite side from the other invoker, which was now close
enough that its energy arcs were eating through the outer layers of the station
while in turn it was also getting pummeled with plasma that was making it
through the gaps where the energy arcs disappeared on contact with the hull.

The second invoker came in so close it looked like it
rammed the far side of the station, but in truth the hulls never touched. The
energy field did and vaporized hull plating like a glowing hurricane that slowly
moved in closer and closer, consuming more material and literally eating away
at the station. Between the two of them the invokers focused on the narrow mid
section of the station until their energy arcs finally met up and they cut the
station in half.

The first invoker, now heavily damaged, moved into the
gap and began to eat at the upper orb from the interior where there were no
weapons to damage it while the other pulled out and headed for the relief fleet
pouring towards the station. The Skarron ships had just finished mopping up a
lizard formation higher in orbit and were now coming down to hit the bigger
ship, with dozens of juggernauts in the mix that began sniping the invoker from
range with their lachars.

If the invoker allowed that to occur it was doomed to
a slow death, so it accelerated towards the incoming enemy, buying time for the
other one to eat away and finish off the two halves of the station from the
inside out. The juggernauts immediately withdrew, knowing they’d be no match
for the lizard ship up close, and the other Skarron ships went with them,
bullied away by the invoker that could not catch the quicker ships.

All over orbit there were literally hundreds of naval
battles taking place, with the lizards having brought their largest fleet to
date to assault the
Skarron’s
most
rimward
regional capitol. This was the first time the
lizards had assaulted a civilian planet, with all others involved in the war
being pure military civilizations. The one below them now was the source of the
soldiers that continually kept flowing out to the front, and if knocked out
would diminish the Skarrons’ ability to counterattack with any longevity.

But it was going to cost them greatly, for the system
was more heavily defended than any other they’d taken. That was expected, for
the lizards had recovered computer data from damaged Skarron vessels that
included strength analysis and maps of Skarron territory, highlighting this
system as the central strongpoint supporting the rest of the region. Below them
there were over 15 billion Skarrons and 120 billion of their slave races, all
of which were reproducing regularly to supply them with new troops.

There were other worlds similar to this one further
into Skarron territory, but their troops and resources were being funneled
through here en route to the fronts, making this the sweet spot and weak point
of this tiny piece of the Skarrons’ giant empire. The Skarrons knew it as well,
which was why they’d built the enormous defense stations and had a slew of ship
varieties the lizards had never encountered before guarding the system. They
intended to hold this strategic point and the lizards intended to take it away
from them, resulting in an apocalyptic naval battle that was seeing carnage
inflicted to both sides.

The invoker moved through as many debris fields as it
did intact ships as it continuously chased away incoming fleets seeking to aid
the still operation halves of the defense station. Less and less weaponsfire
was coming from them over time as the other invoker slowly chewed apart their
innards, but that was a slow process considering their sheer size and meant the
other invoker had to either come in very close to aid or keep its distance to
avoid the lachars and, more importantly, the rail gun slugs, both of which
would pass right through the energy fields and hit the hull with nearly maximum
effect.

The Skarrons had learned early on that the invokers
had a weakness in that their energy fields needed prolonged contact to inflict
massive damage, racking up power being poured into a target to superheat and
vaporize it, meaning that fast moving objects could pass through with only
minor damage. That was why there were hundreds of new rail gun-armed warships
in the system that had not yet made their way to the front, but that had been
designed specifically to fight the invokers.

So far none of them had made their way to the bisected
station and the pair there, but they were elsewhere hunting the others while
they in turn were using their cruiser swarms to corral the Skarron fleets into
positions where they couldn’t easily redeploy…then the invokers would come
through the masses and run right into them, making almost instantaneous kills
on contact.

The Skarrons were likewise responding with their own
monster ships, far larger than the invokers, that were heading directly for the
lizard cruiser swarms and peppering them with plasma and lachars with such
intensity that they were eating through them almost like the invokers were
eating through the Skarrons’ smaller ships, though not with such a spectacle.
The Skarrons’
Titans
were smaller
than the invokers, barely a third of their size, but covered in so much plasma-resistant
armor that the lizard cruisers could barely scratch them short of hitting them
with thousands of ships…which the Skarron escort warships sought to disrupt
long enough for the titans to do their job.

The outer invoker, doing its job to scare off the
small fleets that came nearby eventually was overwhelmed when three groups of
planetary defenders joined up and hit it with all ‘small’ scale ships, though
for the Skarrons none of their ships were what most races considered to be
small. Taking a page out of the lizards’ play book six of the
Cruiser
-class warships went kamikaze,
accelerating up to considerable speed and plunging into the rainbow vortex
around the invoker.

Their shields went down almost instantaneously, with
their hulls being stripped off their superstructure before they made it all the
way through, but the mass of the innards of the ships survived and plowed into
the invoker like slow, giant rail gun slugs. Within seconds the amount of
energy arcs dipped by about 20%, leaving some bigger holes in the field that
the other Skarron ships then began trying to target, often with their plasma hitting
and being dispersed by the erratic arcs that seemed to defy prediction.

In order to get close enough for the plasma hits to
really register those ships had to enter the kill zone, but when they did they
all did, and like a coordinated swarm of bees they all stung the invoker
simultaneously and from multiple angles. The mass of ships looked like someone
had snuffed out the bright candle for a moment as their hulls ate up and
stopped the energy arcs from cascading from one emitter to another, then there was
a massive series of explosions as the Skarron ships were ripped apart, sending
debris out in all directions like confetti.

But there were enough ships that didn’t get hit, with
the dying ones shielding them from the energy arcs, that they were able to pound
the invoker with clear lines of fire, targeting the emitters and crippling the
lizards’ primary weapon. Some arcs returned and hit more ships, killing or
disabling them but it wasn’t enough. Soon the rest of the emitters were down
and the big ship was just a giant target.

Knowing it was doomed it accelerated, plowing into the
Skarrons that didn’t move out of the way. Below it the other invoker pulled
back from the half of the station that it was almost now buried inside and
moved away, taking some more fire as it came within the targeting lines of the
intact batteries on the station’s hull but those didn’t really matter, it just
had to get clear as the doomed invoker rushed in on its own kamikaze run and
rammed the lower orb.

The big white structure visibly dented as the invoker
buried itself inside, then the concussive force caused that orb to bump into
the other drifting nearby, adding to the damage the first invoker had already
caused. As that damaged chess piece ran up higher in orbit with defensive
cruiser screens rushing down to defend it, the Skarron defense platform showed
only a handful of defensive weapons still online, meaning that the severed and
now otherwise wrecked but still massive structure was essentially out of the
fight.

The lizards had achieved their objective and now the
area where it had held dominance was free for them to move through and engage
the roaming Skarron fleets.

Similar drastic tactics were required to remove the
other giant defense stations from orbit, but with great cost to themselves the
lizards succeeded in killing them all and turning the rest of the assault into
a more or less ‘normal’ engagement. They made sure to stay away from the
atmosphere and extreme low orbit, but eventually the Skarron warships retreated
there, into the firing range of their surface defenses, and created a
stalemate.

The lizards waited, knowing that going down there
would have been needless suicide, so they took possession of orbit and hunted
down and destroyed all the damaged Skarron ships and took out their remaining
orbital infrastructure in the coming weeks, taunting the remaining Skarron
fleet to come out after them but they wisely wouldn’t. Even without the handful
of big chess pieces that had survived, the lizards had the remaining Skarron
ships outnumbered, so a naval fight to try and save infrastructure that they
knew they couldn’t protect would serve no purpose.

But on the other hand the lizards didn’t have anywhere
near enough ships to assault the planet itself and the Skarrons knew it, so
they preferred to preserve their remaining ships and see if the lizards were
stupid enough to press a surface attack.

The stalemate that resulted would last 9 months, with
most of the Skarron ships entering the system unaware of the assault being hunted
down and destroyed before they could make an emergency jump back out or race
down to the planet past the blockade, but eventually the second lizard fleet
arrived as planned, now augmented with data returned from the initial assault
and the ground troop transports that had been missing from the first assault
fleet.

The big chess pieces were not present here, merely
jumpship after jumpship carrying an insane number of cruisers that filled orbit
with hundreds of thousands of ships that waited patiently. The troop transports
stayed back at higher orbits, biding their time, then when the moment was right
the cruiser swarms descended into the atmosphere and took on the remaining
warships, surface batteries, and anti-air capable walkers all at once, counting
on their numbers to give the defenders too many targets to shoot at, leaving
other ships free to become slayers.

It was a tactical move that no trailblazer would ever
consider pulling, for the lizards lost almost their entire fleet in the
following 6 hours, leaving two assault pillars, a damaged invoker, and a light
defensive cruiser screen around the troop transports as all that remained aside
from a few hundred of the ships that had descended into the atmosphere and
lived to tell of it. Most of those were damaged and only partially operational,
but 54 of them had somehow come through the maelstrom untouched and were now in
a position of impunity, for all of the Skarrons’ walkers, warships, and surface
missile batteries had been eliminated, leaving them with nothing to defend
themselves with.

With those handful of cruisers scouring the planet
looking for any defenses that might have been overlooked or quiet, the troop
jumpships began disgorging landing transports that brought the lizard armies to
the ground, and without any walkers to oppose them their tanks reigned supreme
in the ground battles that would follow, with cruiser fire support added where
necessary. The Skarrons did have their aerial forces more or less intact, but
in those troop transports came the lizards’ wisp swarms as well, which flooded
the skies and kept the Skarron fighters occupied long enough for the ground
troops to do their work over the coming 2 years.