Star Force: Proving Ground (SF66) (4 page)

Before she could pull up a count of all markers that
had gone offline, either destroyed or deactivated since the beginning of the
ambush, the command ship began pulling back with large ‘no-go’ boxed popping up
and traveling along with it as large chunks of the ship’s forward end were
falling off and crushing buildings below.

“Oh shit,” she said, realizing just how much damage it
was taking and stopping in her tracks. The Scionate nearly ran over her, but
skidding to a halt a few meters past as they jumped to her outer flank. “Stay
here and be ready to run, warning or not. Keep your eyes up.”

Larissa did likewise, watching both the battlemap and
the sky as the sun returned underneath the retreating edge of the ship. Just
then another thick pink beam hit and a chunk over her fell off. The trailblazer
didn’t move, even as the warning box fell on them at the last moment as the
ship’s computer estimated the general area that was vulnerable. It didn’t have
time to calculate individual pieces, for there wasn’t that much distance for them
to fall, so it was giving generous measurements.

Larissa watched the building-sized chunk detach and
gravity take hold of it. “Stay put,” she said, eyes up as it fell perilously
close, landing on the roof of the building they were hunkered up against and
pancaking the top. She couldn’t see the impact, but a moment later the upper
levels puffed out debris that began to rain down on them, then a waterfall of
material followed it over, soon to add to the wisp debris clogging the street.

“Follow me!”

Larissa took off across the street, dodging a big
piece that came down and taking them into a zone between the dusty waterfalls
that followed. A few bits hit her shields and bounced off, with a huge chunk
hitting and half burying itself in the street to their left while a pile of
debris fell and built up on top of it, as well as one to their right.

The next thing she knew dust from both flowed out like
clouds and covered the area, making it so none of them could see what was
around them.

Larissa clicked on her Pefbar and mentally linked to
the two Scionate, giving them a bit of her psionic vision as well as the
ability to warn them if any more chunks came down towards them, though she
couldn’t see the top of the building and would only have a split second to
react if something did come within her range. Sending calming ‘hold’ orders
telepathically, she had them wait with her while the building continued to
crumble, eventually losing the majority of the top 5 levels as the command ship
segment imbedded itself as the crowning ornament on the lizard structure.

“I think we’re in the clear,” she said, mentally
telling them which way to head. “Let’s try and get out of these clouds…then we
have a ground war to fight.”

“The lizard fighters are gone,” one of the Scionate
commented as he looked at the battlemap.

“Most of them,” Larissa agreed. “We’ll have troop
transports on the way and mechs coming in through the gash shortly.”

“Are we evacuating or fighting this out?”

“The wounded will be pulled out, but we’re definitely killing
these bastards here and now.”

The pair of Scionate growled appreciatively inside
their armor.

“Thought you’d feel that way. Come on, let’s go find
that group we were just playing with and reintroduce ourselves.”

4

July 6, 2755

Pagaliss
System (lizard
territory)

Varasiss

Morgan ran ahead of the Ninja Monkey Regulars, leaping
up onto the side of one of the shorter buildings in the city and climbing the
rest of the way to the top. From there she sprinted across to the far side
while her troops circumvented it around the perimeter and began to engage the
lizard infantry on street level that had bunkered themselves behind a series of
what looked to be premade blockades and a courtyard with an overhang that
prevented attack from the air.

Or mostly, for when Morgan reached the edge of the
building she jumped off shallowly and fell down between the wall and the edge
of the giant infrastructure umbrella that was concealing the courtyard,
slipping through the two meter gap and landing on top of a trio of standard
variant lizards that were seated in the shadows below eating some of their
battlefield rations.

With a thought she knocked them and the dozen or so
nearest her to the ground with a Fornax field, then ignored them and ran
further under the canopy towards the back lines of the mass of troops heading
to engage her Clan infantry out and around the corner. She didn’t even bother
to pull out a weapon, merely throwing a few Fornax blasts to her left and right
to stop enemy phaser fire from coming her way as she barreled into the back of the
crowd and punched right into the midst of them, pulling a few aside with
telekinetic grips and tossing them through the air and out of the way, but
mostly she fought her way inside hand to hand until she was buried amongst the
horde.

Suddenly a wave of bodies surged up over her head and
pushed outward, scattering like leaves as she started throwing concussive
energy around. Morgan moved through their ranks like a snow plow, knocking them
aside and unconscious in many situations from the blunt force until she worked
her way up to the front lines and attacked the barricades from behind. They
were several meters thick and seemed to have extruded from the street…and would
have been impossible to blow through with only infantry weapons in any
realistic amount of time, but she spotted a control station imbedded into the
wall on her left as a handful of lizards managed pointblank shots into her
shields.

She tossed them aside casually with another Jumat
burst from her left arm and ran up to the terminal, physically pulling the two
lizards in front of it away and throwing them out behind her before bringing up
a bioshield covering her back as she quickly studied the controls…which weren’t
complicated. There were only two buttons, one that toggled a holographic interface
and another that operated the barricades.

She didn’t have time to explore the hologram and
punched the other button. Agreeably the barricade plates began to retract into
the ground one by one and slowly, opening up first a door-like slit that allowed
the first of her Ninja Monkeys thorough behind the cover of a heavy Knight
shield.

The lizards that had been sniping thorough narrow peep
holes pulled their weapons out of the crack-like gaps and fired on the column
of Star Force infantry appearing, but Morgan took care of them with a series of
Fornax blasts, disabling them long enough for the commandos to come through and
shoot them as they were twitching on the ground.

Her shields kept taking hits, but there were so many
lizards nearby that they could hardly shoot at her without hitting their own
and she wasn’t about to let them get any space by backtracking. The trailblazer
ran with their pullback, sprinting a few steps back into their midst and
scattering them again with consecutive Jumat attacks while her troops shot them
where they fell.

Playing vanguard, she lead her Clansmen further under
the overhand and into their makeshift base, eventually pulling out her own
rifle and helping to finish off the last stragglers before the entire area was
clear and she marked it as such on the battlemap. In that first moment of
freedom she looked around, seeing piles of crates scattered around tables and
what looked like makeshift bunks. The entire ceiling was solid save for the
gaps around the edges on the eastern and western sides. Stretching out her
Pefbar into the structure she saw the internal mechanism that allowed the roof
to retract, meaning this courtyard was originally exposed to the air.

A closer look at the wall she’d fallen down along
revealed several imbedded ladders, meaning that the lizards had a backdoor to
escape should they need to. Seeing that she took to one immediately, climbing
back up to the rooftop and looking around.

There was no one in sight, visually or on her Ikrid
radar. As typical the lizards had fought to the last man, but whoever had
designed this makeshift base had left them an out. Maybe they hadn’t used it
because they knew they could be picked off by the aircraft circling above, but
even having the option was something new for lizard methodology, not to mention
the retractable canopy.

Morgan jumped across the small gap and landed a few
meters down on top of it, feeling it with her Pefbar as she walked across. It
wasn’t just a roof, but an armored one that could take a lot of hits from
aircraft before it was penetrated. This was definitely meant to be an infantry
bunker, and had she not taken the backdoor approach it would have been very
difficult for her troops to fight their way inside. The tops of the barricades
had been open to the air, meaning they’d have had to climb or jump over them to
get to the other side…which explained why so many lizards were pooled and
waiting there to gun them down the moment they did.

This colony was full of surprises, but fortunately
this was going to be one of the last few. Star Force had control of most of the
city by now, with only a few pockets of resistance such as this holding out,
though it would take weeks to search the entire city and properly safe it. They
didn’t have that luxury, for there were many more on the planet that needed to
be conquered. Why this one had so many tricks and traps she didn’t know, but
she betted it wasn’t going to be the only one. They’d have to do some more
thorough scouting before committing to the future engagements, and she planned
to be handling a lot of that herself going forward.

“Archon, we’ve found a tunnel entrance,” someone
reported over the comm.

“Coming,” Morgan said, jogging back over to the gap
and dropping down below the roof, cushioning her fall with another Lachka
field. She saw the location of the commando that had
commed
her and ran over to his position to find a concealed panel in the floor
underneath one of the tables. It was already open and showed a single person
ladder tube heading straight down.

Morgan sensed further than she could see with her
Pefbar, but the terminus was too deep for her to make out, with no minds
present to add any
datapoints
.

“Damn it,” she said, checking her battlemap. “We’ll
have to come back to it later. We need to get moving to point 6. Grab what
replacement weaponry you need and follow me,” she said to everyone in her 33
man unit over the comm.

The pair of Knights ran over to her immediately, their
shields tucked up against one arm leaving the other free to punch or fire from.
They still had some Star Force ammo left, but most of the Regulars were out and
had resorted to using lizard weapons given the 7 hours they’d been out hunting
the bastards down. They were almost done now, with only two or three more
engagements to go before they could head back to a firebase or resupply point
within this city, but until then they’d have to make do.

Morgan had saved a few rounds of her own, using her
Psionics most of the time and doing a lot of damage with her Jumat. She’d
gotten to the point where she could snap necks with it if she applied enough
force at just the right angle and speed, literally giving her the ability to
point her finger and make one of them die, but she’d found it much more
effective in attacking groups solo, or better yet with a fireteam in support to
clean up the easy targets that she knocked askew.

The only Archon in the group, Morgan headed back to
the barricades, seeing that they’d all retracted into the ground and were now
little more than a few paving stones across the street. She ran over them with
the two Knights trailing a step on either side while the commandos formed up
into a column two wide and followed her out with the entire group picking up
speed as they headed on foot to the nearest location that was still seeing
combat.

Cvog
was walking his
Granthor
-class
mech through the lizard streets in line with two others of a similar make as
they transitioned to a waypoint given to them by an Archon. All three orange
mechs were physically torn up, with
Cvog’s
having
lost a third of its shield generators. Still, the designs were so robust that
they were more than capable of chewing up any lizard tanks left roaming about,
let alone able to snuff out any infantry that was stupid enough to oppose them,
shoulder mounted rocket launchers or not.

The Calavari had seen a bit of calm for the last 15
minutes and were now moving about in a patrol pattern that kept them handy in
case any of the last combat teams needed assistance. Most of the other
surviving mechs had already left and headed back to the makeshift firebase set
up within the city’s outer edge near the gash, but
Cvog
and his two senior mechwarriors had pulled one of the last duties, given that
they were the most experienced and the lesser soldiers needed the reprieve more
than they did.

He was fatigued, but pushing through it. Even after
Star Force had regained aerial superiority the fighting had not been one-sided.
The defensive setup in this colony was completely different than what they’d
been encountering in others, almost as if this had been where they’d put their
main defensive efforts into the architecture and everywhere else was just
secondary…except that he didn’t know of any reason why this city was special.
It wasn’t the largest they’d hit, nor had any significant industry or
spaceports. It was a standard city, except when it came to fighting for it.

There were so many subsurface tunnels that it had
taken more than 2 days to hunt down most of their tanks, and it was rumored
that there were still some moving about where the air cover couldn’t spot them.
Those tunnels that had been found were now shut down, but unlike other lizard
designs they weren’t all connected to each other, so the discovery of one
didn’t open up them all to the invading army…and the subsurface of the city was
coated with plating that made it more difficult for Star Force’s sensors to
penetrate.

This was the most dangerous battlefield
Cvog
had ever fought on, for you never knew for sure when
the fighting was over. That, combined with his fatigue, made him twitch when a
battlemap contact suddenly landed on his mech’s left shoulder and stuck there.
It took him a moment to process what was happening, then he did a doubt take
when the Star Force icon told him that the Queen of Diamonds had just flown in
and perched on his mech.

He hesitated at first, then opened up a direct
comm
channel to the Archon. “Is there something you
require?”

“Just felt like riding a bit while I catch a breather.
How are you three holding up?”

“Well enough, but our mechs need considerable repair.”

“I can see that, but unlike a lot of others yours are
still battle worthy. We’ve lost over 60% of what we brought in here to the
scrap pile already.”

“That many?”

“Afraid so. We pulled most of the pilots out alive,
but equipment wise we’ve lost a lot. And that’s not counting what the Bsidd
lost prior to the reinforcement.”

“Do you know why this city was so heavily fortified?”

“No one does. And we’re not launching any new assaults
until we find out what’s going on, just finishing up the ones we’re currently
engaged in.”

“Their tunnels have given us considerable headaches.
We never know when a street is clear or not, and they’ve been very good at
disguising the entrances.”

“Are your shields inoperable?”

“Diminished, but waiting in standby.”

“Noticed they weren’t up when I landed. How much has
the rocket infantry been bothering you lately?”

“They’re gone as far as we’ve seen. The last half hour
has been rather boring,” he said as they came to an intersection and made a
left turn, with him walking his mech through the maneuver via the full body
harness system that had him standing inside the cockpit with all four arms
latched in, which made for far more fatigue than the seated models.

“Been that way for most, but I’ve got a feeling we’re
about to see another breakout.”

“Breakout?”

“Troops coming up from underground.”

“Where do you want us?”
Cvog
asked, his attention escalating a notch.

“Right where you are until…check that,” she said,
sending him and the other two mechs a waypoint a few dozen city blocks ahead.
“Just got intel on another tunnel entrance. Feel up to an ambush?”

“Depends how many there are, but yes, we’re ready to
fight.”

“Looks like a holding area with about 80 tanks of
various makes.”

“80?”

“I’ll go with you, and Morgan is already down there
waiting. She’ll disable a lot of their pilots and I’ll get the ones nearest to
you. You just have to point and shoot.”

Cvog
smiled. “The techs
should build a seat for you up there so you can ride along all the time.”

“Gets kind of slippery when your shields go up, so
I’ll jump ship just before we head down but keep close by. Shoot the nearest
targets regardless of whether or not they’re firing back.”