Star Force: Empire (SF58) (8 page)

Larissa knew her Clan could handle this on their own,
though it would be tight and stretch out much longer than wise. Give the Skarrons
too much time and they might sneak a supply convoy through or find a way to
make her life hell through sheer resistance if she didn’t have a large amount
of troops to work with. The trailblazer knew she could get the job done without
the Bsidd, and always had that as a backup plan if something went wrong and
they suddenly showed they weren’t ready, but they weren’t just here to watch
and she needed them if they were going to efficiently and cleanly kick the crap
out of the Skarrons and take the planet…and she intended to personally make
sure that happened.

With the orbital battle heating up she began throwing
a few Bsidd warships into the fight, testing and evaluating them on the fly
then gradually bringing in more and more over the coming days with their
performance being satisfactory for a first outing. Had it been her Clan troops
she would have been irate over the sloppiness, but the Bsidd were green and
needed time to learn, and so long as it was only equipment being lost it was an
acceptable price to pay for the lesson…especially since she knew what kind of
industrial powerbase the Bsidd were building, with a few hundred drones being a
small order in the near future as their growth rate continued to snowball.

When Larissa sent troops to ground they were all Clan,
with the Bsidd being reserved for cleanup operations and kept far from the
enemy’s big walkers. The
Bsidd’s
own mechs didn’t see
their counterparts on the battlefield until well past the halfway point in the
campaign, with a few of their best being added to some Clan formations where
they could protect them if things went very bad…but they didn’t, with the Bsidd
mechwarriors faring better than their naval counterparts.

But it was the infantry that stood out the most, with
the larger Bsidd variants, armored in typical Star Force style, owning their
Skarron counterparts. The Hobbits could barely scratch them, and the muscle
behind the otherwise looking ‘spindly’ Bsidd was enough to be able to wrestle
the Skarrons to the ground, even when they were wearing their own elite armor.

Larissa fed them into the combat formations gently,
not wanting to take any great risk, but even she was surprised by their
effectiveness, for the original Bsidd troops had never been anything close to
this strong in combat. They’d always been lightly used as cannon fodder with
their numbers being their primary strength, but now that each of them was being
treated as a valuable component and armored/armed as such, the future applications
were literally mouthwatering with Larissa putting them in more and more combat
situations against the Skarrons to get a better test of their capabilities.

Their strategic sense was lacking, she discovered, but
that was just due to them being green and would be something they’d have to
work through like everyone else, but their hand to hand effectiveness was
nothing short of amazing, and even their smaller infantry units were proving to
be more than competent once she let them wade into combat.

The entire campaign took some 9 months to complete,
which was fast in terms of a planetary takeover, and a large part of that was
due to the Bsidd being able to take on more duties than Larissa had expected
and freeing up her Clan troops to make quicker and more forceful advances
without having to spread out into defensive arrangements that the Bsidd were
now capable of maintaining.

At the end of it all Larissa was genuinely impressed
and already making plans for tweaks to the Bsidd military structure…along with
a message to the rest of the trailblazers indicating what a gem she’d stumbled
across and how down the road the Bsidd were going to add so much firepower to
Star Force that she didn’t even want to try and estimate the impact they’d have.

But it was going to be huge.

8

August 30, 2652

Typhis
System (lizard
territory)

Hashfa

Uxtral sat in his Valerie cockpit, waiting in standby
mode as his fighter was tucked away safely inside an armored transport waiting
to head down to the surface when the order was given. He’d been sitting in his
angular ship for more than 2 hours, but for some reason they were being held up
with his transport sitting in middle orbit along with the rest of the
non-warships as the Calavari navy continued to clean up the orbital clutter.

The major battle had been won, and won convincingly,
some three weeks ago with the Calavari breaking through the lizard defense
fleet and taking out their orbital battle stations, but instead of stay and
fight to the death, the surviving lizard cruisers had broken up and fled around
the system. The ground offensive had been held off until they could be hunted
down and killed, for their ability to aid surface troops was well known, and
Uxtral and the others waiting to get into the action did not want to see one of
their silhouettes approaching on the horizon once they’d entered battle.

Their
Wisp
-class
fighters were bad enough, not that the craft was any match for the Valerie.
Star Force tech had made them even more potent than their original designs and
the Calavari prided themselves on the effectiveness of the tiny craft and their
being used by many allies and other factions within Star Force. The mainline
and Clan aerial divisions still preferred their skeets, with a never ending
conversation over which was superior, but both were far better craft than the
lizard fighters, which didn’t even bother to come equipped with shields.

Their advantage was in their numbers, for the tiny
craft were agile, had decent firepower, and almost no defense. That made them
easier to produce and the lizards were doing so in vast numbers. Uxtral hadn’t
fought them many times to date, but when he had they were always outnumbering
the Calavari at least 10 to 1 and fighting in packs, as if 5 or more of their
fighters were a single unit that you had to contend with. They flanked as often
as they could and whittled away at your shields and armor until one eventually
broke through…and unlike going up against a single opponent, when you killed
one of the wisps you only diminished the incoming firepower against you
slightly, making for battles that seemed to never have a pause.

But that was their only advantage. The lizards had
even tried adding shields to their fighters once, but after several horrific
encounters the heavier wisps were never seen again, for the reduction in their
agility made them so much easier to kill. It was clear that the lizards were
experimenting and adapting, as they always did, but more so in recent years as
they tried to crack the puzzle that Star Force had become. It was true there
were other races involved in the defense of the ADZ, but Star Force was the
skeleton on which all others were fixed, both in terms of defenses and
technology.

The Calavari were Star Force through and through now,
but they retained their individuality as a race and even Uxtral felt the debt
they owed the Humans weigh on his shoulders, despite the fact he had been born
well after the fall of the original Calavari
empire
.
Star Force had rescued the survivors, preserving a few of their worlds and
bringing them back into the ADZ to train on others, reshaping and enhancing the
Calavari military and overall civilization into what it was now.

Or so the stories went. Uxtral had to take their word
for it, for he had never known life outside of Star Force, but he felt the urge
to prove the Calavari worthy and to take on a greater share of the combat
duties. The Humans had more than done their part, and many other races in the
ADZ were sitting on their fat assess doing nothing. All those in Star Force were
contributing in some way, and he didn’t fault any of them, but the freeloaders
that sat in safety and complained about the very empire keeping them alive and
prosperous irritated Uxtral and most other Calavari to no end.

But more than that they didn’t like playing a support
role. They viewed the Humans as their brothers, and the other races within Star
Force as the same, only lesser so, as if they were younglings whereas the
Humans were elder siblings. The Calavari wanted to rise up on par with their
brothers and share the load they’d more or less been single handedly carrying
while everyone else licked their wounds and used the time given to them to
retool and grow.

The Humans were still in command, or their elites were
anyway, and they’d been holding the Calavari back for some time. Uxtral
grudgingly agreed that it had been necessary in the past, but now was
different. The Calavari race was resurgent and taking back worlds from the
lizards…a few small ones here and there, but they were taking and holding them,
with few reprisals coming their way. Some said it was because of the Skarron
war the lizards were fighting, but Uxtral knew their enemy hadn’t been ignoring
them. All along the border there were raids and full blown battles going on.
No, the lizards just hadn’t found a way to deal with Star Force yet, and they
weren’t committed to sending the numbers of troops and ships it would take to
make for a sloppy overrun.

And even if they did, they’d only get a few systems.
Star Force had been reinforcing the border worlds for decades and now had so
many Sentinels in place that there was no way the lizards could take them all
out. The simply didn’t have enough ships to do so, which was why Uxtral assumed
no large scale invasion had taken place. It was a stalemate, with Star Force
unable to kill the lizards due to their huge territory, and the lizards unable
to kill Star Force due to their Sentinel defense line and density of
well-defended systems.

Without much room to expand, Star Force had been
colonizing planets that no one in their right mind would have wanted
previously, but by doing so they had thickened the inhabited band of systems
within the ADZ to the point where if one system were hit it wouldn’t be very
long before reinforcements would arrive from the next. Given that fact, no
matter how hard the lizards attacked they couldn’t get very far, and until they
found a better way to fight Star Force, Uxtral assumed the enemy wasn’t going
to waste resources.

The Calavari didn’t feel like maintaining the
stalemate and had been urging for a larger assault, which they now had.
Hashfa
was one of three inhabited planets in the system and
not lightly so, for the lizards had poured more resources here than the
surrounding systems, with documented supply convoys coming in on a regular
basis rather than building and growing everything they needed locally. The
system was a central hub of lizard activity in their territory near the
Rimward
Calavari cluster, and from it a mass of new lizard colonies
were attempting to spread out.

Those systems had been the targets of raids and
‘weeding’ expeditions, but
Hashfa
hadn’t been touched
due to its stronger defenses and distance from the border. The Calavari had
urged the Archons to let them hit it, knowing that it would weaken the
surrounding area if it fell and set up the possibility to sweep away a dozen
other systems in the following years, systems that mostly belonged to the
Calavari before the fall.

It had taken a long time, Uxtral had learned, before
the Archons had granted the Calavari permission to hit it solo, though there
was one caveat they had insisted upon. Right now there were two Sentinels
sitting in orbit around
Hashfa
, one of which had only
been assembled yesterday after being brought into the system in large segments.
If the Calavari were going to take the system then they had to be able to hold
it afterwards, and without the Sentinels that would be very hard to do when the
lizards responded, as everyone assumed they would.

This wasn’t a small target Star Force was taking away
from them, and he wondered if the delay in landing ground troops was to get the
Sentinels up and operational or to wait and see what kind of reinforcements the
lizards sent before potentially stranding them on the ground if they were
forced to flee orbit.

Uxtral didn’t care right now, he just wanted to get
into the fight and all he could do was sit and watch the battlemap as the navy
did their thing. Frustration aside, it was good to see his people kicking ass
in space, for rumor had it that pre-Star Force the Calavari navy sucked hard.
He couldn’t understand how that was possible, but right now his brothers were
hunting down and kicking the crap out of the surviving lizard fleets as they
tried to ambush the cargo ships and others as the Calavari were beginning to spread
out across the system to go after varying targets.

This was by far the largest assembly of Calavari
fleets to date, with them devoting a significant chunk of their overall naval
forces to be able to take this system without needing mainline fleet help. That
had been the main emphasis when they pleaded their case to the Archons, for
they knew ships were scarce with so many needs across the ADZ. They didn’t want
to weaken any other positions, but felt they had enough to make this assault
happen on their own.

Uxtral had heard there had been some wrangling over
that point, but eventually they’d been given the green light and here he was,
all set to do his part but stuck inside a transport waiting for a release that
felt like it would never come.

After another ten minutes he began wondering if they
were going to get called out of their fighters and back to their quarters, for
they couldn’t stay in their cockpits all day, but then the battlemap began
registering incoming jumps into planetary orbit and he realized that their
arrival near the system’s star must have been detected earlier and that’s why
their planetary assault had been delayed, for scores of lizard cruisers were
popping up in escort of several larger battleships and dreadnaughts…enough to
be a concern as the Calavari fleet was somewhat spread out between the various
planets.

But the Sentinels were here and one opened fire
immediately, with the nearby Calavari ships moving aside to give them clear
firing lines. The lizards didn’t hesitate and went after the Calavari warships,
completely ignoring the pair of Sentinels, of which only one was currently in
range of the jumppoint.

Uxtral really wanted to get out there and fight, but
his Valerie wasn’t designed for space combat. None of theirs were, as was
standard Star Force military philosophy. Fighters were too small to be
effective in space given the risk of the pilot, with similar sized drones being
more effective, though the Calavari used none, nor did most of Star Force save
for Canderous who fielded a lot of them. No, the Calavari aerial core was
strictly planetary, though they did fight on airless worlds a few times.

It was the anti-
grav
that
they needed to maneuver, not the air, and this far above the planet the angles
were all wrong. He could fly his Valerie through space, but not at combat
speeds given the lack of necessary lateral tug that being on the surface
provided. That, and if he got shot down he’d suffocate to death if the canopy
was breached or someone didn’t get to him in time.

Thoughts of getting into the action in some way were
pounding through his head as the panel that would show deployment orders was
annoyingly blank, but then his attention was taken fully back to the battlemap
as a huge target manifested itself on sensors, with him recognizing it as a
lizard assault pillar. That meant they were going after the Sentinels before
Star Force could get any more here, which was a wise play because a few more
with overlapping firing arcs would make it almost impossible for the lizards to
reclaim orbit.

A moment later a second jumppoint, one not originating
from the star, began spewing more ships. They too were lizard cruisers, so many
that Uxtral couldn’t visually count, but with them came another large ship,
this one an invoker that was headed not towards the Sentinels but towards the
cluster of Calavari ships parked in orbit…including the one that he was sitting
inside.

“Damn it, let us go!” he yelled to no one inside his
cockpit, smacking the armored canopy over his head in frustration. The navy was
going to have its hands full dealing with that beast, and there was nothing he
could do about it sitting in here so they might as well let them head on down
to the planet where they could do some good, otherwise they’d just be target
practice in here or their quarters.

The
Calavari’s
frustration
turned to dread as another target at the first jumppoint materialized on
sensors, with this being a second assault pillar amongst even more waves of
cruisers.

“What the hell is going on?” he said angrily, knowing
that they should have had some ships covering the star. It took some doing, but
he adjusted the battlemap to give him the lag-delayed data from stellar orbit
and his jaw dropped when he saw how many enemy jumpships there were. No more
incoming arrivals were being logged, but there were far more than he’d expected
the enemy to have available to counter attack with, especially after only 3
weeks.

The Calavari ships that had been there were gone, but
a quick check of stats indicated that they had redeployed elsewhere rather than
stay and get destroyed…which was smart. With the two Sentinels up and running
this was going to be a good fight that could go either way, but regardless of
who came out on top
Uxtral’s
fleet was going to get
trashed in the process.

But so be it. The fight was here and the more lizards
they killed…