Star Force: Evacuation (SF50) (10 page)

After some 20+ transports were destroyed a few of them
started taking off, with the Valeries hitting them hard and sandblasting their
shields with thousands of tiny plasma blasts, enough to tear through them and
take a few of the ships down while the ground troops continued to blast more of
them into rubble from pointblank range.

Inside of that rubble field more Skarron infantry and
a handful of walkers met them, with several Type-1s and 2s throwing up missile
support in a huge arc that traveled up over the transports in the LZ and down
onto the super dragons, knocking out several of them in less than a minute but
leaving so many more intact that they couldn’t stop the Nestafar assault wave,
despite seeing it coming towards them at an ominous, pondering pace.

Now getting hit hard from both flanks the Skarrons had
a choice to make…stay and fight it out or try to pull back and save what troops
they could. They chose the former, making both Star Force and the Nestafar earn
their victory and wearing down the troops on both sides. It took another four
days before the Skarrons were eventually slaughtered, with most of their
transports fleeing into space before they could be killed…yet unable to pick up
their walkers and infantry to take with them.

When the Nestafar troops eventually came into contact
with Star Force, the Elarioni, and the Voku Paul ordered a slight pause to
allow them to retreat…but they didn’t. Instead they
dove
head first into their other enemies and forced another long battle that
consumed the next 2 days, ending with an Alliance victory but at a heavy cost.

There were Voku mech/suits everywhere, along with
destroyed fighters and infantry corpses, though the latter didn’t have massive
numbers of casualties, given that they were selective in where they employed
them. Many Star Force mechs and skeets were down as well, though in far smaller
numbers given that they hadn’t had a large force to contribute to the battle in
the first place.

Two Elarioni warships had also fallen, now dug into
the ground and leaking water. Recovery efforts were being made by the other
ships to try and get to any surviving crew, but land and air were death to the
Elarioni and few were recovered alive.

The rest of their ships were showing damage of various
levels, all of which retreated back into the water and disappeared into the
depths to make repairs, leaving an incredible amount of debris behind on the
battlefield, most of which belonged to the Skarrons. It stood as a testament to
the effort Star Force and the Voku were going to in order to get the Elarioni
off this world…all the while the evacuation transports continued to load and
depart round the clock.

That was the ultimate victory of it all, but
accomplished at a high cost…and one that the Elarioni would never forget.

10

December 27, 2537

Hachtat
System

Eliossa

Paul stood in the command nexus onboard the
Adamant
, much as he had for most of the
past 4 months, but for the first time he was holding back the transports. That
was because the Skarron fleet in the system had been continually growing, and
even as they successfully evacuated most of the Elarioni from the planet the
convoys heading out to the Voku fleet guarding the jumpships at the star had
been getting jumped more regularly.

The Skarrons hadn’t hit his position or at the star,
trying instead to snipe their ships when they were at their most vulnerable, and
now that they were devoting more and more warships to that endeavor Paul had to
hold back the last of the transports or risk losing one…something he had
avoided thus far.

Most of the planet was now in Skarron hands, with the
Nestafar stupidly having wasted troops battling Star Force and the Voku, but in
truth if they hadn’t it would have only delayed their defeat. The Skarrons were
overrunning them with numbers that they hadn’t seen in the assaults on the
ADZ…a dire omen for what was likely to be coming their way eventually, for
Nestafar space was much closer to Skarron territory. If this was how they dealt
with nearer threats, then it was only a matter of time until their border
eeked
out close enough to the ADZ to warrant a larger
assault.

But they had time to prepare, it seemed, and right now
getting the last of the Elarioni out was the mission. They were going to
accomplish it with ease, Paul knew, thanks to the superiority of the Voku. But
completing that mission without losing a single transport was the tricky
part…and not leaving anyone behind. The Skarrons weren’t stupid, and had
deduced what they were up to, all the while trying to interfere if just out of
spite, for they didn’t have the numbers to take down the Voku fleet, given how
superior their ships were.

So Paul held the last of the transports, getting a
group of around 400 sitting in next to the
Adamant
and his other few warships, surrounded by a cloud of drones with patrolling
Voku cruiser analogs keeping any predators at bay while frigate analogs spread
out in an even wider detection zone, sending out active signals to monitor the
area with such sensor intensity that it surprised Paul. Apparently they didn’t
want the enemy sneaking anything
in,
though to date
Skarron tech hadn’t shown any such capability and Paul wondered what enemies
the Voku had that did.

When the last transport was loaded at 3/4ths capacity
he held the six more empty ones that were waiting in orbit and signaled the
other empties at the star to stop coming. Some of the ships were on their third
round trip, just having gotten back from Atlantica thanks to the ever
increasing speed of Star Force’s newer jumpships. The long trek, however, still
meant that Star Force had to devote an insane percentage of their transport
fleet to this endeavor…and not just here, but the other 7 planets that were
being simultaneously evacuated.

Paul had gotten a few status reports from them, passed
along by the transports
who
were meeting up at their
eventual destination and swapping intel, and so far there had been no major
problems in any of the campaigns, each of which was led by a trailblazer. Paul
had taken the most difficult assignment for himself, or so he’d thought in the
planning stage, with the reports coming back indicating that he’d been correct.

This planet’s Elarioni population was the largest
also, so it was with only a small shock several hours later when the TF finally
pulled up from the surface that several thousand
Cruiser
-class and smaller starships rose up from the oceans across
the planet simultaneously, making the waters look like a giant cereal bowl full
of O-shaped Cheerios as they made the transition to air.

The Voku stayed on the ground covering Star Force’s
exit and came up with the Elarioni, bringing their ground troop transports back
up to the carriers in orbit and joining with them in transformer style while
their warships pulled back from hunting the Skarrons elsewhere in orbit and
formed up into a defensive wedge around the transports and Elarioni civilian
starships while the aquatic race’s own warships did likewise.

Not to Paul’s surprise the Skarrons began moving their
fleet around quickly, attempting to bring one last hammer blow before they
escaped. Problem was such a massive fleet comprised of 3 different races
couldn’t move together with as much coordination and alacrity as a single,
smaller one. They had to jump out in stages while the long carpet of ships was
laid out for the enemy to hit at whatever point their wanted.

Paul held the
Adamant
back until the last section began to move, knowing the stragglers would be the
most vulnerable, and began fighting a rearguard action as Skarron warships
began to come up from below them, skirting around to the gap between ship and
atmosphere and hitting the rear…intent on coming up the middle and getting at
the Star Force transports just ahead.

Devoting what drones he had left, Paul sent them down
into the enemy not expecting them to return. He’d had enough with the playing
it safe routine and decided to nail the bastards for their insolence…and with
Ta’lin’yi they certainly were able to accomplish that, catching the Skarrons
off guard with the offensive maneuver and creating a bloody melee as the
Adamant
gained altitude ahead of them
and followed the back of the convoy out.

The Voku commander contacted him and they set up their
final battle plans, including sending a few ships back to destroy the drone
debris that was large enough to potentially survive impact with the planet.
Paul didn’t want the Skarrons getting their hands on any intact pieces, and
he’d purposefully had the
Adamant
hovering over the target zone rather than occupying a normal orbit prior to
their final departure, knowing that the drone debris would fall into the
atmosphere and burn up…if it was small enough.

Some of the Voku ships flew back and killed the
handful of Skarron ships remaining before blasting apart the intact hulls of
the drones that were now partially or totally inoperable. None had survived to
return to their warships, with Paul having ordered their pilots to hurt the
Skarrons as badly as possible…and their having destroyed more than 500 enemy
vessels in the process.

But the Skarrons had thousands more insystem with a
large chunk of those harassing the outgoing fleet and more jumping in from the
other planets to tighten the noose. They weren’t going to get them all here in
time and the Voku were insistent that it wouldn’t matter, taking it to the
enemy head on and making them pay heavily whenever they ventured close to one
of the transports.

The Elarioni warships were doing likewise, guarding
their own people closely, on both their ships and the Star Force transports,
and giving Paul his first good view of their military hardware. They had beam
weapons similar to the
Dvapp’s
Sammies but these were
using an altogether different type of energy. Using the limited sensor readings
he was able to get what he thought was a match with the private database of
V’kit’no’sat documented tech.

It was a Yor’vok, and something the Elarioni had not
originally possessed when the V’kit’no’sat had hunted them. Or, to be more
accurate, not what they’d possessed the last time the Elarioni had been updated
in the database, with their eventual ouster happening much more recently than
the fall of Earth. The Yor’vok was pretty much a standard, straightforward
weapon that employed altered photons and worked like a slow moving laser…only
infinitely more powerful. Normally light particles were scattered and had large
gaps between them in transit, but with the Yor’vok they were densely packed
together, so much so that little bits would escape and cause the beam to glow
whereas a laser was invisible until it hit and reflected off of something.

It was a burning weapon, effective against shields and
armor alike, but the sticky energy matrix they also had was what intrigued him
more. That was an even higher level technology and something that Star Force
wasn’t yet close to developing. The Elarioni weapon was crude by V’kit’no’sat
standards, but it was the first time Paul had seen one of the ‘holy’ weapons
employed on the battlefield…and it sent a shiver down his spine.

The Elarioni version couldn’t attack shields, meaning
they had to take them down with the Yor’vok first, after which they would
essentially spit a glob of glowing destructive goo at slow speeds and splatter
the enemy ship…with the Ha’star melting the matter as if it were little more
than snow to a bucket of hot water. The drawback was, if you could call it a
drawback, that the Skarron ships were so big that the Ha’star could eat large
chunks into them and the rest of the warship could keep fighting.

The Elarioni didn’t know yet the interior structure of
the enemy and where to probe for weak points and there was no time for Paul to
inform them of that now, but none the less the Skarrons had no defense against
the Ha’star after their shields went down, for the armor they so depended on
was like tissue paper to the Elarioni weapon.

Even though most of his thoughts were centered
around
the evacuation, a part of Paul’s mind sized up the
threat the Elarioni would pose if Star Force fought them…and immediately saw a
weakness. Not in his own fleet, but theirs. The Yor’vok was a pure beam weapon,
which meant it was easily defendable against with a reflective shield. To date
Star Force hadn’t had cause to use such a thing except in low level
applications against lachars, with only partial deflection occurring. Against a
Yor’vok they’d get full deflection so long as the shield matrix was strong
enough, and would even be able to, with a bit of luck and a lot of skill on the
shield controller’s part, redirect the
Elarioni’s
own
weapon back at them.

And without being able to take down the Star Force
shields their Ha’star would be next to useless. For as advanced as their tech
was, their battle layout was lacking. Then again, they were aquatic, with naval
warfare probably being something they delved into rarely, especially given that
they’d spent so many years in hiding. He was thoroughly impressed by their tech
and knew how effective it would be against the lizards and others, but in a
head to head he’d own them.

With the Voku warships quickly cleaning up behind the
Adamant
, the big command ship slowly
made its way up to the jumppoint…with more and more Skarron warships closing in
around them, so many in fact that the only way to keep the jumppoint clear was
to engage the enemy in a slugging match and slowly pull your ships back into
themselves as the mass jumped out. The
Adamant
got severely beaten up in the last few minutes, taking many hits that otherwise
would have gone to the Voku as they recovered their damaged ships, melding with
them and carrying them out, until finally only a few dozen the Star Force
command ship remained.

Those few jumped out together under heavy weaponsfire
and ended up at the star a few minutes later, seeing that several skirmishes
were already taking place there and knowing that the rest of the Skarron ships would
soon be on their way. The evacuation fleet was already repositioning around to
the exit jumppoint, which was where one of the conflicts was occurring, but
with the influx of Voku and Elarioni ships they kept it clear and sent a
continual stream of Elarioni starships out while the Star Force transports
continued to load up onto the waiting jumpships.

Paul watched the jump signatures of the Elarioni,
getting a computer estimate as to their speed and seeing that they were only
slightly faster than the Skarrons…but like their enemy they also didn’t need
jumpships, which was a double-edged sword. Paul informed the
Adamant
’s bridge crew that they’d need
to match the Elarioni jump speed in order to stay at the back of the convoy,
with a message from the Elarioni coming through that they were claiming the
‘galaxy down’ part of the road, meaning that after they made their departure
jump they’d drift lower on the galactic plain, allowing the faster moving
jumpships to pass them by above the jumpline to avoid any potential collisions.

As expected the bulk of the Skarron fleet showed up to
‘escort’ them out of the system under fire, with the
Adamant
taking a few more hull hits but nothing major as it soaked
up a lot of the enemy’s attention. The Voku stayed with it and all of the
remaining jumpships, ensuring their departure and sending ships with them to
further guard the convoys as they moved from one system to another, knowing
that an enemy could be waiting for them ahead if they were smart enough.

Paul didn’t expect the Skarrons or Nestafar to be that
determined, but he was glad for the backup regardless. Once the jumpships were
fully loaded they began winking out of view, carrying their precious cargo out
of harm’s way and leaving nothing but warships behind. Those then stayed around
a bit and fought it out with the Skarrons to make sure they didn’t jump after
the convoy and potentially meet up with it mid jump or cause trouble at the
destination system.

After more than an hour of combat and a lot of dead
Skarron ships the Voku commander consulted with Paul and they both began to
pull out, with the Elarioni already having gone ahead, given their slower speed
and desire to stay with their own ships.

Most of the Voku took off at amazing speed, but the
commander kept a good chunk of them with Paul and the
Adamant
, so when the command ship made the jump and left the enemy
system behind the chrome ships reformed around it within a few kilometers,
demonstrating their navigational skill, not to mention their gravity drive
strength, because pulling on stars lightyears away for maneuvering capabilities
mid jump was a very expensive and unrewarding venture, allowing you only a
little tug here and there, with most ships using thrust engines to accomplish
such maneuvering.