Star Force: Evacuation (SF50) (4 page)

This time she caught it, mentally speaking, and pulled
back from the bag while maintaining the feel over her right leg. She reached
down and touched it again, with her finger being stopped a few millimeters away
from her shin against a slick but firm force.

“Holy shit,” she whispered, not believing what her
senses were telling her. She touched the invisible barrier again,
then
forced herself to let it go and reengage it, fearing
that she wouldn’t be able to. It took several tries but she did manage to find
the mental trigger and recreate the bioshield over her shin again.

Riona stood up and focused on her left hand, forcing
what felt like a glove to form around it, then curling her fingers down into a
fist and forcing as much energy as she could out into the aura around it…then
she stepped forward and punched the target, hard.

The hologram registered the impact, but she never felt
it hit her skin. Instead she felt the pressure all along her arm, as if the
shield were physically connected not to one piece of her anatomy like an
emitter, but to her entire limb…which was when she realized why her entire body
was aching. The bioshield upgrade Paul had got had created little bits of
tissue everywhere that acted as emitters rather than one or two solid chunks.

Suddenly Riona was glad for the excessive pain, for if
she was right then she’d be able to create shields around any and all parts of
her body.

She took a few more ‘gloved’ blows on the bag,
then
her head started to spin as she suddenly felt the
effects of low ambrosia sweep over her.

“Dumbass,” she criticized herself. “Paul said it eats
ambrosia. I’ll need snacks,” she said, leaving immediately for the cafeteria to
collect a stash of ambrosia-laced foodstuffs along with several bottles of red,
feeling the
draggyness
of her workouts already.

When Riona came back she spent the next 3 hours
probing her new ability and working through stretching and light sparring
drills while her snacks digested to continue to loosen up her body then, after
she was convinced she was fit to fight, went back to her quarters and set her
alarm for 45 minutes, catching a rejuvenating nap before heading over to the
hangar bay and grabbing another skeet. She headed out to the closest battle
zone that needed fighter cover, this one being a Scionate offensive, and dove
back into the fray, overly pleased with her new ability but knowing that she
needed to put it aside for the time being. She’d have an opportunity to train
later, right now there was a planetary assault requiring her skills and
attention.

4

July 12, 2536

Gwet
System (Delta
Region)

Leonis

Riona flew her trio of drone fighters in a triangle
formation behind her skeet, two positioned above and one below so they’d all
have forward firing arcs as she made yet another pass on the lizard cruiser
pummeling the TF with a green plasma streamer. The weapon was holding out
despite the fact that the back half of the ship was on fire and smoking
heavily. The lizards had put most of their shield strength forward to protect
that battery and Riona hadn’t been lucky enough to get a shot through the tiny
opening that was allowing the plasma to come out.

So the Archon did the next best thing and kept
hammering the exposed section of the warship while six others were still
pouring fire into the massive dropship as it recalled the last troops from the
surface campaigns. Likewise Axius and Scionate dropships and transports were
pulling up the last of their troops in the face of a huge lizard relief fleet
that had come into the system a day ago prompting the recall. All of the lizard
bases had been eliminated with some residual cleanup efforts ongoing, but those
had been quickly scrapped in order to get the troops back onto the jumpships
and out of the system.

The bulk of the Axius and Scionate fleets had already
left, with the
Adamant
and the
handful of Star Force warships and their drones providing cover for the others
on their way out. Riona’s TF was the last major chess piece on the planet,
given that she’d had her mainline troops assume the final responsibilities to
cover the others getting out, meaning there were still convoys coming in to the
big dropship even now.

They had avoided the warship barrages, which seemed
more interested in killing the dropship than strafing the troops on the ground,
though the mechs had downed one of the cruisers on their own when it got too
close. Perhaps that was the reason they were staying back and hitting the TF at
range, but while they did other warships were scouring the planet and harassing
the fleeing Scionate and Axius groups who were putting up a good fight while
covering the evacuation.

Meanwhile orbit was where the heavy fighting was going
down. The Hycre had long since departed, apparently having left the system but
in actuality had gone into hiding within it, so when the lizard fleet arrived
to face off against the
Adamant
and
the ‘small’ number of warships it had with it the lizards thought they’d
brought more than enough firepower to overwhelm the big ship.

That hadn’t happened, with the Hycre jumping the enemy
at a very vulnerable transitional period between star and planet, hitting both
locations simultaneously and making several devastating attack runs that sent
the battle into a free for all as the lizards split their attention between the
Hycre and pushing down to the vulnerable transports waiting nearby their
warship escorts.

The few ships that had come down to the surface were
nothing compared to the hundreds going at it above the atmosphere, and Riona
desperately wanted to be up there in a command nexus but that wasn’t an option.
She had troops to get back onboard and right now that meant taking down this
warship, which she tore up a little bit more with a mauler storm augmented by
the few missiles her drone fighters still had left onboard.

As soon as she zipped past overhead a pair of wisps
fell in on her tail that she had to deal with, triggering a preprogrammed
attack pattern in the drones and having them split up and loop back. The wisps
were caught with four targets to chase and only two fighters to do it with,
allowing two of the Star Force craft to get in behind them and execute the
kills in short order. Riona had the fighters reform behind her and turned for
another run on the warship when she saw a concussion ripple move through the
atmosphere as something big inside the lizard cruiser detonated…with it falling
to the ground in a soft crash, bending it slightly on impact but otherwise
leaving the smoking hulk intact.

Riona tagged the next closest cruiser as the primary
target for the 18 other pilots flying with her, a few of which had their own
drone escorts, and zipped off towards it together rather than splitting their
fire between multiple targets. The rest of the aerial craft were dealing with
targets in other planetary locations, covering for their allies while leaving
her with the job of supplementing the TF’s defenses.

That hadn’t been the plan, but rather the only option
given the timing of the lizard attack. She’d been inside the TF when it had
happened,
leaving her too far away from the other locations
to do any good so she’d decided to make sure the TF remained where it was to
pick up the ground troops while the other pilots were off making the kills.
Only recently had these warships come into attack range giving her something to
do, but in truth she would have preferred they’d just stayed away for the
shields on the TF weren’t going to hold out forever.

That said, the last of the troops were nearly onboard
and it wasn’t but a few more long minutes until the last of the mechs backed
their way into the exposed hangar, firing up at the few wisps stupid enough to
follow them into range of the TF’s anti-air, with the shield dropping down to
cover the hatch before the bay doors fully closed. When that occurred Riona got
a notification on the battlemap and broke off from her current attack run,
taking the other pilots and drones with her as they shot upward ahead of the
big dropship as it slowly began to rise up from the surface.

The skeets from all areas coalesced at various
altitudes in bunches, with Riona taking the highest grouping. As the TF rose up
the aerial bays opened and the fighters flew inside during transit, making for
a dicey catch even as the enemy cruisers followed it up continuing to throw
plasma into the shields. The atmospheric friction cut down on the amount making
it to target, but they didn’t let it go, eventually moving in close and using
their primary plasma cannons in addition to the streamer to try and get through
the now very weak shields before it could hit orbit.

But that also brought them into range of the maulers…or
rather their outside range. They weren’t nearly as effective, but what energy
they could deliver to the cruisers added up, stripping off their shields and
beginning to eat through their hulls while more and more fighters slipped
inside the dropship.

Another dozen lizard warships broke away from the
orbital battle and dove into the atmosphere, flashing by Riona’s position and
heading into the melee below as the TF couldn’t climb very fast given it had to
pick up the fighters enroute…which was when Riona made a different call,
linking into the comm of all those below.

“Change of plans. If anyone doesn’t have intact
atmospheric seals speak now because we’re going orbital. Rendezvous with the
donut ring and get there as best you can or head back down to the planet and
wait it out. The TF has to go, now, and we’re holding it up.”

Riona changed frequencies and contacted the commander
of the big dropship, with the TF immediately gaining speed upwards and actually
bumping one of the cruisers out of the way. She cringed when she saw that, with
the dropship’s shields disappearing in the collision, but soon it didn’t matter
for rest of the
Adamant
had been
coming down towards the atmosphere to meet it and the armor on the dropship
would hold out for the rest of the trip up.

Taking her own advice Riona launched her skeet up
above the atmosphere and flew directly towards the
Melee
-class warship, mentally crossing her fingers as the space
around it was filled with lizard warships. Their fighters weren’t built for space,
so she didn’t have to worry about them, but there were so many ships exchanging
fire with the massive donut that it looked like there was no way she was going
to get through…but the sizing was deceptive, and what looked to be an unending
net of plasma fire actually had huge holes in it, enough for her to shoot her
skeet and drones through to one of the big ring’s docking bays just ahead of
the ‘donut hole’ coming up from underneath and beginning to slide into the
giant ship.

Riona parked her skeet haphazardly on the deck,
getting it out of the way of the others but leaving the crew to reposition it
where it needed to go as she jumped out of the cockpit and ran towards the
exit, headed for the nearest lift to get her up to the bridge.

By the time she got there the TF had fully merged back
into the
Adamant
and the ship had
moved back further up into orbit, heading right into the heart of the lizard
attack group while the
Warship
-class
jumpships held perimeter positions while firing into the hoard of ships to keep
out of the worst of it. The
Adamant
took the brunt of the attacks and tore through the enemy fleet by the dozens,
but still there were more lizard ships arriving in groups and adding to the
onslaught, making final fleet strengths impossible to determine.

Riona got over to the command nexus and linked
in,
reorganizing the battle slightly from what the Admiral
had them running and chewed through as many lizard ships as possible while the
Hycre fleet really did most of the damage. Eventually the
Adamant
’s shields went down in several places, with the huge ship
beginning to take hull damage but she didn’t pull it out, knowing the beast
could stand up to the slugging and reaping the rewards from it. The lizards
took to the dropped shields like a swarm of bugs to a light, which allowed the
Hycre to literally rip them to shreds.

Rather than retreating the lizards fought to the last
ship, with several trying to ram the
Adamant
and one succeeding in slipping by the specialized shield emitters designed to
‘cushion’ the blow. That ship imbedded itself far enough that the
Adamant
had to stick around in orbit for
another two days cutting it loose before they were finally able to withdrawal
and make the jump back to Star Force territory.

Eventually it was decided that the ship needed to be
repaired rather than being sent into another campaign immediately, which it
could have been given how big it was and how it could take several more such
hits and still remain mostly operational. Star Force didn’t like operating that
way when they could avoid it, so the
Adamant
returned to Earth where it could fit into a sufficiently-sized slip and undergo
repairs…along with a few new upgrades.

Riona went with it, hopping onto a dropship in orbit
and riding it down to Antarctica where she eventually found her way into the
V’kit’no’sat pyramid.

 
“Knock, knock,”
she said softly coming into the open doorway of Paul’s quarters as he was
riffling through a drawer to find a particular headband he wanted before
heading right back out to the sanctum.

He looked up at the sound and smiled, not having felt
her approach. “Hey.”

“Hey to you too…you got a minute?”

“I’m kind of in the middle of something, but if you
feel like walking and talking you can come with.”

“Works for me,” she said as he came back out and shut
the door, walking at a brisk pace and her able to sense a bit of an adrenaline
rush in him.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“You first,” she said, glancing at the headband…which
with Paul’s short hair didn’t seem necessary.

“Prototype sensor.
Headbands
aren’t my thing and I forgot to put it on this morning…then I got a whiff of
instability and rushed back here. Might just be my imagination but I think I’ve
got another ascension coming on.”

“And that would be how many now?”

“Uh, not counting battlemeld this will be the 5th if
it pans out.”

“And with?”

“17th.
Haven’t
found any new
ones recently, and neither have the twins. Whatever they are they’re buried
deep…or we’re just going about it the wrong way.”

“You have to start counting those.”

“Can’t use them alone, so they’re a
different category.”

“If you say so.
My count just
escalated to two, which is why I’m here.”

Paul looked over at her curious as they walked. “What
did you get?”

“Bioshield.”

That stopped him in the middle of the hallway. So far
he’d been the only one to manifest that ability, try as the others had.

“Where and when…be specific.”

“In battle on
Leonis
.
Popped up after a crash that I had to crawl out of.
I
had to dismiss it at the time but was able to get it a day later when I got
back to the TF.”

“Describe the crash…it’s important.”

“My skeet took
a warship
level plasma hit, then the stupid wisps finished me off. IDF was functional so
I didn’t feel the hit, but what was left of my skeet went straight into a
lizard building and I landed upside down. Had to lift the thing off to get out,
and I’m really glad I had my striker armor on or I would have been in trouble.
Fought my way back to our ground troops after that then stayed with
them until fatigue started to win out.
I was almost in the shower when
the instability hit again, then I let myself pass out on the floor afterwards.
That whole body transformation thing is sick.”

“I know,” Paul said thinking hard.

“What?”

“Just working on a theory.
You got time to talk in detail later?”

“Ha. I came here to find you so you could teach me the
ways of the Force. I’m your girl until you get tired of me.”

“Never,” he said with a wink. “Give me four hours to
finish what I’m working on then we’ll get busy,” he said,
raising
up his hand palm out. “Show me what you’ve got.”