Star Force: Penance (SF49) (4 page)

Doing her best Optimus Prime impression, she finished
off that tank and ran across the burning ground to the third as another hoth
cleansing beam hit the other group, taking one of their tanks out of the
fight…with hundreds more approaching on the cluttered horizon.

“Not going to make this easy, are you,” she whispered,
running three steps before soccer-style kicking a Scionate that didn’t move
fast enough. It bowled over three others, which she proceeded to try and step
on as she ran past, managing to put foot to only one and bury it into the
ground on impact heading towards another tank, this one smoking from previous
missile damage but still firing its main weapon.

She took it out with her maulers from range, then
knelt down with its hulk to her back, gaining some cover as she targeted the
nearby infantry behind her with her maulers, resetting them for quicker,
smaller bursts…with the energy expanding rapidly enough to turn the weapon
blasts into mini shotguns at range. Normally that wouldn’t have been effective
against a tank or other heavily armored target, but the infantry was another
matter, with her lining up shots with many targets down the line and hitting
them with ease given the dispersion.

As she fired she also got a visual look at the rest of
her mechs…which were not in good condition. Some still had shields up, but most
were taking some level of armor damage. In the corner of her eye she saw a
madcat with multiple Scionate hanging on it, then under their combined
firepower the left leg broke off, sending the mech to the ground as it was no
longer able to stand. To the pilot’s credit it moved itself around enough with
its stubby arms and remaining leg to get its weapons pointed towards the enemy
so it could still fire in a straight line whenever an enemy crossed it.

Her battlemap tagged the mech as down a moment later,
with the infantry around the area all turning and swarming the injured target.

Morgan clenched her teeth and sprang up from her
cover, sprinting back towards it as one of its weapons was ‘chewed’ offline by
the tiny yellow plasma blasts. She didn’t dare use her maulers with a friendly
underneath, so she popped her blades back out from underneath her
neo’s
wrists and went in hacking and kicking as more and
more infantry poured in to replace the ones being lost.

Midway through that frenzy her battlemap pinged a
warning…indicating that one of the city’s gates had been breached.

4

When Kara got the breach warning she wasn’t even
fighting in that city, but she knew that was where she had to go and took off
like the flash, flying low to the ground and shooting a few more Scionate
infantry as she got up to speed…then she was over the blur of blue grass below
with a moment of calm that she used to check out the situation on the
battlemap.

It wasn’t good. The sea of Scionate was even larger
around the city that was showing Morgan’s ID tag. The trailblazer was in a neo
and a tough fight herself, but the enemy troops were now pouring through the
breach in one of the city gates, with the surrounding defense turrets all
showing to be offline…meaning they were probably slag by now. That left an
undefended side that the Scionate were grouping around and sending a small, but
constant stream of troops through, including tanks by the look of it.

She pulled up a side diagram on her HUD that showed
camera footage of the breach with measurements overlaid. It was wide, but
narrow enough that she thought she could clog it up. That wouldn’t prevent the
Scionate from poking another hole elsewhere, but it would buy the city some
time and relieve the ground troops already fighting off the enemy infantry in
the streets. They appeared to have them somewhat contained at the moment,
including a couple of ravens to add firepower, but the Scionate, the big ones
anyway, appeared to be just as strong as the Knights, for she could see some of
them going at it hand to paw in a wrestling match where the enemy had rushed
several defensive barricades and leapt over.

The bodies were starting to pile up too…all Scionate.
They were running right into a Star Force buzz saw and attempting to overcome
it with numbers, armored and very agile numbers, but numbers none the less, and
Kara knew she had to cut off or at least disrupt the flow before the good guys
started to go down.

The back lines of the Scionate hoard became visible
ahead, a growing mass of yellow that Kara didn’t hesitate for nor slow down,
passing over the rear tanks too fast for them to target her and firing down on
the infantry randomly as she made a straight line to the gate breach. When she
neared it she arced upwards and came down on top of those passing through like
a red bullet, landing on the back of one of the Scionate so hard she heard its
armor crunch…then she brought up both arms and fired her Dre’mo’don at those
outside, mowing down a dozen of them before turning around to fend off a
lunge/jump from those just inside the gate.

An easy spin kick sent that one flying backwards, with
her shooting it out of the air and nailing three others below it before it even
hit the paved ground. A cartwheeled roll to the right got her out of the firing
line of one of the tanks that landed a huge plume of plasma on the ground where
she had just been standing, melting the pavement into a brief-lived puddle of
molten goo that resolidified within seconds.

Kara’s palms morphed and produced the orb emitters,
then she summoned up and fired a green/white glob of energy and sent it
directly into the tank, knocking down its shields and melting through the armor
plating before detonating inside and blasting it apart like a child’s toy that
had broken, though the heavy parts didn’t fly far, more like they just fell
apart from the green glow that flashed inside.

Kara shot down another two dozen infantry before
summoning up another large orb and killing a second tank, with the remains of
both now sitting just outside the gate breach and becoming impediments to the
oncoming flow. Doing so was creating a significant power strain on her
Vorch’nas, but she didn’t have time to poke the tanks to death with so many
enemies around her, not to mention the hundreds of plasma blasts coming her way
that her shields had to deal with.

To ease that burden she retreated a few steps and
swung around behind the edge of the hole in the gate, shooting some more
infantry on the inside then
laying
in wait for the
next ones to come through…whereupon she mowed them down easily, with the rim of
the breach now superheating as the tanks outside tried to expand the breach and
get to her position.

Kara backed up, then flew/jumped across the gap,
killing two more infantry on the pass and took up refuge on the other side,
simultaneously getting a glimpse of the enemy troops on the interior that Star
Force was managing to thin out and overcome. A line of blue plasma even shot
through the breach and held steady for several long seconds as one of the ravens
took aim at a tank outside, meaning that Kara had succeeded in giving the
troops a breather, even as more Scionate rushed through the gap that she
diligently mowed down into a growing pile of bodies.

A large bolt of yellow plasma came back through and
hit the distant raven, impacting on its shields and not getting through, with
Kara having a moment of epiphany that she thought Paul would be proud of. More
for the sake of the other troops fighting and only a little for her own
amusement, Kara opened her comm for wide broadcast, knowing that everyone would
hear it, and jumped out onto the top of the pile of bodies, ducking as another
blue continuous plasma beam shot by over her head a couple of meters and two
yellow ones returned, also missing her as she summoned up another large orb.

She held it up over her head like a mage and stared at
the enemy troops outside, picking the closest tank, and yelled with as much
confidence and bravado as she could muster.

“You…shall not…pass!” she said, augmented by the
armor’s vocal programming to sound as close to Gandalf as she could get without
prep work, as she launched the orb and blew apart the tank outside.

Standing behind a barricade further back, commando
level 36 Colt Harrison was firing his plasma rifle at the enemy infantry
needing, he guessed, about two or three shots to get through their shields,
then another 10+ to get through their armor, so long as you fired on the same
spot. That meant the Scionate weren’t going down quickly, with him and the
other commandos around him team firing on individual targets that one of the
others were highlighting on the battlemap so they would know who to shoot
without the delay of talking.

He had a trio of Knights standing behind him that had
four times already taken on Scionate that had leapt over the barricade, leaving
Colt and the others free to keep shooting, but the stupid cats were proving too
tough a challenge and he knew it was just a matter of time before they were
overrun, with him thinking more about where to flee to than holding his
position.

When he saw the red something or other ahead of them
kicking the crap out of the enemy in the brief gaps of vision visible through
the infantry directly ahead that he was having to quickly shoot down, he
wondered who it was and what the hell were they wearing, figuring it was an
Archon of some sort but never having seen that variety of armor. The red was
too deep and the figure too slim, with the Archon helmets being distinctive in
shape and size, while this one looked like he was wearing a skin-tight hat…but
whatever, he had aliens to shoot and keep from getting hit, having already
taken a plasma blast to the face that luckily his armor’s shields held up
against.

Then the enemies in front of him thinned out
considerably, enough for him to see the strange armored fighter climb out on
top of a heap of the dead cats with what looked like a funky plasma orb forming
in his hands. Colt had definitely never seen anything like that before, but
then his comm opened up and he heard a deep, powerful voice bellow out a movie
reference that he hadn’t heard in a very long time, with his HUD tagging the
strange warrior as the one speaking.

He threw the plasma orb at one of the tanks outside
and it exploded on contact, sending a chill down Colt’s spine along with a
resurgence of confidence…along with a laugh. Whoever that was, they had a sense
of humor packed in with those crazy weapons, and suddenly Colt was no longer
thinking about where to flee to. With half an eye on the combat occurring at
the breach, he and the other commandos and Archons took careful aim and killed
the last of the Scionate infantry between them and the wizard they’d seemed to
have picked up.

Colt didn’t have a clue
who
he was, but with his assistance it looked like they might be able to hold this
position after all.

“Did you hear that?” one of the other commandos asked.

“Yeah I did,” Colt said
,
keeping his sights focused ahead as he reloaded his rifle with a spare clip.

“Who is it? They’re not showing up on the battlemap.”

“That’s the Queen of Diamonds, you rookies,” one of
the Archons nearby answered.
“Otherwise known as Kara-317.”

“What type of armor is she wearing?” Colt asked.

“Something alien that she picked up.
One of a kind.
I didn’t even know she was here, but
count
yourself
lucky. Rarely do you ever see that
amount of badass,” he said as the raven standing a few
dozen
 
meters
behind their barricade line
fired another plasma streak out the gap as a wave of infantry ran forward,
which Colt and the others couldn’t see.

“Heads up,” the Archon warned, just before a sea of
Scionate came over the mound of their own dead in lemming fashion…too many for
Kara to shoot down at once, meaning Colt and the others were about to get busy
again.

“You heard her,” the Archon reiterated. “They shall
not pass. First five of you that get killing sprees get 10 credits.”

Despite the wave of powerful aliens running towards
them at superhuman speeds Colt laughed, his fear of them gone, now replaced by
gritty determination as he started placing shots on the leaders tagged in his
HUD. He and four others nearby him took one down within 3 seconds, then moved
onto the next as a few of the Scionate got through the initial plasma fire and
jumped over the barricades with the Knights swarming them instantly.

The raven fired all its weaponry down into the hoard
ahead of them, busting up the wave and giving Colt and the other ground troops
a thinned group of enemies to target.

With the Scionate fleet continuing to succumb to
Paul’s hit and fade attacks, they eventually called in reinforcements from
their six
worlds
insystem, despite the fact that they
already outnumbered the Star Force defense fleet. When more warships began
arriving Paul brought his two warship/jumpships forward and into the fray, both
as bait and to include their bloon launchers in the battle. Previous to now
they had been sitting far back, remotely controlling the drones that had come
from them and assisting with others as their pilots were freed up when their
vessels got taken out.

Paul tagged the remaining battleships for their
attack, with the two big ships heading straight into the enemy fleet and
drawing an immediate response. The enemy fleet pulled up towards them, exposing
a gap between the atmosphere and their fleet that the trailblazer had been
hoping for. As the remaining Star Force drones formed up around the two
warships and took it directly to the enemy fleet, even as its reserves were
pouring into orbit to supplement them, Paul plotted a course diversion for the
Sentinel, time stamped to begin a drop towards lower orbit in a few minutes.

Before that transition could begin, for it would draw
immediate attention from the Scionate, he called for his ace in the hole,
knowing that he had to bust up this fleet before the enemy got majorly
reinforced. As the battle with the two warship/jumpships continued in earnest,
with their massive hulls eating up a lot of weaponsfire that otherwise would
have been targeting the drones, thus extending their battle life, another
warship pulled an insanely difficult jump into the gap between the enemy fleet
and the planet, braking so hard that Paul could see the stress levels on the
ship’s status display when it finally popped up.

That warship immediately began to release drones…new
drones, for it was a new warship, fully equipped with not only bloon launchers
but cleansing beams, maulers, and even its own Ta’lin’yi. The Mk. 32 variety was
the most lethal yet, and some 21% bigger than previous models. That cut down on
its available jump speed, but with progressively better gravity drives being
developed it
nulled
out the disadvantage, leaving a
‘normal’ warship with a much larger carry capacity.

It disgorged 126 drones in a plume falling behind it
as it too dove into the enemy fleet targeting their battleships, simultaneously
with a second warship jumping into the planet on the topside of the enemy
fleet…a much easier jump to accomplish, with the now four warships bracketing
the Scionate on three sides and putting them in a momentary disadvantage that
Paul pressed. He had more warships to call on if needed, for he’d brought a lot
into the system in case the Scionate didn’t respond well to their diplomatic
complaint, but he didn’t want to show his full hand yet.

That said
,
he needed to take
advantage of opportunities when they arose and take as many enemy chess pieces
off the board as possible, which the torch-enhanced drones were beginning to do
in earnest.

The four warships were manned, of course, meaning this
ploy was a bit of a gambit. If those ships were destroyed, tough as that was to
accomplish, he’d be losing people, and that was something that Star Force
abhorred. But with him monitoring the situation on the planet below, he knew he
had to aid the ground troops…which was why as the Scionate were suddenly
getting more resistance than they could handle in orbit he sent a third warship
in to the planet at a location some 1000 miles off, having it brake not far
above the atmosphere and send its drones skimming across the top and over to
the engagement zone.