Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series) (3 page)

already been fought on and won, with the entrances, the main ones anyway,

having been welded shut so they didn’t have to leave guards. As it was, the

Bsidd army was spread out across this front so much that it almost seemed like

there were hundreds of battles going on rather than just one, with each

corridor, level, and section having its own unique history that was seeing the

typical Star Force victories be pushed back by the corpse clutter.

Worse yet, the little lizards could crawl over each

other far better than the larger Bsidd could do, so they had a movement

advantage. Not to mention being able to crawl through maintenance shafts and

other small passageways. Most of the Bsidd soldiers were Betas, but some of the

smaller Epsilons had been dispatched to look for and hunt down lizards slipping

through in odd places. They could never come in sufficient numbers to be a

major threat, but the Bsidd couldn’t afford to have wounded personnel getting

ambushed behind the front lines or a det pack carrier running up from behind

them.

It was a mess, but they were working their way through

it. This was lizard territory, for sure, but Tavarini was glad there weren’t

wide open fields for their tanks and aircraft to operate on. Det packs aside,

the Bsidd were the largest, most heavily armored units in play and he liked

that change from their ‘standard’ battles…as if there was ever such a thing

with the lizards.

Movement on his right caught his attention and he saw

green lizard bodies wearing black vests moving on top of the piles ahead of

them down the corridor. They weren’t wounded crawling for safety, but incoming

troops slipping over the tops of the piles like they were surfing a wave on the

ocean. Their rifles were strapped to their backs and they were running on all

fours, something he’d rarely seen lizards do before this invasion, but it was

obvious that the movement was all too natural for them.

A pink phaser blast shot by him, missing one of his

mandibles by a few inches as he reengaged shields across his entire body save

for the treads on his shoe bumps and the weapon muzzles attached to a few of

his numerous mandibles. Most of his body looked like a collection of thick sticks,

upon which he could run or crawl or jump as he liked, but they were all covered

in armor with some holding the tread for his ‘boots’ while others were free to

grasp or hit with. A few others were covered in weapons that were physically

attached to his armor since he didn’t have anything even remotely like fingers,

though he could grasp things better than most Humans given how many mandibles

he could apply to a given object.

He pointed one of his rifle mandibles down the

corridor as he put most of his odd body behind the bulkhead, twitching the end of

his limb inside the device that activated the trigger. A blue plasma lance shot

out and hit one of the many lizards surging towards them. It crumpled onto the

pile as the lizards behind it simply rushed over the new terrain. They couldn’t

get too many through this chokepoint, but then again only two or three Bsidd

could get into firing position on them, so that evened out a bit. Holding

position was easy, for the lizards couldn’t engage them in hand to hand without

getting cut to shreds with their plasma rods…unless they had a det pack, in

which case all the lizards had to do was get close enough to take down their

shields and do some damage to their armor.

That had already happened twice today, with several jagged

cuts on his purple body plates marking shrapnel damage, though they hadn’t

gotten close enough to him to do more than force him back while his shields

recharged. He’d had to give up some ground after that, but they’d taken it back

and then some, though the gains were little more than dozens of meters with

their orders being to hold the general area and adjust as needed while other

units were probing behind enemy lines.

What units those were he didn’t know, nor had seen,

for he’d been so busy here he couldn’t think of much else and he hoped there

would be a relief team coming within a few hours so he could cycle back, get

some food and water, maybe a little sleep. That wasn’t happening right now, so

he stubbornly held his ground and shot a couple more lizards before he got a ‘hold’

order on his helmet.

He complied, even as the lizards were nearly on top of

them, then saw a fast moving dot on his battlemap approaching them from behind.

By the time he recognized the icon the dark blue armor of an Archon mage flashed

past his position, brushing up against a couple of his mandibles as she shot by

the bulkhead…then pile of lizard bodies exploded backwards under some type of

invisible attack, throwing the dead and living back on top of each other.

Two white beams of light flashed into existence and

suddenly the Archon was chopping apart lizard bodies in a frenzy and pushing

her way through the mess and out of sight ahead.

The hold fire order was rescinded, along with a ‘don’t

follow me’ command.

Tavarini looked at his fellow Bsidd curiously, then

the two of them came out of cover and ran forward a few steps to give them

better firing lines on the surviving lizards that were trying to crawl their

way out of the pile.

Ginsi flashed past the Bsidd, getting on the other

side of friendly lines and brandishing her pair of death sabers. She’d been

told that the term ‘lightsaber’ had been strictly banned, though that’s exactly

what they looked like, only flat to the point of invisible when viewed on the

side. Problem was they weren’t actually swords and couldn’t parry anything. If

she crossed the two she carried together they’d pass right through each other,

and anything else would either be cut by them or disrupt the intense energy

field that comprised the cutting devices.

Since they weren’t true swords they needed another

name, and it had only been with reluctance that Star Force had even developed

the weapons. They’d evolved out of the Bsidd plasma rods, and then the Archon

plasma swords…both of which had such a low ammo count that they were almost a

waste of time against hundreds of thousands of lizards, though both of those

could still be used as blunt object weapons when they were depleted of charge.

The death sabers could not, which was why Ginsi was

carrying a special pack with no gear in it whatsoever. It was the same size and

approximate shape, not to mention a bit heavy, but it made up for that drawback

in longevity. She could still run, jump and tumble with it, but the tethers

that ran down her arms and ended at her wrists connected to the base of the two

sabers she held and fed them with continuous power. Disconnect the weapons from

it and she’d get a couple hundred dead lizards and that was it.

These weren’t stun weapons, and there was only one

purpose for them…cutting apart lizards fast and efficiently with one hit kills.

It was a badly needed upgrade to their fighting arsenal, but one that didn’t

allow for taking prisoners or limited combat. In an environment like this,

close quarters with a lot of bodies all around you, it made for a very potent

weapon system when paired with an Archon mage.

Which had turned Ginsi into a killing machine.

She wasn’t fighting with troops backing her, she was

going solo, same as several other Archons in different locations. Her mission

was to probe beyond the defense lines and just rack up a body count. With her

psionics, and especially the addition of her new Jumat that Taryn had been

gracious enough to give her ahead of schedule, there was nothing the lizards

could do to stop her short of detonating a really big bomb in her face.

Her armor could take a det pack and survive it, so she

wasn’t holding back and aggressively pushed past the Bsidd postion, cutting her

way down a long corridor that eventually led to a larger promenade that was

used to haul cargo to and from various sections like a highway.

And it was filled with lizards waiting in orderly and

blocky groupings that were being dispatched piecemeal into adjacent exits that

would filter their way through to the thousands of tiny combat fields they were

engaging the Star Force troops on.

Ginsi let slip a wry grin, no longer thinking of the

lizards as people, just targets. She’d been careful to avoid thinking like that

before, but after so many engagements with them and not even a single lizard in

the history of the war ever surrendering to Star Force, she’d let go that

safety restraint. They still offered them multiple opportunities to surrender,

and would continue to do so, but in a situation like this where they were actively

fighting and they were spamming Star Force lines with millions of infantry…the

best way she could protect her Regulars was by becoming a slayer, and gruesome

as it was, Ginsi didn’t mind at all.

These were bad guys, and taking them down fast and efficiently

wasn’t a problem with these death sabers…so long as she hit killing blows. It

was either take them out or not strike, for there was no point in maiming them

or lopping off a hand just for fun. These were threats that needed to be taken

out, with pain and punishment nowhere in her mental vocabulary.

It was a very fine line to walk, mentally, but Ginsi

didn’t have trouble with it. The death sabers were definitely a weapon that

could be used to torture, but neither Star Force nor her would ever use it that

way…and that’s why it was reserved specifically for high ranking Archons. Those

who could walk that fine line between being a slayer and a butcher, and could

do so with such lethal efficiency that the lizards would have no way to stop

them.

Ginsi launched herself into the first row of the

lizards as they pulled their rifles off their backs and fired at her, swiping

both glowing white sticks through two of their chests and cutting both in half

as she passed them by, then with the help of her Pefbar she put herself into a

controlled twirl that saw another 5 of them taken out Darth Maul fashion as her

shields flared with phaser hits that suddenly began hitting friendly targets as

she redirected and dashed a different way.

Point to point she jumped/ran, slashing and making

clean kills each time while covering the artificial ground with pools of blood

that the living lizards trampled through trying to get at her. None of them

fled, all of them stayed and fought, pumping shot after shot into her shields

whenever they could get the chance. A part of that was admirable, most of it

was just stupid, but that’s what the lizard empire was and these people were

born locked into it, apparently without the will to break free…and definitely

no option to do so logistically, for even if they wanted to get away they’d

never have anywhere to go, save for those rare times they met Star Force on the

battlefield and were offered a way out.

The fact that none of them took it meant these lizards

weren’t victims, and were fully committed to a combined will and mission. Dying

for the cause didn’t concern them. Making themselves useful was their only

priority, and even if they only landed a single phaser hit against Ginsi they

were accomplishing that…though there was no way she was going to let them wear

down her defenses so far that they’d actually get a chance to kill her.

Not bothering to count, though a bit interested in

what the number had become, Ginsi continued to slay lizards and the more

concentrated groups like this that she encountered the better, for there were

billions of additional lizards on their way up the connecting columns from the

planet’s surface, and it looked like the ground war was going to be fought on

this spacebound ring long before they ever set foot on the surface.

And without heavy weapons or aircraft to counter her,

it was only going to be a question of how many she could kill and how fast.

August 18, 3104

Menchet System

(lizard core)

Tess

Paul dropped down from an opening in the ceiling, one

he’d just quietly cut with a very hot finger, and fell down into a mass of

lizards, hitting them with a Fornax field as he punched aside a couple leading

into a twirl of his death sabers. He lit them and started jumping from one area

to another and mowing down all the infantry as they desperately tried to target

him with their phaser rifles. A few hits were absorbed by his shields but they

couldn’t land even a tenth of their shots…and it wasn’t because he was messing

with their minds. Once he landed, his Fornax disappeared and he took them all

hand to hand, though dropping an Ubven field on top of them would have been

much easier.

He hadn’t done that, nor was he using any of his

psionics now that he was on the ground. He did what was necessary with blade

and muscle alone, not even engaging the powered nature of the light Archon

armor he was wearing. It was originally gold, but after nearly 8 hours of

fighting there was little of it showing beneath the blood splatters. His