Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) (3 page)

That’s what it meant to
be superior. You didn’t tell someone else to go fight your battles for you, you
tell them to back off and let you handle it because you’re more capable. That
was the proper place of the superior, on the front lines, not hiding behind a
wall of ‘lesser’ valued personnel and planets.

And that’s what the
Clans wanted. They wanted to be superior despite their small size. They wanted
to matter when the times of crisis came rather than being stuck in the stands
watching the action go down when the big dogs stepped in. The Bsidd were now
one of those big dogs, and despite the skill level in the Clans being higher, their
civilization size was far too small for them to handle more than a few ‘small’
missions.

The Clans wanted more
than that, as much as they could get in fact, which was why they were pressing
so hard. If the V’kit’no’sat came back 50 years from now, each of the Clans
wanted to be the ones to engage them while others evacuated and ran, and
there’d be a long line of volunteers for that duty, but only those most capable
would get it.

That was the Star Force
way. There were no sacrificial pawns like in chess and the disgusting warfare
practices of other empires, with the lizards taking the prize as the most
gruesome to date. Sacrifice was abhorrent, no matter how effective it might be
in some limited circumstances. A properly outfitted and trained military would
kick the crap out of any that used such
darkside
tactics, and with every year that progressed that military would grow stronger
due to the fact that they wouldn’t lose people to attrition. Self-sufficiency
was about more than just staying alive, it was the means to take the ordinary
soldier and make them extraordinary over the course of centuries through a slow
progression of skills and experience.

The longer that
military existed and survived, the stronger it would become. That was why Star
Force was now able to beat the lizards in virtually every battle and why their
swarm tactics were becoming less and less effective. Technology aside, Star
Force’s troops were just plain better and growing in skill with each passing
year…whereas the lizards’ were dying off and having replacements grown,
maintaining their current strengths and not advancing.

That was one of the
many illusions in life getting busted in epic fashion. Many people thought that
darkside
practices were the way to greater strength,
and that sacrifice on the battlefield helped the civilization by winning a
battle on a single day at any costs…but the truth was the cumulative effect of
keeping your people alive and training indefinitely pooled into some truly
remarkable feats that were only now becoming evident.

And many races within
the ADZ still denied what they saw, partly because they couldn’t understand it.
A single Star Force commando with a few centuries of training to their name was
now literally a demi-god when going up against ‘normal’ people, and even though
a lot of what happened in the war against the lizards didn’t make its way into
the news, Star Force security used commandos to deal with internal matters and
those soldiers did interact with the ADZ races.

Many people claimed
they were given cybernetic enhancements or other cheats, unable to simply
accept the fact that being the good guys, while seemingly having short term
disadvantages, gave you mind boggling power in the long term so long as you
were wise enough to maintain and cultivate it over the progression of years.

To quote an old Star
Wars philosophical debate, the
darkside
may have been
the quicker, easier path, but at the end of the day the lightside was and always
would be the stronger.

And what did the
lightside
badasses
do more than anything? Save
people.

“Admiral, cease fire
and start loading the drones back inside the warships,” Mike said after giving
the data packet a thorough look.

“We’re leaving?” Krimja
asked for clarification.

Mike nodded. “The
damage we’ve done here won’t be quickly erased, and either we or another fleet
can come back and finish the mission later. Right now we have a more important
task before us.”

“A rescue mission?”

“If these guys have
survived this long, then we’re going to make damn sure they don’t get wiped out
a few years prior to the safe zone reaching them. We’re skipping ahead and
coming to their aid.”

“We don’t have any
linguistics on them.”

“I know. We’ll have to
make do when we get there, but once we start shooting the lizards I think our
intentions will be clear enough.”

Krimja tapped one of
his appendages against a console, giving a familiar signal to his bridge crew
to carry out the order they’d just overheard. On his display screens the
battlecruisers immediately stopped firing and began a slow retreat up to higher
orbit as the lizard planetary defense batteries continued to paint one of their
shields with diffuse beams.

“Drones are
withdrawing,” he confirmed, turning around fully as he stood up and looked down
at where the Archon was sitting reading through more of the scouting report.
“Are we going in alone or calling for support?”

“Both. Dispatch a
courier ship with an update and get this data back on the grid. If they want to
send backup they can, but we’re not waiting. We’re heading straight there and
taking pressure off these guy as soon as possible. If we can save lives by
getting there a month sooner, we’re getting there a month sooner. Drop a few
monitoring probes on our way out. I want to see how they respond when we’re
gone. Schedule and log data retrieval before we jump out.”

“Gladly,” Krimja said
as he walked back to his station and sat down, opening up the orders panel to
craft and file the necessary requests to be sent back onto the Star Force grid
with the courier as Mike continued to study the scouting report with great
interest. Though the circumstances would have changed somewhat since the time
this report data was collected and would change more during their travel time
there he wanted to get well acquainted with the party the lizards were throwing
for the locals before he crashed it.

3

February 22, 2826

Aphat
System (Unknown race)

Inner Zone

The
Archer 7
pulled away from its
deceleration point in low orbit around the giant white star follow the pair of
warships that had preceded it as the sensor feeds began to get returns. There
was a small lizard fleet also in orbit around the star but some 36 degrees around
the perimeter. There were many jumpships among them and Mike instantly knew
this was either a troop or supply fleet holding station to resupply the lizard
forces assaulting the system, for they wouldn’t leave empty jumpships just
sitting around for months or years on end. They’d have a flow of supplies
coming in, meaning these were probably at least partially loaded.

“Admiral, deploy drones
and have the
Archer 13
come with us
and do likewise. Primary target is that nearby fleet while the rest of ours covers
the entry point. Bring us with the drones, we’re going to need the heavier
weapons.”

“Navigator, plot and
execute course correction,” Krimja said as the Archon let him handle the
details while he studied the updating battlemap. “Drones stand by to detach
after we gain momentum.
Comm
, signal the
Archer 13
to do the same and link them
in with our navigational control. I want a simultaneous jump and us riding even
with them. No lagging. The more time we take the greater the chance of those
ships running.”

As the Bsidd sat down
at his command station the bridge crew got to work carrying out his orders. Two
decks below them there was a huge chamber filled with individual stations that
half of the drone controllers now sat in. The other chamber was located a deck
below and both were safely inside the central mass of the ship and very
difficult for weaponsfire to find. Every station in both chambers was filled
with Bsidd of varying types, all of which were soon to be assigned to some
task.

Who went where and got
what assignment was the purview of the bridge crew who, as soon as the issue to
deploy came, assigned a pilot to each drone while another began feeding them
navigational coordinates so they could get underway. The ‘coin racks’ in the
back half of the ship began releasing the disc-shaped drones one at a time from
each stack with them dropping below the ship and easing away into widely spaced
escort slots as the
Archer 7
made a
fast transition around the star by enhancing its gravitational pull in order to
facilitate the tight curve as they accelerated laterally.

The drones had to do so
as well as soon as they left the inertial dampening field, but the bridge crew
knew better than to try to fly a curved course during release and risk
collisions when they passed through the barrier of the IDF and physics took
over, so when the time came to release the jumpship’s engines went dark and the
warship coasted in a straight line until all were out, then as a group they’d
resume the curved trajectory around the star and up to the position of the
lizard fleet.

The
Archer 7
had a total of 56 drones
onboard, including two of the battlecruisers. Those fell to the back of the
formation and got a wide spacing before the course alterations began that
resulted in all the ships spreading out as their individual engines and
navigation calculations put them back on course. Once they were all pivoting on
the star’s gravity well they eased back together, pulling navigational
information from the jumpship to coordinate a somewhat precise arrival while
other bridge crewers were handing out remote piloting slots.

The pilots in the two
bays below the bridge were all waiting at their stations until a prompt would
come up requesting that they take a control slot. If the pilot accepted then a
function on one of the drones would be routed to their station. Helm control
had already been divvied up before they left the confines of the jumpship, but
now the weapon batteries, shield control, and auxiliary tasks were being handed
out with many gunners getting two or more weapons each. How many tasks went to
an individual pilot was a factor of how many drones there were for the total
number of pilots available and what each of their ratings were.

There was a complex
ranking system involved that was run by computer and allowed the bridge crew to
hand out assignment in batches or individually as they chose, not having to
know the history of each pilot but by selecting ‘best available’ for certain
tasks. How much a pilot could multitask was also figured in based off of
training scores and combat experience, with those more skilled being given
multiple jobs so the less skilled could focus on one or two things and become
more effective at them. The less one had to do in battle the more likely that
they wouldn’t get overwhelmed. Each of these pilots knew their task and their
task alone, for not one of them was assigned tasks on different drones
simultaneously.

Each pilot was mentally
on one ship, either through a neural interface or the holographic pocket of
displays available to them in their little control nooks. They only knew what
was happening to their ship, and often not even the whole thing if their
attention was on a particular firing line. It was better if they knew what was
happening directly around them, but more often than not the gunners didn’t just
fire randomly at nearby ships. The bridge crew was also able to assign targets,
whether they be individual ships or specific locations on those ships with
battlemap markers.

Those virtual orders
could also come from the ship’s Captain, the Admiral, or an Archon in a nexus.
The gunners often didn’t know who the order was from, they just saw a glowing
marker beacon on their displays to tell them that this was a priority target,
then they’d decide what to shoot and when, for most of the time they’d have a
slew of targeting markers to choose from that were color coded. Pulsing red was
the highest priority, with red being very important and orange and yellow below
that.

If something was worth
shooting, like a
comm
array or shield generator, it
would be marked purple so the gunners knew where to look without having to
search themselves. If a marker went yellow that meant it was preferred that
they shoot that one over the others. Orange was greatly preferred while red was
‘shoot it now.’ Pulsing red meant to ignore everything else and blow the hell
out of whatever was marked as fast as possible.

But there were also
other markers, with blue meaning ignore and green meaning don’t shoot at all.
Allied ships shown with a green halo, while if a certain section of an enemy
ship had something valuable onboard it’d be tagged with green, like the cargo
you were trying to steal. If a ship was fighting as a diversion the bridge crew
would mark it blue so the gunners knew it was still an enemy, but a waste of
shots even if it was flying right in front of your guns.

The color system was
different for each race and the control stations were modular so that if, say,
a Human needed to replace a Bsidd all they had to do was hit a few buttons and
everything from the holograms to button layout to seat shape would alter to
match the individual logging into the system. Right now there were only Bsidd,
but different variants had different sized bodies, so while their holograms
remained the same their seats and button layout did not, for the small
Eppies
couldn’t reach the farthest buttons on an Alpha’s
control board, and an Alpha couldn’t tag the small buttons as easily as an
Eppie
could.

Star Force had taken
all possibilities into consideration, even changing some of the holographic
color schemes into wavelengths of light that Humans couldn’t see because they stood
out better for other races, and vice versa. The Bsidd had produced this
warship, but since it was Star Force any race could use it, and use it on a
moment’s notice. All the remote pilot had to do was log in and his or her
presets would automatically update, including customized button layout, or they
could choose from several default standards.

As these Bsidd
controllers got their assignments their screens lit up with localized sensor
feeds from the ship they were virtually on as well as having a panel where
written orders could be displayed. In addition to that each controller had
sound cues to give
them
additional data and even that
very rare vocal communication from someone on the bridge. Each little nook they
had was sound dampened via an energy field that allowed them to hear outside
their little bubble of reality, but with reducing those sounds to a loud
whisper so as to not drown out the various pings and warnings of the ‘gaming
system’ they were using.

Every little detail
mattered to the battle, and the remote pilots knew better than to get sloppy.
If they couldn’t handle all the tasks requested of them they’d only accept the
ones that they could, and if they got overloaded they could remit one or two
back to the bridge where they would find another pilot to take on that
duty…though in battle when you were losing ships the greatest workload would
come at the beginning, for so long as a jumpship wasn’t lost you weren’t going
to lose remote pilots and they’d share more and more of the tasks with the
pilots from destroyed drones as time progressed, increasing overall efficiency
as the workload was spread out.

When the pair of
warships finally ended their tug on the star and leveled out they began
decelerating on approach as the lizard fleet picked them up and a few of the
ships began to move. As soon as the jumpships were within range they both
launched bloons at the same target, with the glowing capsules carrying
IDF-laced goo that hit and spread over portions of the lizard jumpship. More
bloons followed, blanketing several ships as the others began to run. Even
before the drones could get to them more bloons fired off, tagging and
disabling ships for a short period of time so long as the IDF field covered all
the internal gravity drives. Even one remaining active was enough to allow a
ship to move, with several lizard vessels limping off in just such a condition.

A few large Keema
blasts shot out across the gap, nearly invisible coming from the battlecruisers,
and punched through the shields of the jumpship they hit. The batteries meant
for surface bombardment worked well enough against the huge jumpships, but the
handful of cruisers with them were too small and mobile to adequately target
until the drones closed range…but by that time most of the lizard jumpships had
flashed out, making emergency jumps elsewhere in the system to avoid the
slaughter that they knew was coming their way.

The two warships and
their drones closed with the six jumpships that were left behind as the bloon
launchers continued to bathe them in the disabling goo else it’d expire and
they’d be free to move again. Even the cruisers knew what was coming and had
ran, knowing that they wouldn’t be able to do any damage to the Star Force
ships with such small numbers, leaving the caught jumpships to their fate.

However, these ships
were tens of kilometers long and didn’t explode with the push of a button. The
orders going out to the drones were to disable, not destroy, so the bloon
launchers wouldn’t have to sustain continuous fire to keep them in place. That
meant first breaching the shields, with the battlecruisers handled nicely in
conjunction to the heavy medium-ranged Keema batteries on the warships, then
coring into and destroying the gravity drives no matter how deeply buried
inside the ship they were located.

Other targets were the
weapons batteries, which a portion of the drones went after so they didn’t
whittle down the Star Force shields and cause damage during the long process
that killing a jumpship took. As usual, Mike sent out an offer of surrender to
the jumpships that they obligingly didn’t take. Though he didn’t like killing
other starship crews, he didn’t want to be burdened with prisoners on a mission
like this. They needed to hit hard and fast, though poaching cargo ships was
still a bit distasteful for such an operation.

Fortunately slowing
down Star Force with prisoners wasn’t a tactic the lizards had used yet, so
Mike’s pair of warships held in place and slowly tore apart the 6 lizard
jumpships until they were fully disabled and no more than helpless space
stations floating in orbit. They didn’t bother to stick around to pulverize
them, rather meeting up with the rest of their fleet that had arrived and
proceeding further into the system where the bulk of the enemy forces were.

Mike studied the
updating
battlemaps
as a few drones were sent to
every planet for
intel
purposes. There were no active
naval battles at present, but a huge chunk of the natives’ defenses had been
wiped out of orbit around one planet and had a very large lizard fleet sitting
in the rubble while the planetary defenders were taking refuge alongside their
existing battle stations.

Admiral, have a look
, Mike said telepathically through the wall
from the nexus and onto the bridge as he sent a location ping to
Krimja’s
station showing him the location of that
particular lizard fleet, though there were thousands of ships elsewhere in the
system working on other targets and covering the ground troops they had on the
semi-conquered worlds.

The Bsidd activated the
comm
back to the nexus in lieu of the telepathy he
didn’t possess, nor
any of his race did
. That was
another reason why the Humans were so suited to being the core of Star Force.
The powers of the Archons were beyond impressive.

“A lot to chew, but I
think we can handle it without losing too many drones. If they reinforce it’ll
tip the scales and we’ll be in a messy fight.”