Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) (4 page)

“I agree,” Mike said,
sending the official order out through the nexus. “If the natives jump in we’ll
coordinate as much as possible, but let’s assume we’re going at it alone for
now.”

“I’ve got a designated
comm
officer standing by in case they try to make contact.
Hopefully we can establish some rudimentary shorthand if they do.”

“I wouldn’t count on
that, but try anyway,” Mike said, knowing that language differences didn’t only
exist in spoken words but in computer systems as well. “Lizard would be the
best bet if they’ve been fighting them as long as we think they have. Work it
from there, but I’m not expecting anything so soon.”

“I hope to surprise
you.”

“Please do. In the
meantime, let’s work on the
Bsidd’s
kill count. Lots
of ships out there to deny the enemy the use of, and in doing so let’s hope we
make some new friends.”

“And if not?”

“We
killsteal
and run. Enemy of my enemy isn’t always my friend, but we can still help these
guys out regardless. Just watch our back in case they don’t take kindly to us
being here either.”

“I’ll put a man on
monitoring them while you go to work. If they head our way I’ll ping you well
before they get within weapons range.”

“Thank you. Let’s get
busy,” Mike said, cutting the
comm
and focusing as he
linked fully with the nexus and immersed himself in the fleet. Krimja knew he’d
communicate with him through the system unless something warranted spoken words
and the Bsidd knew to reciprocate, for the less distracting the
battlemaster
the better. While his crew of remote pilots
were damn good, they always fought more effectively with an Archon guiding the
flow of battle and he didn’t expect today to be any different.

Settling himself on his
bench he began setting up his control boards so he could also issue selective
commands with a touch of a button rather than verbally shouting to his crew.
When a Star Force warship went into combat the bridge didn’t get noisy, leaving
everyone without exterior distractions so they could focus on their small part
of the overall battle.

The Admiral’s role was
that similar to the Archon’s, and he’d be backing him up mostly while looking
for adjustments to make when necessary. Some Archons preferred to let their
Admirals fight the battle and make tweaks, but Mike did not. He wanted to be in
the hot seat from the beginning, which meant Krimja would be carrying out his
general orders and adding the detail necessary so the Archon wouldn’t have to.

To that end he received
his first vector allotment, indicating that Mike wanted three prongs to the
attack, and the Admiral went about assigning warships to each with theirs being
added to the central group first off.

4

The left prong to the
Star Force attack skirted well wide of the lizard formation as it broke from
its holding orbit and rearranged itself into swarm mode, clumping the cruisers
together so they could mass fire on the drones. If they didn’t they’d get
picked apart too easily, plus it would make it harder for ramming
countermeasures to come into play. When necessary the lizards were still
attempting to go kamikaze against ships though they didn’t try so many times
against the jumpships knowing they had dampening shields that could slow their
momentum or stop it entirely before reaching the proper shields.

The drones were a bit
different, being much smaller and not so equipped, but the shield matrixes they
carried were variable and could be
retasked
to emit
the dampening fields in front of a target. That would leave the drone without
shields itself, but there was only so much room inside their disc-like volume
to accommodate weapons, engines, power cells, etc. Choices had to be made, but
if a ship looked to be the upcoming target of a kamikaze attack the drones
could be deployed into defensive alignment and blanket the trajectory with the
dampening shields…which would act as a momentum slower and structured in a
similar manner to the Archon’s Lachka ‘crash bags.’ They didn’t structurally
link back to the emitters, rather laying down a cloying energy field and
sustaining it to achieve the desired slowing effect.

In the clutter of a
heated battle the drones were essentially vulnerable to lizard ships ramming
them, but when those impacts occurred they were not at very high speeds and
most likely would only diminish or breach a drone’s shields in addition to
knocking it out of place. That would open it up to hull attack by the others
around it while pancaking the much less sturdy lizard cruiser and it was a
technique that was used on occasion, but with so many drones in play it almost
seemed pointless because the drone in question would almost certainly withdraw,
recharge its shields, then cycle back into the battle.

Whether or not that
happened today wasn’t known to the remote pilots flying this prong of the
attack, but they knew that keeping the enemy off the jumpships was the priority
and unlike in previous eras the jumpships were most definitely coming into the
battle rather than staying far beyond it, earning their titles as ‘warships.’
They were not glorified carriers, and had on them some impressive weaponry in
addition to the bloon launchers.

Some of that weaponry
launched out prior to any of the three prongs getting to target. Some were
compact bloons mean to cheat the range limitations and get some mauler blasts
on target, which in this case was just firing into the moving swarm of cruisers
because the large core of lizard capital ships were lagging behind and letting
the cruisers get in position to take the brunt of the assault, knowing that
Star Force could smoke the bigger ships right off if they led with them.

Along with those bloons
came a series of missiles, some small, some large, and all shielded. A hail of
anti-missile phaser fire filled the area ahead of the missiles but a few hits
weren’t going to be able to take them out and the missiles were being fired in
groups with the leading few acting as shield ships to protect the ones with the
payloads. As a result most of them got through to the inside of the lizard
formations then found ships to detonate against.

When they exploded they
didn’t damage the lizard ships, rather mushrooming out in gigantic energy
fields that interacted with the lizard shields and drained them, some to the
point of breaching the matrixes for those closest to the detonation points, in
preparation for the incoming drones that entered Keema range within the next
handful of seconds.

With the battlecruisers
already firing their heavy, long range versions the medium Keema batteries
opened up across the fleet as they coasted to a stop, intent on just poaching
the lizard ships while staying outside their phaser range. That didn’t stop the
lizards from returning fire, but when their phaser beams reached the drones
they were diffuse and disintegrating, for like the Keema they were unstable
upon release and didn’t continue indefinitely like a laser.

Though like a laser
they did fan out, spreading their damage over a wider area rather than a
pinpoint strike that would have the best chance of momentarily breaching a
shield. As the lizard ships surged ahead to cut the distance the beams from
both sides got stronger, though the Star Force Keema quickly peeked out and had
them tagging the enemy hulls with shots powerful enough to breach through their
yellow/tan armor plating with a single hit.

Once the lizards got within
their prime phaser range the Star Force drones accelerated again, jumping
across the gap to bring their short range weapons into play. Those were
comprised of a few maulers and
sammies
but most were
now Ta’lin’yi, with years of technical advancements making those weapons
smaller and more potent, enough that most drones carried at least two. Those
drones targeted the
shieldless
lizard cruisers, with
their shield columns touching hull and blasting it away with fireworks-like
results when the white/gold sparkling energy surge hit. All it took were a
handful of Ta’lin’yi hits to take down a cruiser, allowing even a single drone
to chew through one in under 12 seconds if the shields were already down.

But there were a lot of
targets to choose from, for there were thousands upon thousands of lizard ships
just in this one tendril that they were sending against the leftmost prong.
That was typical and nothing the remote pilots hadn’t seen before so they
didn’t panic, knowing what they needed to do and listening to the prompts their
controllers were giving them, whether they were a
crewer
on the bridge, a ship’s Captain, or even the Admiral or an Archon. When they
told them to do something they did it immediately, then filled in the blanks
themselves when left alone amongst the fray.

That included
everything from deciding which target to fire at to maneuvering the ship around
the enemy vessels to get better firing lines, for the ships didn’t just sit
still and shoot at each other. That would have been a death sentence for the
lizard cruisers who didn’t have the armor, shields, or firepower for that kind
of a slugging match, so they acted more like a slow flock of birds swirling
about to deliver a few good salvos before running off to live to recharge their
own shields.

Trouble was starships
weren’t all that fast and the Star Force drones were faster, so it wasn’t
uncommon to see the drones breaking formation to briefly chase down a ship and
make a kill then circle back around to the group they were in. If you could
stay with the flow you’d dominate, but let the lizards create a current of
ships passing by you and they’d pummel you with weaponsfire you could not stop,
for even if you destroyed a ship its debris would fly on by and there would be
intact cruisers coming at you the next second, every second, as the mass of
lizard ships acted in unison to try and take down individual drones.

The naval power scale
had tipped so much in the past few centuries that the lizards were considerably
outclassed at this point and even a cutter could take on two lizard cruisers
and reliably win. That kind of dominance was countered with massive numbers,
but the Bsidd fleet wasn’t going to let them use that advantage to its fullest.
One reason for the three pronged attack was to spread their fleet out, but when
the left prong engaged it fanned out even more taking small clusters of drones
out at different angles and trying to get to the edge of the lizard formation.
If they could do that then they’d essentially have their rear angles clear of
enemies and be able to shift shields towards the incoming firepower and make
themselves that much harder to kill.

The lizards knew this
and always tried to keep ships surrounding the drones…but that also drew them
further and further apart. It was a numbers game and if Star Force could spread
them out enough they’d win handily. If the lizards were able to stay clumped up
enough and still surround the drones then they’d have the advantage of
attrition with the Star Force ships having to retreat and recharge or stay and
risk destruction in order to rack up a kill count.

As it was they didn’t
always have that choice. The remote pilots were good at anticipating when to
pull back, and their controllers would ping them if they thought they’d
overstayed, but there were never any guarantees and the flow of battle could
change instantly. That was another tactic the lizards used, with multiple ships
attacking different targets in a seemingly predictable way then all changing to
a single target in the hopes of getting through its shields before it had a
chance to pull back and retreat.

So not only did the
remote pilots have to worry about who to shoot and when, they also had to look
at positioning and try to avoid giving the enemy too many proximity possibilities
to counter them with. That responsibility lay with the pilot of each craft and
the controllers orchestrating the overall battle, and the ones the Bsidd had
sent with this invasion fleet were all experienced in lizard combat so most of
the predictable tricks didn’t work on them.

But they were always
trying new ones, and it was Mike’s job to smoke those out and see ahead to any
possible traps or opportunities from his position in the command nexus. He knew
his troops would take care of the minutia of battle, as well as being consumed
by it and unable to notice what was happening elsewhere. As the Admiral handled
a lot of the duties coordinating the central prong of their attack that was
heading directly for the larger lizard capital ships, Mike kept making alterations
here and there but wanted to keep a clear head for the overall battle. Dive in
too deep to micromanaging one piece of it and he’d lose perspective…which was
the primary task he had and that others were counting on him for.

It was that big picture
approach that allowed him to see the multiple jump signatures of ships entering
planetary orbit as soon as they manifested themselves into strings of lizard
reinforcements coming in from other fleets. They couldn’t jump
en
mass, fortunately, and these were not coming by jumpship
either so they had some time, but on the larger battlemap there were strings of
the ships arriving and maneuvering around planetary orbit while the main battle
was underway. The lizards knew they had to keep their numbers up or they might
as well retreat and it looked like they planned to do just that rather than
concede Star Force this planet’s orbital swath that they’d taken from the
natives.

Mike also noticed
deployments from the native fleets, not heading for the huge battle that he was
currently sitting in the middle of but the wide V-shaped ships were making slow
course corrections from their current positions and heading towards the
jumppoints the lizards were using, ostensibly to attack those reinforcements.
The natives were still a wildcard in this, but he was glad that they noticed
the opportunity for what it was and were throwing in at exactly the points
needed while keeping their ships away from his own given their lack of
knowledge of each other.

Mike had a limited knowledge
of their capability, based off the scouting reports and snippets of battle that
he’d observed, but he had no way of knowing how many lizard ships were incoming
and how the natives would fare against them. He thought they could handle a
good number of them but hoped they weren’t desperate enough to engage in
reckless engagements. Mike’s Bsidd fleet could kill all the lizards in the
system given enough time, they just had to be smart and cagey about it and not
rush in head on to their numbers, splitting them up and whittling them down by
using Star Force’s strengths against them and denying them the swarm tactics
that the lizards relied upon.

But there was no way
for him to communicate that to the natives, so all he could do was hope they
knew what they were doing and didn’t let their desperation to aid in this
seemingly victorious unknown raid cause them to lose a chunk of their fleet
that they’d kept intact this long. He wasn’t sure how it looked on the outside,
maybe the natives thought his ships were losing, for after all these centuries
of fighting the lizards Mike could look at an engagement and size up the
tactics of it instantly, both because he was familiar with his own fleet and
had so much combat experience against the lizards.

Regardless, the natives
were coming to the aid of Star Force and going to try and ambush the
reinforcement fleet as they came into planetary orbit piecemeal. It was
definitely an opportunity to exploit, but it was going to take some time for
them to get there and they weren’t moving as fast as Star Force’s ships were
capable of. That said, this battle wasn’t going to be over anytime soon given
how much tonnage was in play and how long weaponsfire took to tear through
hulls, armored or otherwise.

But unlike in the
movies, when a starship was destroyed it didn’t vanish in a cloud of vapor.
Every molecule was still there, broken apart or maybe in altered forms, but the
mass didn’t disappear. That meant that with every lizard ship killed there was
junk now floating in the battlefield and the lizards weren’t retreating from
that mess. Mike knew that was on purpose because they wanted the wreckage to
offer them cover to pin down Star Force’s movement options more than to block
incoming weaponsfire. They needed the drones to be in one spot in order to mass
a swarm of ships against them, so the more pinned down Mike’s ships got the
better it was for them.