Star Force 82 Hradeiti (SF82) (Star Force Origin Series) (9 page)

      
“We won’t. But we may get a bloody nose. We need to learn from actual combat with the lizards using our tech and our troops what it takes to beat them before we start advertising to the ADZ that we can do this. Star Force can beat them, the Hradeiti are unproven. Let’s not make any proclamations or predictions this first time out.”

      
“And our mercenary teams?” the Irondel asked.

      
“Let them finish their assignments and return as scheduled.”

      
“I agree,” the Protovic concurred. “We need to be cautious about this. Keeping it in-house until we know what the outcome would be is the prudent course.”

      
“No point in bragging before an ass kicking,” the Gardeen said sarcastically. “So let’s not jinx ourselves. Quiet we will be until we get Bra’shom’s post battle report.”

      
The councilors nodded, coming to a consensus.

      
“I’m off then. Let’s make this happen,” the Gardeen said enthusiastically as everyone rose from their seats/pedestals…then a few sat back down as the others left when they realized their work required these consoles.

      
They were all eager and untested as Hradeiti, even those who had come from Star Force. This was an entirely new ball game, and no one knew for sure how it was going to play out without the Archons leading the way. They had to prove themselves, and as the time now rapidly approached, no one knew for sure what was going to happen.

 
      
7

 
      
February 17, 3149

      
Velcor System (lizard territory)

      
Inner Zone

 
      
The Hradeiti assault fleet jumped into the system without incident, finding the situation the same as what the scout sent ahead of them had returned to the rendezvous point with. There was one inhabited planet with a fleet of 85 cruisers sitting in orbit, two more than the initial survey, but that was probably due to surface yards having completed two of the ships under construction.

      
85 cruisers wasn’t anything to disregard, but Bra’shom knew it could have been much worse as he watched the high orbit transmissions from the current scout around the planet as it broadcast intel back towards the star where the rest of the fleet was still arriving. He didn’t know how they’d react. Come out to the star and try to attack them there? Stay in planetary orbit and fight just above the atmosphere? Go in atmosphere and retreat back to the surface? The lizards could do a number of things, but as soon as the fleet made its way around the star and into view of the enemy sensors, assuming they didn’t have any stealthed monitoring satellites with eyes on them now, they were going to see that they were heavily outnumbered.

      
The Scionate paced around the bridge of his flagship, monitoring the crew and various displays, though it was really just his way of impatiently waiting for his full fleet to arrive at the jumppoint. His battleship and three other identical converted cargo jumpships had led the fleet into the system ahead of the 168 naval jumpships carrying the rest of their attack fleet. Most of those had arrived by now, with only a handful left that would be followed up by the supply ships and those carrying the ground forces.

      
He was proud of the Hradeiti fleet they’d built, and even though most of the more experienced ships/units were not here he was confident that those that were could get the job done with a wide margin of error so long as a relief lizard fleet didn’t jump in on top of them.

      
Right now the jumpships were unloading their warships, most of which were crewed, but 18 of those jumpships were carrying remotely controlled vessels of Hradeiti construction. They had no internal living spaces whatsoever, making them expendable if need be, but the rest of the warships had people onboard and ranged from corvettes up to cruisers. The drones were all cutters in hull shape, but they carried weapons equivalent to their destroyers. Only the battleships were capable of jumping between systems on their own, meaning that if the relatively unarmed jumpships were lost a lot of people would be stranded here.

      
For that reason Bra’shom couldn’t leave the bigger ships behind at the star and push in for a quick attack on the planet. The lizards were going to know they were coming, and he hated giving them that head start. They were dangerous enough improvising on the spur of the moment. Give them time to see his fleet and prepare a strategy against the unknown vessels…the very thought of it made him cringe. He might be ex-Star Force, same as a chunk of the senior officers on his ships, but the vessels themselves were not. Almost all of them were conversions of other vessels, many of which had not been warships to begin with.

      
Others were, though they’d had to be modified to get them up to a respectable caliber of both weapons and defenses. Not enough armor, shields, and countermeasures was typical of warships sold in the ADZ. They were all engines and weapons, useful in going after pirates or defending convoys with just their presence. There were no full scales wars going on within the ADZ, so there was a considerable lack of shipbuilding savvy outside of Star Force that the Hradeiti had to compensate for.

      
They’d purchased the ships from various manufacturers, then had others rebuild them to their liking up until they had gotten a working shipyard capable of doing that themselves. Right now that still incomplete shipyard had taken over producing the drone warships in its own right, which were coming in quite handy on the frontier mercenary missions that they were currently testing them and their troops in…though those were all small scale engagements. Nothing even close to 85 lizard cruisers.

      
The two control ships for the drones were converted jumpships, both armed to make them combat capable and heavily armored to allow them to take quite a beating, but they didn’t have the kinetic stopping power of dampening shields. That was a Star Force tech that hadn’t been shared with the ADZ despite it not being a weapon. The shields that were available to the public were solid, multi-purpose models and every ship in the Hradeiti fleet had been outfitted with them for just that reason, but if you had to stop a kamikaze cruiser you needed dampening shields, meaning Bra’shom had a very real concern about losing crews if the lizards turned and rammed something other than the drones.

      
The key here was to beat the lizards in this first engagement before they could learn enough about the Hradeiti ships to exploit their shortcomings. No Star Force ships had entered the system with them, but for some reason he didn’t doubt that they’d be here when needed…if they could secure orbit and a foothold on the planet. The Hradeiti hadn’t been told where the help would be coming from or in what form, but he knew Star Force wouldn’t go back on their deal. How soon they’d get here after confirmation was made was the question mark, so the fleet commander knew he might have to hold off lizard reinforcements for a short period of time on their own if those reinforcements were already on the way here for scheduled operations rather than in response to a distress call.

      
The system did NOT have an interstellar communications system, meaning that a ship would have to be sent out to alert others and Bra’shom intended not to let any of their jumpships get away. If a cruiser wanted to make the slow trip that was one thing, but their big, fast carrier ships could not be allowed to get escape.

      
But where were they now? The scout in high orbit wasn’t showing them on this side of the planet. Were they sitting on the other side or somewhere else within the system? Or were they off to other locations and not needed to be sitting and babysitting this planet? Were they even now bringing more cruisers back here to supplement the defense fleet?

      
That last option concerned him, but if they truly weren’t here then there would be no distress call going out in any effective way.

      
When the last of his naval fleet arrived he left a few ships at the jumppoint to defend the incoming cargo and army ships and immediately took the rest of his 2,384 ships out from the star in an orderly microjump into middle orbit around the planet and well above the cruiser formation that was obstinately not moving. Even when it was obvious that they were outmatched they didn’t alter from their parking orbit, which concerned Bra’shom. Did they have some larger plan in the works? Or did they just want to see who it was coming into their system.

      
His ships were unknown models to them. Was it possible that other races with similar vessels were dealing with the lizards? If they weren’t sure the Hradeiti were enemies that could explain their lack of movement.

      
The Scionate felt the odds of that were low, but he couldn’t understand why the lizards were just sitting there.

      
He kept his fleet on station until all of them came out of their microjumps, then he got his formations arrayed as he liked, with the battleships leading the way and the drones pacing them ready to be shot on ahead if needed, but otherwise being held back so they wouldn’t be targeted initially given that they were the smallest of the fleet’s ships.

      
Then the lizards moved.

      
All of them, almost in synchronous movement, dipped down and headed for the atmosphere.

      
Damn them. So much for reckless charges to the death.

      
They’d guessed correctly. Bra’shom’s fleet wasn’t built for atmosphere. They could head down after them but their maneuvering capabilities were going to be hampered considerably, not to mention the fact that their hovering rates were average to bad and they’d be eating up a lot of fuel just to hold still, let alone trying to maneuver and chase down the lizard ships that were much better in atmosphere.

      
Then we make them come to us.

      
Of the three cities on the planet, only two were covered by the pair of anti-orbital batteries. Bra’shom put his fleet into a descending trajectory to get them into low orbit hover at an angle to the third city that would leave the big guns around the curve of the planet and out of range. If they came down directly over the city they’d be just within the firing arc, but offset themselves and the planet itself would shield them from the phaser fire that he knew his fleet could not stand up against. If he had to take down a lizard city shield, even a small one, before they could directly attack an anti-orbital gun, that gun would tear through too many of his ships to be worth the effort.

      
But so long as he had a city that he could bombard without taking return fire he was going to make the most of the opportunity…and see if the lizard cruisers would just sit out of range and watch him slowly destroy it.

      
The asteroid chuckers had not accompanied the fleet. Those ships and their painstakingly accumulated ammunition had been left behind at Ventress and saved for when they’d need to punch a hole in an anti-orbital grid. Here that wasn’t necessary, so they were going to use the cleansing beams to sting the defense shield enough until it gave way and they could pummel the city with impunity.

      
Or not quite. As his ships set up and began firing their fire pale white lances down at the planet on a steep angle, missile plumes sprouted up around the city’s edge and a wave of long range weapons could be seen tracking their way.

      
Bra’shom wasn’t worried. Against other ADZ warships those would be a serious problem, but the Hradeiti had painstakingly outfitted all of their ships with ample anti-air defenses for just this reason, not to mention the need to defend themselves when they were in atmosphere against the lizards’ wisp aircraft.

      
Bra’shom had to wait for the missiles to cross some 179 miles before his ships’ defenses were within range. The lachars bit out at the missiles and chewed them up gratifyingly, not allowing a single weapon through to one of the other battleships that seemed to be their singular target.

      
“Well done,” he told his bridge crew. “First test passed. Now let’s get that shield down,” he said as another round of missiles came at them, a much larger one this time, but it to failed to get through the fleet’s overlapping cover fire.

      
“Here they come,” a Critel officer announced, with Bra’shom noting as well that the sensors were indicating that the lizard cruisers were no longer staying near the planet’s surface. They were redirecting back to orbit in order to meet the attackers before the city’s shield could go down. When they got closer another wave of missiles shot off, with the intercept time going to be just after the lizards got to the ships.

      
“First priority is those missiles. Do not let them through,” he underscored. “Cease bombardment and focus all cleansing beams on the leading lizard cruisers. We have to take them out fast or we’ll lose ships. Bring the drones up to flanking positions and order them in to cover for retreating ships. Full cycling protocols, people. I don’t want any ship losses that can be avoided. We have a numerical advantage, so let’s make use of it.”

      
Even as he said the words he knew they were still in jeopardy. Not in losing the fight, but in getting their nose bloodied. And from their incoming tracts it looked like the battleships were going to be the primary targets.

      
Go for the big ones first? Fine with me. Come right into our guns and we’ll get this over with quickly
, he thought, though his gut disagreed with him. By the time his brain recognized the problem it was too late to do anything.