Star Force: Bloodlust (SF54) (9 page)

By the time Morgan got out there it was growing large
overhead, and within the next 17 seconds it disappeared behind a nearby ridge,
then zipped out over top of her a moment later with an opening boarding ramp as
it rapidly descended down to the gravel.

The trailblazer ran for it and jumped up onto the ramp
before it had the chance to touch ground.

“Go!” Morgan said over the comm as soon as her foot
hit the metal, launching her inside between two Archon acolytes at the
entrance.

The scenery outside whipped to the side as the dropship
spun and accelerated upward. Neither Morgan nor the other Archons felt the
shift due to the IDF, allowing them to casually close the ramp as a bit of wind
pushed in to kiss Morgan’s armor as she tossed her nearly empty satchel to the
ground with a sigh of relief, pulling her helmet off and heading for the
cockpit.

“Nice to have you back,” one of the Archons said,
following her.

“You have no idea,” she said, not looking back at him.
“Note to the wise, the Skarrons can track our armor shields in the forest. We
have to turn them off to avoid detection.”

“Damn,” the other one said, with the two exchanging
glances. “What kind of range do they have?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not far. Get them overhead and
they’ll own you.”

“Good to know,” the Archon said as he followed Morgan
to the cockpit as the pilot was pushing the dropship as hard as he could to get
up out of the atmosphere. On the holographic monitor they could see several
fighter squadrons pursuing them, as well as nearby warships coming fast on an
intercept…but at the same time three drones were moving down to cover for them.

“Where’s the rest of the enemy fleet?” Morgan asked.

“Busy on the far side. We had to pull them off to get
you out.”

“How many others are getting picked up?”

The pilot shook his head. “You’re the only one to last
more than 3 days.”

Morgan was silent for a moment, then turned and
punched the wall with her armored fist. “What the hell happened?”

“I’m
sorry,
we couldn’t get
back to the surface.”

“I meant with the Scionate,” she said, both fire and
ice in her voice.

“I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve gotten a courier
back with news yet, and with no relay in this system…”

“How many dead?” she asked angrily.

“I don’t know that either.”

One of the Archons behind her pulled off his helmet
with an apologetic look on his face. “Twenty six thousand, four hundred and
eighty one,” he said painfully slow. “We also lost most of the drone fleet
covering the evac.”

Morgan closed her eyes and clenched her jaw,
suppressing a string of vitriol that she knew would never be sufficient.

“Looks like we’re going to make it,” the pilot said
after several dead seconds. “The drones are forcing the fighters off.”

“Thank you,” Morgan finally
said,
her voice now calm…yet dangerously so, like she was ready to snap and pounce at
the first enemy to show itself.

“We don’t leave people behind,” the pilot said, fully
aware that Morgan had ordered his dropship and others to skip her the first
time in order to evac more troops.

“No, we don’t,” she said, glancing at the holographic
map and seeing that they were nearly in the clear. Tossing her helmet to the
floor and having it bounce off the wall and skitter around she began unlatching
her armor with angry pulls. “Our
allies
are
another matter.”

“What are we going to do?” the Archon to her right
said, wrinkling his nose a bit at the smell of her rancid clothes.

“Get some answers,” she said, stepping out of the
armor and into the crisp, cool air of the dropship with the planet’s excessive
humidity blissfully gone, “then break some bones.”

9

January 24, 2553

Hatten
System
(Scionate Territory)

Inner Zone

Commander
Yen’ten
watched
from the pit as his jumpship braked against the star and came back to relative
speeds with the system, allowing for the continuous transmissions from the two
inhabited planets in the system to begin registering properly, giving him the
information he needed to plan the next jump…a small one across the system to
the further of the two planets.

An insertion point in a friendly section of orbit was
being repeatedly transmitted for any incoming fleets to hear, with the urgent
call for reinforcements going out not just across the system but across the
ADZ.
Yen’ten’s
troops had been on the border fighting
Skarrons at
Weema
when the courier ship arrived with
the recall orders, and since then they’d been on a breakneck course back to
Scionate territory with him sucking his fuel reserves dry in order to get here
as quickly as possible.

Running his gravity drives further out from both
origin and destination systems allowed for greater speeds but had a diminishing
return as the gravity weakened, costing you more fuel for less thrust. At the
moment speed was more important so his giant troop ship had trimmed the
navigation as closely as they
could,
now arriving with
barely 4% fuel reserves. That would be enough to get them across the system
with some left for maneuvering, but they weren’t making a stellar jump again
until they got refueled…and the only way that was going to happen was if they
won the ongoing fight occurring on both planets.

The Scionate troop jumpship came out of its microjump
into middle orbit amidst a group of Scionate warships holding the rendezvous
point while far more numerous fleets of Lacvamat ships dominated low orbit…but
not enough to blockade the planet, which had the surface tied up in battles
that saw the enemy pushing over 2/3rds of the smaller planet of
Orril
and with a solid but contained foothold on
Rewqt
. According to his information the Lacvamat were
pushing
Orril
hard, intent on wrapping it up then moving
their troops over to
Rewqt
to then conquer that
world, with
Yen’ten
being ordered to send his 36
transports worth of ground troops down to
Orril
.

They had to hold that planet or lose the system, and
with so many Scionate troops deployed elsewhere in the ADZ there was no way of
telling when the next group would return. Three systems were under assault, all
smaller ones. The Lacvamat hadn’t been so bold as to hit their Capitol or
primaries, but they were succeeding in taking the targets they were striking,
due in no small part to the fact that the Lacvamat had no troops on the front
and were essentially hitting the Scionate with a dishonorable, blindsided
attack.

But that advantage wasn’t going to last, for the
troops on the fronts were being recalled en mass to defend their territory,
giving the Lacvamat a window of opportunity that the local defenders were
trying to stall out…with little success. A quick glance at the overall troop
disposition and
Yen’ten
knew his transports would be
going down heavily outgunned, but they had to hold at least a piece of the
planet to deny the Lacvamat the clean sweep. More troops would be on the way,
he knew, and the Scionate were the dominate military power of the two, so if
they held long enough the scales would tip in their advantage, but they were
going to have a very bloody price to pay in order to do that.

There was no question whether or not they’d pay it.
The Lacvamat had hit Scionate territory and every single one of the quadrupeds
was now out for blood. They’d do what was necessary to attain eventual victory,
even if it meant fighting and dying here to buy time for others to finish the
job.

The jumpship waited at the orbital rendezvous point
long enough for the other ships following it in to arrive, which took nearly
two hours, but that was as long as they were going to wait. Two more jumpships,
one a troop ship identical to
Yen’ten’s
and one a
warship carrier that added desperately needed firepower to the Scionate orbital
presence. With those ships and the others working as escorts,
Yen’ten
ordered his transports to disconnect and head down
to the planet to make a contended landing in a very hot LZ where the troops
already on the surface were losing ground rapidly as they retreated across a
massive grass plain with only a few small cities to find shelter in.

Mik’tal
ran hard, keeping
pace with the Scionate tank alongside him. The big, blocky rectangle shielded
his right side and the hole in his yellow armor as the skies overhead were
filled with distant Lacvamat. Little energy orbs dropped like rain, landing
randomly across the landscape from the unarmored flyers that were too far
overhead for the infantry to shoot back at. The few Valeries in the air were
consumed by the
Lacvamat’s
own fighters, shaped like
a boomerang similar to their starships.

Those fighters were nearly the Valeries’ equal,
despite the inferior technology…but then that was to be expected of an aerial
race. Trouble was that meant the Scionate had lost air superiority, which meant
they’d effectively lost the ground war because the Lacvamat didn’t fight on the
ground. They flew overhead and rained down ordinance on the infantry, landing
only when there were key structures to take.

In those few situations the Scionate were eating them
alive, making it hard for the Lacvamat to take the few outposts and cities
ahead, giving
Mik’tal
and the other fleeing troops
somewhere to run to. They’d just had to evacuate one of their major cities,
with so many Lacvamat flying overhead and dive-bombing his unit that they’d
been hard pressed to see the sun in the sky. The enemy was attacking in swarms,
even on the ground, making it virtually impossible for the Scionate to hold out
once the city shields went down, though his unit had made them pay for the
victory with many kills when they came down inside the buildings.

Mik’tal
had barely gotten
out alive, more due to luck than skill,
then
had taken
so many orb hits from above as he ran that his shields had gone down and his
armor was penetrated on his right side. The wound was light, but it pained him
as he ran…but run he did, for the Lacvamat were still overhead raining down
glowing little purple orbs that were hitting the tank beside him and every now
and then himself when he got unlucky.

Staying as close as he could to the tank he avoided
taking another hit to his exposed side, but the further he and the others ran
the more of them got hit, for there were more than 500 infantry running
alongside 18 tanks and a myriad of civilian vehicles as they made their way
towards the outpost ahead, which was already throwing up anti-air against the
fighters pestering it ahead of the Lacvamat ‘infantry’ swarm.

Small twangs of energy discharge were sounding
everywhere the orbs hit,
then
suddenly there was a
loud screech of plasma overhead just before a Valerie shot over the tank so
close that
Mik’tal
flinched. Two more quickly
followed it and a glance upward saw the Lacvamat swarm changing its normal flow
as the Scionate fighters flew directly into their midst, shooting or ramming
them out of the sky.

The first glint of hope in many hours forced
Mik’tal
to continue looking up as he
ran,
catching an orb to his armored face that then drove him down into the ground.
His head hit and tripped him up, rolling his armored body over in a bad
somersault as the tank continue to move ahead of him. A small personnel
transport behind him hit him in the head as it didn’t slow, knocking him down a
second time underneath it as the anti-
grav
vehicle
floated over him.

He held still for a moment, then popped up and got
into the clear before the next vehicle in the convoy could do the same, nudging
aside another Scionate and falling back into the group as they ran with the
orbs continuing to drop even as the Valeries tore into the swarm…but the
Lacvamat weren’t letting the ground troops go, intent on killing them in the
open and having more than enough flying infantry to do it, no matter how many
of them the Valeries took down.

Mik’tal
continued to run,
seeing a few others around him go down to the purple rain accompanied by the
occasional falling Lacvamat corpse, as they were still two kilometers away from
the outpost and the more or less clear sky over it that was still in contention
with weaponsfire and enemy fighters continuing to go at it, though the
outpost’s shield appeared to be down, which was probably why the Lacvamat
weren’t pulling back despite the losses they were taking.

Mik’tal’s
skin rippled with
goosebumps as a loud rumble sounded on his right and grew louder quickly, with
the sun going out above as a Scionate troop transport flew in low overhead,
pushing the enemy infantry away with its own anti-air fire but more importantly
blocking the airspace above the convoy so they couldn’t rain down fire on them.
Elsewhere nearby other troop ships were coming down right into the swarm and
beginning to unload with
Mik’tal
very glad for the
help but knowing that the Lacvamat weren’t going to be easily displaced.

He just hoped all these Scionate weren’t coming in to
see their quick deaths.

The transport overhead stayed with them all the way up
to the city, but then it began taking heavy plasma hits as the Lacvamat version
of walkers began pounding it. They were fighters, but so bulky and heavily
armed they were more like mini flying turrets…and a group of 60 or so were
coming in through the infantry swarm to hit the transport, as well as firing
down underneath it.

The vehicle to
Mik’tal’s
left took a hit, then quickly two more that exploded a chunk of it out that
bowled over four Scionate ahead of him before tearing into the grassy plain and
setting small fires in its wake. He didn’t know if they were injured or dead
but he didn’t stop, knowing that he’d end up like them if he didn’t get indoors
and the outpost was just ahead. He kept running, trying to block everything
else out, including a plasma blast that fried the Scionate next to him and took
down his own shields, leaving the left side of his armor a melty mess.

A few seconds later and his left rear leg seized up as
the melted metal hardened and locked the mechanical joint in place.
Mik’tal
fell,
then
got up into a
three-legged limp continuing forward as another tank flew directly over him. He
had to duck to keep from getting hit, but was momentarily glad for the air
cover.

When it passed him by he saw troops coming out from
the outpost towards them, fresh troops, one of which came up to him and knocked
him over with her head, then rolling him up into a rescue carry over her back
with his armored paw in her mouth as she retracted her helmet into segments
that pulled back down her neck.

Glad for the awkward help, he let her carry his
massive bulk all the way into the outpost gate where she dumped him to the side
then disappeared, with him seeing her helmet reform just before she went back
outside. Now
laying
next to a building,
Mik’tal
dragged himself over to the nearest entrance and
went inside, relieved to be out of the deadly rain, and inspected the damage to
his armor and realizing he was going to have to jettison it. He couldn’t fight
with three legs, so he began peeling it off and pried his leg out of the jammed
section, leaving him with only the wound on his right side hindering him.

He was alive, for the moment, and needed to either
find a new set of armor, which was unlikely, or find some way to assist the
others that didn’t involve taking weaponsfire.

Ven’poi
ducked his Valerie
down through the Lacvamat swarm again, cutting through three of them with the
bladed front of his fighter before even getting to fire the scatter gun, mowing
down another dozen within a few seconds, but for every cluster he killed more
came in to replace them. The sky was literally cluttered with the enemy, making
for a target rich environment that had a very bad time targeting him. Their
weaponry was designed to use gravity assist to cause heavy damage on the
ground, with their air to air setting being very inaccurate. Add to that their
reluctance to fire laterally for fear of hitting their own and
Ven’poi
had virtually a free fire zone to work through up
until the enemy fighters got to him.

Somehow the swarm knew when they were coming and parted
for them, allowing their fighters and heavy fighters through without any
collisions. Their boomerang-shaped fighters took after him immediately, two
against his one, and he knew he had to run. Dropping down to the surface was
suicide, for the infantry would bombard the hell out of his ship, so his only
choice was to go up and above the swarm…and quickly finding that’s where the
other Scionate fighters had gone as well.

The boomerangs came up with them, both the small and
the large versions. The larger ones were slow enough that
Ven’poi
could stay away from them, but the Lacvamat fighters would retreat towards them
whenever the Scionate got the advantage, forcing them to either peel off or go
head to head with the flying death traps. The heavies had enough weaponry and
armor to slug it out with tanks, making his Valerie severely outgunned. The
only way he could take one down would be to nip away at it with hit and run
attacks, but the Lacvamat fighters wouldn’t allow that, making for a potent two-punch
combo that frustratingly gave them aerial dominance over top the swarms
continuing to assault the ground troops below.