Star Force Perseverance (SF81) (Star Force Origin Series) (14 page)

across the entire sky in an arc, looking about a fifth the thickness of Earth’s

moon.

Riona stared at the darkness beneath the visible

column and zoomed in with her helmet’s optics as far as she could. The view

changed into a myriad of lights around the column, bathing it in pinks coming

from different directions, some of which seemed to be coming up from directly

underneath it, along with a few other colors that she recognized as rocket

plumes. The nearby turret screeched again and its pink lance was visible as it

intersected the column, but Riona was too far away to see the effect.

She jacked up her comm signal, knowing that it might

be tracked to her so she set to transmit to Derrick-633 so that he could then

relay it to Paul using the dampened signal strength that wouldn’t reach all the

way up to her through the layers of lizard infrastructure.

“Paul, have a look,” she said, sending him her

visuals.

“Damn it,” he said with a snarl. “I need you to boost

for an orbital link.”

“I’ll keep my head down,” she said, visually scanning

the nearby sky for ships as she reset to act as his transmitter with a signal

strong enough that they could not keep the lizards from being able to detect

it. “Link established.”

“Admiral?” Paul asked, waiting a few heartbeats.

“I assume you’re seeing what we’re seeing?”

“Confirm they’re attacking the column.”

“Confirmed. Looks like they intend to sever it at the

base before we can send any more troops down it.”

“Any change in combat on the ring?”

“Negative. I don’t think they expect it to all come

down.”

“Make sure of that and get someone working the gravity

drives to compensate for when the column gets chopped off.”

“You think it’ll hold?”

“I hope so, or 26,000 miles of pain are going to come

falling down who knows where. The lizards can’t hit it further up so this is

their only point of attack. Compensate for the weight and keep your fingers

crossed.”

“Do want an evac team standing by?”

“Negative. My team is scattered going after different

targets and we’re all under the fire canopy. If it does fall I’ll get back to

you, but for now just wait it out and make sure someone is riding those gravity

drive controls nonstop from here on out.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Admiral Hestin promised.

“And evacuate the connecting point in case it rips a

chunk of the ring off with it.”

“Sending the order now.”

“Ground team going dark,” Paul said as he cut transmission

with orbit but stayed on with Riona. “Get back down here.”

“Coming,” she said, taking a few more seconds to look

at the column. It hadn’t moved so much as a twitch yet, but if/when the lizards

did blow through the base she didn’t know what would happen.

With another phaser screech sounding and the

corresponding pink bath of light flooding over the rooftop, Riona circled

around the stairwell cupola and headed back into the building. She expected

some sort of lizard response to be on her position soon and she needed to get away

from this building now.