Star Force: Internecine (SF55) (6 page)

“
How? The
Lacvamat will not stop until we are all dead
.”

IF THE SKARRONS
BREACH THE FRONT YOU WILL BE JUST AS DEAD
.

“
And if we don’t
fight back the Lacvamat and their allies will destroy us long before the
Skarrons can get to us. We did not start this fight, but we will defend
ourselves. You would do the same if your worlds were to come under attack
.”

OUR WORLDS HAVE
COME UNDER ATTACK BY THE CAJDITAL. WE DID NOT WISH TO ABANDON THEM, BUT WE WERE
WISE ENOUGH TO REALIZE THAT THEY COULD BE RECLAIMED LATER. MOST OF THE
POPULATION OF THIS WORLD CAME FROM LOW PRIORITY WORLDS THAT WE EVACUATED IN
ORDER TO PRESERVE OUR MOST VALUABLE ONES. DO NOT LET YOUR PRIDE OVERRIDE YOUR
STRATEGIC WISDOM.

“
You would have
us concede the worlds the Lacvamat have taken from us?
”

YOU ARE
CURRENTLY WASTING VAST AMOUNTS OF RESOURCES TO RETAKE THEM. ARE THEY TRULY SO
VALUABLE?

“
They are our
home. We will defend our territory no matter how large or small the world may
be.
”

THEN YOU WILL
BLEED YOUR FLEET DRY
.

“
Which is why we
need your assistance. We have no wish to annihilate the Lacvamat, merely to
recover what is ours and put an end to this.
”

YOUR ATTACK ON
THEIR CAPITOL SUGGESTS OTHERWISE
.

“
Taking out
their leadership was deemed the quickest way to end the war. It would be over
by now had their allies not intervened. They had severely overextended
themselves
.”

SO YOU BELIEVED.
THEY KNEW THEY HAD SUPPORT THAT YOU DID NOT. THAT IS NOT OVEREXTENSION. IT IS
AN ERROR ON YOUR PART. YOU SOUGHT THEIR DESTRUCTION AND FAILED. NOW YOU TALK OF
PRESERVATION OF LIFE. YOUR MILITARY DOMINANCE OVER THE LACVAMAT HAS BEEN
EFFECTIVELY COUNTERED AND YOU HAVE AN EVEN FIGHT BEFORE YOU. WE WILL NOT TIP
THE SCALES IN THAT FIGHT
.

“
You would have
us annihilate each other? How does that benefit the ADZ?
”

IT DOES NOT,
BUT NEITHER SIDE IS INCLINED TO DO OTHERWISE. THE SCIONATE WILL NOT YIELD. THE
LACVAMAT WILL NOT YIELD
.

“
It is not a
matter of who will yield but of who is in the right. They invaded us. We are
not at fault. We did not create the bioweapon. The Captain of the ship that
exploded in their atmosphere was Scionate, but he was not affiliated with us
any more than the independent Lacvamat mercenaries are with their government.
We have been wronged, and our blood is running freely. We cannot tolerate this
.”

AND WE CANNOT
INTERFERE WHEN WE DO NOT KNOW WHO IS RESPONSIBLE. WE ONLY COMMENT ON THE
INEVITABLE OUTCOME. IT IS A WASTE THAT WILL WEAKEN THE ADZ FURTHER
.

“
We agree.
Something must be done. That is why I have come here to ask for your assistance
.”

THE ASSISTANCE
YOU SEEK WILL NOT HAPPEN. WE WILL NOT FIGHT IN THIS WAR. NOT FOR YOU OR THE
LACVAMAT
.

“
Then fight to
stop it
.”

IF SHIPS ARE TO
BE DESTROYED THEY WILL NOT BE OURS. WE HAVE BIGGER THREATS FOR THEM TO COUNTER
.

From there on the conversation continued to loop for
multiple days as the Scionate tried to
plea
their
case to varying
Hycre
on the planet, none of which
would accede to their requests in even the smallest way. The Scionate diplomat
couldn’t understand their resistance, because the Lacvamat were clearly the
ones to blame. After the incident with the Humans and the change of bloodline
leadership the Scionate had been extremely faithful to the Alliance and they
had not initiated this fight, despite their past bad blood with the Lacvamat.

They had been attacked and defended themselves. The
issue with them pulling out from the front so suddenly was a separate matter,
with the inclusion of the
Gnar
and
Nammet
making it clear that the Scionate didn’t have the
luxury of only using part of their military to fight the incursion. They were
in a fight for their very survival and had to go all in.

And that’s what they ended up doing, recruiting allies
from every race that would listen, right down to independent military units and
mercenaries that were willing to work for hire or favor. With the
Hycre
unwilling to take sides the Scionate were left on
their own…and they were willing to take up that challenge. The condition of the
Skarron front concerned them but honestly there was nothing they could do about
that now…short of letting the Lacvamat kill them and end the war that way,
which was never a thought in any of their minds. Besides, the Lacvamat weren’t
going to help out on the front anyway, so the only way to get back to
bolstering it was to win the war and free up their troops.

Now that wasn’t a foregone conclusion. The Scionate
were in trouble, having to fight a real war and not just a series of
skirmishes, so they pushed aside all thoughts of the Skarrons and focused on
their immediate enemies…races they had once called allies or at least
associates, and who now were out for their blood.

6

July 3, 2553

Vensi
System
(Protovic Territory)

Ven

“You two ready?” the dropship pilot’s voice asked in
their helmets.

“Always,” Travis answered for the both of them just
before the aft boarding ramp cracked open and a flurry of wind shot inside,
with both level 2 rangers waiting on the edge in armor and jump packs as a
countdown began inside their helmets linked with the navigation system. Both of
the twins watched it diminish down to a handful of seconds as the falcon zipped
across the mountainous landscape, sometimes so close to peaks that that Karen
felt she could literally reach out and touch them.

There was also the occasional plasma orb visible,
shooting up and missing the kamikaze dropship and its insane pilot as they flew
deep inside enemy held territory on the last of two contested planets the
Skarrons were holding onto in Protovic territory…and holding onto with a
vengeance. Most of the Protovic cities had either been evacuated or captured,
with a band in the southern hemisphere still inhabited and fueling the planet’s
resupply. That band was where the heavy fighting was occurring, with the
Skarrons pressing their army advantage even while the naval situation in orbit
was up for grabs.

The Protovic were holding their own up there well,
with a bit of assistance from Star Force, though that ‘assistance’ was racking
up far more kills per ship given that all of the drones in play were equipped
with Talon cannons. Had there been more of them Star Force would have been able
to push the Skarrons from orbit, but right now they were just barely managing
to keep the Protovic fleets in play as they systematically chewed up ships
given their superior gravity drives, often ambushing the enemy reinforcements
coming into the planet.

Virtually everything in the region that the Skarrons
were getting past the Voku was coming here, with several other systems having
been abandoned or evacuated…with their troops redeployed here or to the
neighboring planet in the system,
Dahwa
, where there
was also heavy fighting. Every other star system in Protovic territory was now
back in their hands save for one…though most were wrecked beyond immediate
repair. Their fleet was also thin, not to the point of cracking, but after so
many decades of continuous warfare their numbers were down and they desperately
needed a breather to build up their ship count and train new personnel.

They were throwing most of their remaining army units
here, attempting to stall the full Skarron takeover so they wouldn’t have a second
uncontested foothold in their territory. Star Force was assisting with what few
troops they had available, for most were deployed to Dvapp territory where the
Skarrons were making more gains…and with the pullout of the Scionate several of
the
worlds
just on the far side of the border that
Star Force had been assaulting, either to reclaim or remove the enemy presence,
were now back in Skarron hands and growing, slowly with the lack of adequate
supplies, but the longer they were left to develop the easier it would be for
the Skarrons to launch future assaults.

Ven
and
Dahwa
were the key points now. If the Protovic were allowed even a short respite from
the war they’d come back stronger than ever and be able to kick the Skarrons
out completely. If the Skarrons were able to hold onto and even secure one of
the two worlds, let alone both, they’d dig in hard and play the waiting game as
they held onto their footholds while the rest of their empire found a way to
deal with the Voku on
Achkor
, and even if the
Protovic could reclaim one of the systems they wouldn’t have the strength
anytime soon to take the second, meaning the Skarrons were going to be around
to stay for a long time.

A number of reserve Star Force units had been pulled
out of the core to replace others in Beta Region on ‘secure’ worlds, freeing up
the more veteran units there to redeploy to the front in order to counter the
Scionate pullout and make several strategic pushes in key places while the rest
of the engagements in 9 systems played for a stall. Some of those were minor
league battles now, with neither the Skarrons nor the Alliance sending
reinforcements. They had to make do with what they had available, which burned
Star Force even more because with the Scionate’s help they could have been able
to at least marginally reinforce those positions and sweep away the
Skarrons…but right now, even with all the reserves they’d pulled up, their
outcome was still up in the air.

Karen and Travis has been pulled off their special ops
work long ago and had spent the past two years fighting on another Protovic
world as they maintained their remarkable advancement rate despite their
irregular training. Now rangers with Karen holding the barest of leads over
Travis in their training marks, they were being deployed into the Skarron rear
to cause some havoc…which was what they’d been doing for quite some time now
that their commanders had seen what they could do with their battlemeld
psionics. Rather than splitting them up, which having two rangers together for
these missions would normally have been considered a waste of resources, they
were being sent out into more dangerous areas together, always together, and
taking down key facilities or drawing heat off the major engagement zones.

Though in truth what they were doing was minor
compared to what was happening down there, but even the loss of 1000 Hobbits
could turn the tide in a close engagement, and as of this campaign their kill
count stood at 3,421 with an additional 85 Skarrons…which the two were keeping
track of by reviewing their helmet telemetry in their few spare hours.

In truth they were probably close to 4,000 by now but
hadn’t had time to check, just having come out of a mission to reinforce a
Protovic army defending a mountain stronghold. They’d gotten there just in time
to work their magic and the Protovic had held…barely, but the facility remained
in their possession and opened up the surrounding region to future operations
rather than forcing the natives to retreat further.

That was the thing about
Ven
…it
was all mountainous, with not a flat piece of land on the planet aside from the
scattering of lakes that dotted the surface, one of which held a Star Force
aquatics outpost that the Skarrons had no counter for. It was a strategic
stronghold that Karen and Travis were operating out of north of the main
inhabited band of cities literally hanging from and drilled into the
mountainsides.

It made a mess of conventional ground warfare, but the
giant Skarron walkers were still able to maneuver around better than the Star
Force mechs and Protovic tanks…that latter of which could only operate in the
wide open ravines, for they had been built heavy enough to tackle the Skarron
walkers and no longer had the speed or maneuverability that they needed for
traditional engagements. They were literally flying turrets carrying cleansing
beams with some smaller versions, none of which could do much to support the
infantry in all the nooks and crannies of the mountains.

Star Force was deploying an army of their smallest
mechs, mostly ravens and neos, with the latter being used for their ability to
work over the rough terrain with a skilled pilot, but there were so few on the
planet compared to what was needed that, while they dominated wherever they
were located, the Skarrons’ infantry hoard was winning most of the planet for
them…with their walkers coming in only to hit the big defense targets, such as
city shields and turrets.

It was very much an infantry war here, with the big
machines playing support, and in infantry wars the Archons dominated…let alone
a battlemeld-linked pair of rangers.

When the countdown expired Karen and Travis walked off
the ramp together, not having to say anything to each other for they already
knew what the other one was thinking. Trusting the telemetry they dropped into
freefall, immediately goosing their jump packs to break against some of the
lateral momentum as they fell into a deep river at the bottom of one of the
ravines…with Travis nearly missing and hitting the rocky sidewall.

He created a telekinetic wedge between himself and it,
acting like a crash bag, and deflected himself down into the fast current a
meter shy of the rock, disappearing underneath the water and coming back to the
surface some 40 meters down as he swam to the side and came up near to where
Karen was, with both of them quickly disappearing into the rocky jungle using
their jump packs to get over tricky terrain.

They moved quickly for about 10 minutes before they
finally noticed overhead Skarron fighters. Knowing to keep their shields turned
off unless necessary, they kept moving under the canopy as much as they could
manage and avoided their detection all the way up to a Skarron outpost that was
little more than an encampment underneath the trees with a few single story
prefab structures set up to accommodate the troops temporarily stationed there
as they moved from one point to another on trails the Skarrons had been carving
out of the trees, dirt, and rock for months…all of which usually operated below
the canopy, making their movements virtually invisible to any fighters or
orbital surveillance.

And with the great distances involved the Skarrons
weren’t walking. They’d brought in tread-wheel transports that looked like
giant centipedes in that the ‘wheels’ were made up of hundreds of individual
segments that would literally wrap around rocks and allow the trucks to move
over bad ground without having the energy expenditure that anti-
grav
would require. They had flying transports for that,
but they were spamming the surface with these trucks and moving both troops and
supplies everywhere they had built their roads.

The outpost ahead contained both troops and workers
for doing more of that carving, with at least one branch being extended nearby.
When the twins came to the edge of the outpost they didn’t offer up any
warnings or give any sight nor sound of their approach, simply sliding into the
camp and opening fire on one of the Skarrons there that was out in the open and
moving from point to point.

Both Archons hit it with a combined Fornax blast
before Karen jumped up on top of its fallen form and blasted into its back with
her plasma rifle while Travis stayed on the ground and shot the Hobbits nearby
that were coming to the Skarron’s aid and attempting to shoot his sister. Both
of them kept the big enemy down with Fornax blasts until it was dead, then
Karen jumped off and helped Travis clear a path through the enemies that were
popping up everywhere to the largest of the buildings.

They fought their way inside, killing the Hobbits
there before a lot of them could even get to their weapons, then split up and
came out different exits, with Travis staying outside and fighting in the open
while Karen snuck over to the nearby building and killed six more Hobbits
inside, but passed over the knot of Engineers she found there. For whatever
reason their race never fought the Humans, and in return the Humans didn’t
target them. They were workers, not combat troops, and even though they were on
the enemy’s team building and harvesting raw materials for them, they were no
threat and treated accordingly.

Once the Hobbits began to pool outside to numbers that
would jeopardize the Archons’ shields even with half of their shots missing,
the twins used their Lew ability and both started generating an Ikrid field
between the two of them, creating an invisible column of energy connecting the
two Archons that they then ran through the Hobbits, taking down all those who
passed through it with a disoriented visual and auditory wash implanted into
their minds. It was temporary, just a little bit of mind tricks that made them
see blots and bright flashes of light while hearing distracting sounds, all of
which was delivered not to a targeted enemy, but to any that passed through the
energy field.

The twins rendered some 80+ of them unable to fire
back within four seconds of sprinting around either side of the group, then
they proceeded to fire away at the enemies outside those effected, shooting
those who could still shoot back while hitting them with individual Fornax
fields and trimming the plasma fire coming back at them considerably.

Between Fornax, Lew, and a few other psionics, Karen
and Travis kept the mass of Hobbits and two more Skarrons distracted, disabled,
or confused long enough that the two of them were able to fight and shoot their
way through them…then they broke up and chased down the scattered remainder of
the combat troops and killed them before returning to the outpost and ignoring
the Engineers as they came out of the buildings to look at what was going on. The
two Archons quickly moved to the racks of equipment lining the storage
buildings walls and pulled out several fuel canisters that they converted into
a makeshift bomb.

After getting the Engineers clear they detonated it,
blowing apart the building and at least damaging the handheld equipment so it
couldn’t be used to carve out new roads, after which the twins got to work on
the big pieces of mechanized equipment that looked like miniaturized and
beefier versions of their combat walkers. Gone were the thin legs, leaving
thick columns that supported crab-like work walkers that could cut down trees,
move dirt, or carve out sections of rock.

For those the twins pulled out small explosives from
their packs, with both knowing exactly where to put them on the machines in
order to disable them. They planted some 14 in total, all linked to a single
detonator and made sure the Engineers were clear before wrecking the lot with a
quick pyrotechnics display that caught some of the nearby tree branches on
fire.