Star Force: Backdoor (SF53) (4 page)

“
Gotta
keep our number one
asset battle worthy,” she said, exchanging spots with him. “And you look like
you need a good workout session and powernap.”

“You read my mind,” he said sarcastically, referencing
a running joke between the two of them. Other than Jason she’d become his
closest friend, with an unexpected bond forming that both were a bit surprised
at.

With her lowering the pedestal and taking a standing
position in the nexus he left her there, knowing that she knew that he couldn’t
relax without knowing that she or one of the other trailblazers was watching
over the planet…and at the moment there were no other trailblazers here.

Riona’s naval scores weren’t the equal of Paul’s, but
they’d been rising steadily the more time the two of them spent together, though
they rarely worked on those skills. Most of their combined sessions were
straight up physical training or bioshield related, but both of them suspecting
that Riona was getting some bleedover knowledge from the extensive battlemeld
training they were doing, with Paul feeling a bit the same way.

Linking with Jason had had the same effect, with
Paul’s own mind adjusting a bit to the presence of the other as they got
repetitively in sync with one another. The same thing was happening with Riona
and Paul could notice a few new tendencies creeping up in his speech that
mirrored hers. It was minor stuff, with Riona seeming to get the benefit in her
naval scores, but Paul guessed that had more to do with emotional control and
mental focus rather than any particular strategy or tactical awareness that he
had.

Being in a nexus required a certain mindset that
couldn’t be taught, and if she was picking up on his mojo and mimicking it then
it’d essentially speed up her learning curve. That was one of the benefits of
the battlemeld, but it could also be a disadvantage if there was a negative
habit or mindset…but they were Archons…and Archons were troubleshooters and
problem solvers. Any personal problems they may have had in the past had long
ago been solved.

Back in the day when Paul was growing up people had
said, almost as if it was unquestionable, that nobody was perfect. That sort of
nonsense was long behind him now, for the word ‘perfect’ had to have a
definition and a measurement. Assess where you were relative to perfect and
work towards it.

If perfect meant not having any flaws, then he and the
Archons were there…at least the older ones were. Not all the adepts, he
guessed, but then again you didn’t have to be perfect to kick ass. One of the
others, he couldn’t remember which after so many years, had floated the
metaphor that having a personal problem was like running with a backpack with a
rock in it. Three problems three rocks, etc. The problems didn’t stop you from
running, they just slowed you down, and if you were a badass you could beat a
‘perfect’ person, meaning one without any rocks, by being so much better than
them that your strength outweighed the drag your problems had on you.

So ‘perfect’ didn’t mean you always won, it just meant
you weren’t being held back by anything. Paul had been ‘perfect’ for quite a
long time now, but that didn’t make life easy. With everything that he’d
learned and all the strength he’d gained it seemed like it was never enough,
and the current situation was proving that. He was holding onto their defenses
by what felt like a thread and wasn’t sure how much longer he could manage it.
He knew he had to take it one moment at a time and play it out, but the writing
on the wall wasn’t good and it wasn’t the fault of any inadequacy on his part.

Sometimes you were simply outmatched, perfect or not.

But there was a part inside Paul that wasn’t going to
accept a no-win scenario, if just out of spite. Riona taking the helm for a bit
allowed him to relax enough to head back over to the track and get in a full
10k before hitting the shower and catching an hour nap. After that he relieved
her, made a few adjustments to their orbital positions,
then
tentatively headed off for some sword work while wearing an earpiece to keep
him in constant communication with the bridge crew or allow him to access a
holographic battlemap with the touch of a button.

That was how he lived nowadays, always worried about
being caught off guard and knowing the consequences that would result if he
was. But as he reminded himself on occasion, Archons liked challenges and this
was just another one…and one worthy of a warrior of his caliber.

With that in mind and a little bit of
Vegeta’s
ego channeled to emphasize the point, Paul kept
himself invested in the moment and fighting the Skarrons, knowing that every
minute he bought for them meant more
Sentinels
being
built and deployed along the border, which was going to be their long term key
to holding the line.

4

May 29, 2549

Rotunna System
(Beta Region)

Heimdall

Randy jumped up from the ground on the barren forest
floor using his jump pack to get him extra height, then kicked off a tree trunk
to bounce him higher and back towards a tree branch some 20 meters up. He
landed on the half meter thick limb and nearly slid off the far side but caught
himself with his right arm and hung on, then pulled himself up on top and into
a crouching position. He stayed there, alone, and waited for more than 20
minutes before he began to pick up activity nearby, not with his battlemap
sensors, which were next to useless in the forest, but with his Ikrid that he
had extended out in detection mode as far as his padawan range would allow.

The branch he sat on was barren, for it was underneath
the canopy and leading up to higher foliage, though more or less flat where he
now sat hunched. The moon he was on orbited a gas giant that sat 2nd in line
around the system’s two central stars that bathed it in an excessive amount of
sunlight. The trees here ate it all up, but a considerable amount still got
through their thick leaves and left the forest floor visible and covered with
small plants. In between those and the extremely tall treetops was a dead zone,
for the trees didn’t seem to want to grow leaves in the lesser light.

That left a lot of branches for Randy to move across,
as he had been doing for weeks out hunting in the forest. Originally the moon
had been a startup colony with some 50 million inhabitants located in two
cities and a scattering of outposts but recently they had all been evacuated,
leaving the planetoid as the playground in the war between Star Force and the
Skarrons.

Randy had all 9 habitable planetoids in the system
colonized to some level, but this moon had been the weakest link and only
possessed a single Sentinel as opposed to the 46 he had around Ida. The
Skarrons had attempted to land troops there and failed three times, with his
fleet intercepting their transports and kicking the crap out of their warships,
preventing them from setting up a blockade in mid orbit as they had done in
other systems.

That left the Skarron fleets roaming the system and
attempting to intercept ships moving about. Randy had been out hunting them as
well and making a lot of kills while the local population of 12 billion Humans
and 153 billion Kiritak worked to produce more drones at an astounding rate.
Rotunna was a system that didn’t need naval reinforcement, for they simply made
their own, and the Skarrons hadn’t yet fielded enough ships to challenge them
in any meaningful way. They’d preferred looking for opportunities for ambushes
and sneak attacks up until a few months ago when they’d finally made their
move.

They hadn’t been stupid enough to assault the major
planets, but they had hit
Heimdall’s
single Sentinel
with an enormous fleet…half of which the defense station wasted before they
took it out. The Skarrons had had to close to short range to kill it with their
plasma weapons, meaning the Sentinel’s own short range defensive weaponry also
came into play, though the enemy had tried to hover in the sweet spot that
would allow their plasma to hit but the Sentinel’s maulers to remain
ineffective.

But there really was no safe place anywhere around a
Sentinel and the Skarrons had paid a heavy price to take it down. Afterwards
they spammed the moon’s orbit with ships as Randy’s fleet came out to engage
them in a massive conventional brawl…all of which was a diversion to get their
ground troops down to the moon. It had been well planned and some 2,385
transports jumped in and headed down into the atmosphere simultaneously,
preventing Randy’s fleet from stopping them.

They didn’t hit the cities or outposts at first,
merely coming down over top the moon-spanning forest and burning out some
landing zones where they could deposit their ground troops…minus their walkers.
The forest was too tall and too thick for them to operate with, so the
transports merely hung in the air over top the LZs until enough of the trees
had been cut down and disposed of to allow the ships to land.

From there they’d burned back more forest to create
room for their walkers to deploy and hold ground as they began building
prefabricated structures and setting up their own outposts on the surface. It
wasn’t long before they had shield domes covering them and a foothold on the
moon that they began expanding upon.

Trick of it all was, Star Force’s mechs couldn’t
operate in the forest either, making this ground war purely infantry
save
for the open areas surrounding both Star Force and now
Skarron infrastructure. The Hobbits and Skarrons had moved out on foot almost
immediately and filled the surrounding areas with troops that eventually hit
one of the outposts. They’d suffered heavy losses to take it, but the forest
came right up near the edge and didn’t have much room for mechs to operate,
instead relying on a number of defense turrets. With a combination of plasma
and their annoying shoulder-launched missiles they’d taken them down and
secured the outpost, but not before the Kiritak there were evacuated.

That was the one small gain the Skarrons had made, but
with every day that passed they were cutting out roads through the forest for
their walkers to travel on. It was hard work, for many of the trunks were 10+
meters in thickness, but the army of workers they’d brought with them
were
diligently making progress. Randy had bombarded several
of their LZs from orbit, but every time he did more Skarron ships would appear
from wherever they were hiding within the system and force him to stop.

One tactic the Skarrons had picked up was not showing
their full
hand,
leaving Randy guessing how many ships
they had insystem rather than showing him up front with a standard blockade.
They kept a large number in orbit around the moon for quick response, as did
Randy, but every naval engagement they’d made had resulted in more forces being
brought in on either side, creating a stalemate all of its own over the moon
while Randy still had ships out hunting the enemy elsewhere in the
system…especially incoming transports that the Skarrons were using to reinforce
their surface campaign.

Randy’s fleet had a 1 in 3 kill ratio going on those,
with the Skarrons hesitant to bring them in randomly. Each attempt led to
another costly naval engagement, usually for the Skarrons because Randy’s fleet
pretty much owned them so long as they didn’t get careless. That price was
something they seemed to be willing to pay in order to secure the moon. There
was no way they were going to take the other habitable planets in the system,
but whether it was out of pride or some long spanning strategy the Skarrons
wanted this moon and Randy wasn’t going to accommodate them.

Right now there was a column of Skarron infantry
heading out from one of their LZs, as there were many, Randy had discovered,
moving from place to place and setting up a network of outposts underneath the
forest canopy. Some were camps, others were being dug into the ground, and all
being accomplished by hand and underneath the forest canopy keeping them away
from sensors and air support. The Skarrons seemed intent on making this an
infantry campaign up until they could get their walkers to the primary targets
and Star Force had responded in kind, taking the fight to them underneath the
trees with Randy choosing to become his own one man Venator squad.

That meant he was roaming freely while other units
held to prescribed locations, defensive assignments, or attack runs. It also
meant he got to play ambusher, and while his dark brown armor clashed with the
deep grays of the tree trunks he’d found that the Skarrons didn’t pay much
attention to the trees above them, thinking that their enemy was going to hit
them from the ground only. That had allowed him to move through the treetops
over them many times with impunity, but this time he was waiting for them to
come to him.

They weren’t coming directly under, with the leading
Hobbit skirmishers passing about 50 meters to the south. After them came a pair
of Skarrons with their Hobbit units surrounding them. Behind them came the
ranks of closely packed troops aligned simply for crossing territory rather
than fighting…and there were thousands of them stretched out in a line that was
4 or 5 wide for the Hobbits and single file for the Skarrons, most of whom were
not elites.

Easy pickings for a trailblazer so long as he had
enough ammo…and Randy had packed plenty of extra plasma clips.

Rather than jump them at the midsection he waited for
the end of the line to come up, then he stood, stretched out his legs a bit,
and casually looked around.

“Time to play Master Chief,” he said to the air before
taking a few steps forward on the branch and jumping with the assistance of his
jump pack across to another one. He stuck that landing better then hopped
again, coming over top the line of footprints in the ground where the enemy
troops had just passed.

Randy stepped off the branch and fell to the ground,
landing lightly with some anti-
grav
assistance and
pulling his plasma rifle off his back as he sprinted forward. It took him some
14 seconds to catch up with the back of the line but he didn’t shoot
immediately, instead he ran up to them and actually knocked two aside to get in
their midst before he emitted a large Fornax field and dropped some 20+ Hobbits
to the ground.

He peppered them with shots making easy kills as the
sound of his plasma fire turned the attention of those ahead to him. After a
moment of shock white plasma orbs began to fly his direction and hit his
shields, but he stayed long enough to kill most of the ones on the ground
before sprinting sideways and getting behind a tree trunk.

From there he did a Jedi jump straight up and got back
into the branches, repositioning to another tree and jumping down inside the
growing group of those turning around to engage him. Another Fornax field took
them down and he killed some dozen more before taking off behind cover, this
time running from tree to tree and drawing some of them out after him…which he
circled back around to kill in ones and twos.

Though he couldn’t see it, the Skarron column suddenly
became severed. The leading portion didn’t know what was going on and couldn’t
hear the weaponsfire, for they were too far ahead. Those that did turned back,
leaving those in the middle at a loss as to what was going on and what to do.
Soon that was resolved by their Skarron commanders via comm and the line began
to shrink in length and fan out into a wide formation to look for and pin down
their attacker.

Which worked perfectly to Randy’s
advantage.
Get them isolated and he had easy kills, keep them bunched up
and he could Fornax them into submission, but with enough of them they’d rack
up plasma hits to his armor’s shields and force him back. That was their only
effective option, for they couldn’t run, they were too far away from the
nearest help for that, and they couldn’t call in air support for the trees
would block their fire and most of their sensors.

That meant this battle was Randy’s to lose, and he was
too experienced to let recklessness get the better of him. Keeping the
engagements spaced out and allowing his shields to recharge at least a bit each
time between strikes, he worked through hundreds of Hobbits while avoiding the
Skarrons, knowing they’d take more than a few shots to take down…but deprive
them of their escorts and they were vulnerable in the trees, for they already
didn’t move very fast, allowing Randy to dart here and there almost with
impunity.

The Skarrons might be stupid, but they weren’t
stupid
and after it became clear that
they weren’t able to kill the single Archon they pulled their scattered forces
back together and formed a clump of troops in a circle, putting as many plasma
weapons together as they could to increase their chances of making a killing
hit in the few seconds that their enemy would appear.

Randy recognized this and acted appropriately, going
Jedi and pulling weapons out of the Hobbits’ hands when he was behind trees but
able to see with his Pefbar. He’d throw them out into the forest, almost daring
them to come out after them. When they didn’t he remained patient, picking a
few more Hobbit weapons off while the Skarrons literally wore theirs on their
gangly four arms and weren’t so available for picking.

Eventually the Skarrons saw the writing on the wall,
knowing that if they let this continue their escorts would be defenseless, so
they guessed Randy’s approximate location and charged en mass.

The trailblazer smiled inside his helmet and jumped up
into the higher branches, staying behind a tree trunk so they couldn’t see
where he’d gone. He let them pass underneath him then he dropped down into the
back section of their charging horde and emitted another Fornax blast, with
this one catching a Skarron as well. It went down, but struggled to get back up
on its feet while the Hobbits seemed to have no resistance to the intensity of
his Fornax.

Randy shot several of them then decided to chance
going after the Skarron. He ran up to it, still emitting the field which felt
like he was mentally holding his breath as he maintained the effort, and jumped
up onto the quadruped’s flat back and fired his rifle down into the sweet spot
just back of the ‘head’ though in truth the creature had none. Its face was
part of its body, but the spot he was firing into led directly into its vital
organs and after some 14 shots it died and dropped fully to the ground.

Randy took several plasma hits to his shields from
ranged shots, but not enough to penetrate so he jumped off and shot a few more
Hobbits before retreating to the rear and ironically the spot where the enemy
had been turtled up, now clearing their lines and releasing his Fornax emission,
feeling his mind start to recharge so he could do it again.