Star Force: Newbslayer (SF64) (10 page)

The remaining infantry from the initial firefight, as
well as those that had come over from the other side of the tank formation,
toppled to the ground unconscious with those closest to the Archons going down
a split second sooner than the ones further out as if a giant tidal wave had
hit them. The more minds taken down, the less charge there was to continue
spreading out, but unlike an Ikrid link this effect had no range limit, so long
as there were links in the chain to jump from.

The infantry soaked up most of the
Jini
,
but some managed to travel through them to the nearest of the tanks, taking out
four of their crews and leaving them intact, but inoperable. That left Jenna
and Levi huddled together with a moment of peace, as no more incoming
weaponfire
was hitting their combined
bioshield
that was just a thin shell remaining around them.

Both of them knew they couldn’t waste time, so they
dropped the protective barrier and stood up, sprinting towards the dead tanks and
using them as cover as they closed with the rest of them. Soon they were
running around the blocks and into view, dodging some more large plasma blasts
until they got within Fornax range. Those they sent out individually, splitting
up and heading towards different tanks, momentarily disrupting the crews of the
closest ones until they could get within sound Ikrid range, then each Archon
accessed the minds inside and put them to sleep, Levi one at a time while Jenna
managed two or three with each connection.

That left a handful of tanks remaining that had been
closest to the city defense turret. Sprinting towards those Jenna juked to the
left right before she expected the next plasma blast to be fired, but the
stupid gunner fired a bad shot and missed to his right…meaning Jenna dashed
directly into its blast point.

She reflexively threw up her
bioshield
just before it hit, but it punched through with ease then ate through her
armor’s shields, knocking her down and melting the outer layer of her armor.
Stunned by the hit, she reached out with her mind while her arms grasped for
the ground to roll herself over and stand up, finding the tank that’d shot her
and throwing a Fornax blast that way to try and buy herself time. The range
wasn’t good, but her shot hit, causing the crew to twitch uncontrollably for a
moment, but by the time they got their hands back on the controls and shook off
the ‘what just happened?’ confusion, Jenna was back on her feet and moving
again.

Levi got to the tank before she did, already having
knocked out another. They finished the last ones off without taking another
plasma blast to the face, then ran together over to the city’s outer wall and
took cover alongside it, melting against the five meter tall barrier as a
scattering of
aerofighters
passed by overhead…but at
the moment they weren’t interested in them.

Levi had felt Jenna take the hit, still linked in
battlemeld as they were, so there was no need for questions. He knew her
status, just as she knew his, and they both knew they had to lay low a bit to
let their armor and
bioshields
recharge before they
entered the city and went after far more troops than they’d just taken down
now…though they’d have the advantage of cover to work with.

While they waited, Jenna got on her suit’s
comm
and got a line to the Marauders.

“Send in the Valeries and get those fighters down near
us if you can. We’ll hold here and try to help you pick them off if you can get
them close enough. Send the transports immediately. We’ll cover them on the
ground if we have to, but you have to get to these tanks and infantry before
they wake up. I don’t want to have to take them down twice.”

“We’re on our way,” Brayden answered. “For the record,
I have no idea how you just did that.”

“Archon secrets.”

“Are you injured? Looked like you took a direct tank
blast.”

“Yeah, not one of my better moments. Got a little
cooked, but I’m fine.”

“Valeries will be there in…seven minutes. You good
till then?”

“Yes, but get them to chase them as low as they can
near us.”

“Still want to take the pilots alive?”

“That and our range isn’t very far.”

“We can take them down the hard way if needed.”

“Stick to the plan,” she said, with warning in her
voice.

“Copy that. Just offering to make your job a little
easier.”

“Don’t worry about easy, just pick up what we
drop…including the brand new tanks we just bought you.”

“How much time do we have?”

“I’d safely assume half an hour. After that a few
individuals might start waking up. If one of them happens to be a tank pilot…”

“We’ll be there in 20,” Brayden promised.

10

Levi ran down the narrow city street, throwing what
felt like his billionth Fornax blast into a pair of soldiers ahead, then ran
sideways and leapt up onto the wall, bounced off it with his right foot, and
came down on the twitching Varshoo from above. The padawan knocked both down to
the ground, pinning one against the paving stones with his armored knee while
he dove into the other’s mind and took a pair of seconds to render it
unconscious. He lingered for a third, making sure it went deep enough to stay
out long enough to be retrieved,
then
he repeated the
process with the other.

His head ached with both contacts, but he did his duty
and made sure they were both out of commission for a while, then the pain
relented a bit. He took off down the street again, headed towards one of the
shopping centers that the Varshoo had taken and were now holed up in. Jenna was
already there picking them apart, but she’d sent Levi out to clear the
surrounding streets and cut off anyone fleeing the area. He’d taken down six
others before this pair, and from his Ikrid ‘radar’ he could sense that there
were no others coming out…at least not on this side of the large complex.

There were many ways in and out, and there was no way
that only two of them could blockade the place, but the goal was to locate and
disable the Varshoo soldiers…and if he could pick up a few more on the exterior
with easy takedowns, then so be it.

He placed a beacon on the battlemap for the location
of the downed pair then paid them no more attention. Periodically his and
Jenna’s
comm
systems would transmit the beacon
markers to the Marauders, letting them know where the unconscious troops were
so they could get to them before they woke up…or the locals got to them.
Between the citizens in the under siege city, the few remaining defense forces,
and the handful of mercenary units present, there were a fair amount of people
who would consider shooting the unconscious Varshoo if/when they realized that
they were still alive and not dead.

The Marauders were running interference with them and
collecting the prisoners while the two Archons did all the fighting, not
wanting to risk anyone else or have to kill the attackers. The objective here
wasn’t to take sides, but to stop the invasion, for neither the Varshoo nor
Tieor
were worthy of their trust. Jenna had decided to act
in order to stop the carnage and to send a message, and neither she nor Levi
had any illusions that they were saving the good guys from the bad. This was a
fight against chaos and barbarism, and while they couldn’t stop everyone from
dying they were sure as hell going to stick the middle finger up to the notion
that they had to take a noninterference approach.

The few troops they had on the Ma’kri weren’t
fighting, rather handling the prisoners in orbit, and it was going to stay that
way. The two Archons had dived in over their heads here and they weren’t going
to risk anyone else. The Marauders were already here and fighting so they
didn’t care about them, plus they were taking the hardest work off the
quitters’ hands anyway.

But it was taking a toll on Levi and Jenna, though
more on the padawan. His armor had melted spots all over it, and he couldn’t
count the number of times his shields had gone down over the past 8 hours.
There had been over 20,000 Varshoo troops within the city, given initial
estimates, and he and Jenna had gone through better than three quarters of them
personally. He had no stun ammunition left, and his psionics were so
overstressed his head was complaining even when he had brief moments like this
to rest and recharge.

Power wasn’t the issue, he was just getting fried with
every mental contact he made. Levi tried to alternate psionics to keep himself
functioning, but even his Fornax tissue felt like it was fraying with each
subsequent usage. He really could have used a stun sword right now, or even
stun gauntlets, but their weapons had run dry early on, and even two subsequent
ammo/weapon drops into the city had been expended given the number of troops
the two of them were having to take down.

Ironically Jenna’s armor looked even worse than
Levi’s, for she was trying to take the brunt of the fighting on herself. The
two of them weren’t linking up with battlemeld anymore, for even that psionic
was now painful. If they had to they’d briefly connect to take down a few
troops, then it was back to old fashioned hand signals for most of their
coordination, for they were so tired they didn’t even feel like speaking over
the
comm
channels.

He’d been pushed this far a few times before in
training, but never in combat. He knew the more activities he could eliminate
the better, for his focus could then flow into the others and speaking was one
such thing. Opening a
comm
channel and talking to
Jenna was easy, but with his mind being so punch drunk it was almost a rule now
not to talk, and since they were already using their arms for movement and
fighting, throwing hand signals just seemed to be the most efficient way of
communicating…even if in fact it was not.

Levi searched ahead with his Ikrid in a brief radar
ping, getting the position of the people and sensing where Jenna was inside the
complex, then he shut it off trying to minimize the continual frying. That
wasn’t the wisest thing to do when in combat, but he had no choice. The city
still had enemy troops in it and if he didn’t try some kind of prolonging
tactics he was literally going to burn out and be unable to render people
unconscious short of beating them there.

When he got back to the entrance he sent out another
ping, then ran in and eventually caught up to Jenna. He immediately got a
battlemeld request and accepted it, knowing exactly what to do as soon as they
made the connection and her thoughts melded with his. Without even seeing her
he ran across to the next hallway, turned the corner and activated their Lew,
stretching the invisible barrier out painfully, then he and Jenna both ran down
their respective hallways and swept the psionic ribbon through the entire store
that a group of Varshoo were holed up inside.

When he got to the far end of that block he saw Jenna
to his left as she relinquished the battlemeld. She ran towards him and
signaled to the nearest door. Levi got there first and went inside, pushing
past the barricades that had been set up and began looking around to confirm
that they’d got everyone down. He used his eyes rather than his Ikrid and ran
around the three-chambered store, seeing more than 40 Varshoo lying about where
they’d fallen.

He pulsed once to make sure they were all down and not
hiding behind some clothing rack, then he grabbed a few of the weapons nearby
and tossed them aside for good measure before heading back out and following
Jenna into another section of the shopping center where they tackled a trio of
well-placed snipers, with her using her psionics to take them down from afar
and sparing him the effort of doing so.

She pointed him to the right and the pair made their
way back out into the hallways and to an alcove nearby where she gave him the
‘watch my back’ signal while she entered a doorway and disappeared inside. Levi
stood guard in the hallway, watching both ways with his eyes rather than his
overtaxed Pefbar for several minutes before she came up behind him and tagged
him on the shoulder, then signaled for him to go inside.

Too tired to ask questions, he turned around and went
in…suddenly finding himself in the local’s equivalent of a restroom.

He laughed, then walked over to a stall and hit the
release on his armor. They’d both been fighting for hours and though his body
had gone into a sort of stasis mode with the constant adrenaline pumping
through him, his bladder had been mildly complaining for some time now.
Apparently hers had been as well, and odd as it seemed, they weren’t going to
go back to the ship to relieve themselves.

Yet another excellent reason for the master/apprentice
pairings.

Levi stepped out of his armor and almost choked at
some of the smells present, from races he’d never encountered before coming
here, but his quickly shrinking bladder made up for it and when he got back
inside his armor and headed out with Jenna at a run towards wherever she wanted
them next, he felt considerably better.

“No,” Brayden said flatly to the
Tieor
Defense Force commander. “These are our prisoners…all of them. Don’t make me
take them from you by force.”

Le’han’trel
translated for
him, and when the Protovic finished the thickset Shysosvan angrily shot back a
reply…then stopped short as his eyes widened, looking at something behind the
mercenary.

“Is there a problem?” Jenna asked icily, walking up
behind the half dozen mercenaries from around the corner of one of the broken
buildings in the center of the city. They’d managed to get to the Varshoo just
before they overran their last defense station, then had redeployed themselves
elsewhere in the city to finish cleaning up the stragglers.

Both Archons were in shambles, with holes spread over
their impressive armor like they’d been hit with a shotgun blast, though none
of them had penetrated all the way through to their flesh. That said, Brayden
did see a few leakage points where the inner gel layer was pushing through,
meaning those spots were now exposed and the next hit there would make it
through to their bodies.

“They have a number of the Varshoo and don’t want to
turn them over to us,” Brayden explained.

“He doesn’t have a choice,” Jenna repeated from behind
a large
melty
scar mark on her visor approximately
where her left eye would be.

“He seems to disagree.”

“Tell him again,” she said simply, but Brayden wasn’t
fooled by the calmness in her words. He’d worked with a few Archons before, and
he could tell that this one was angry. When their voice went whisper quiet you
knew they were about to do something violent.

Le’han’trel
repeated their
demands, then got a less argumentative response from the
Tieor
commander.

“He says the captives are theirs and will be punished
according to local laws, blah,
blah
, blah.”

Jenna walked past Brayden and the mercenary cringed
even before the bulky alien was knocked backwards three meters by a single palm
thrust, bowling over several other subordinates that had been visually backing
him up in their little spat.

“Try now,” Jenna repeated, with
Le’han’trel
adding an explanation of how messing with the Archons was not a very good idea
in his experience. Then he went on to remind him that they’d just beaten the
entire army assaulting their city by themselves, floating the question of what
the Defense Force could do to stop them and insisting that such a refusal was
both stupid and rude, considering they’d just saved their lives.

Jenna walked up near the downed alien as the Protovic
spoke, but she waited for what he told her rather than trying to glean any
information from their minds. She was barely holding her head together as it
was.

“Take them,”
Le’han’trel
translated.

“Brayden,” Jenna urged.

“Mason,” he delegated, with the other Marauder leading
a group of others forward and into the area where the locals were holding the few
prisoners that the
mercs
hadn’t gotten to before the
Defense Force did.

“Are there any other areas of activity?” Jenna asked
when the Shysosvan and his party had scurried off, wanting to get away from the
gods of war before they could become their next victim.

“A few transports took off across the plains, but per
your orders we let them go. I have sweeper teams looking, but so far the city
appears clear.”

“Broadcasts?”

“We’ve had local crews plus our own recording and
transmitting the whole thing. Anyone on the planet watching saw what you did,
and we’ll keep spreading the images…and making sure they do too. When do you
want to release your ultimatum?”

“Not now. If they refuse to leave we’ll have to hit
another city, and we’re not in any shape to do that.”

“No replacement armor?”

“We’ve both got another custom pair, plus generic ones
on our ship, but we need rest first. We’ll let you know when to release it,
until then just feed us the locals’ response and we’ll get back to you when the
time is ready…and make sure these idiots aren’t holding out on us. Not one of
the Varshoo stays here, clear?”

“Very. I’ll have my people snoop around to make sure.”

“Good,” Jenna said, rotating her left arm around in a
lengthy stretch. As she did Brayden saw a small breach point on the back
side.

“You hit?”

“Just a scratch. We’ll stick around another hour or
so, to make sure the locals hand over the prisoners and that there aren’t still
pockets of resistance. You’ll need to do the looking though, and we’ll
supplement with orbital scans.”

“Understood, but if I may ask…where are your weapons?”

Jenna exchanged a glance with Levi. “We stashed them
in a room when we ran out of ammo so we didn’t have to carry the extra weight.”

“I’ll get them,” Levi offered, turning and walking
off.

“Let us,” Brayden said. “Just tell us where they are.
We know what to look for.”

“Thank you,” Jenna said, sending a beacon point to
their tracking systems on top of the waypoint she’d dropped earlier to mark the
building.

“How were you disabling the others without ammo? I
haven’t seen any bruising on the prisoners from physical night taps.”

“Psionics,” Jenna said, looking over her battlemap as
she talked.