Star Force: Newbslayer (SF64) (9 page)

The two stayed together for the first bit of the
boarding action, then after seeing the next to no resistance that they were
getting decided to split up in order to subdue the crew faster. It took no more
than 12 minutes to get to them all, stunning them into captivity and taking
command of the bridge. There they locked down the ship and proceeded to begin
collecting the crew of over 800 and dragging them into the hangar bays where a
flock of dropships came in to pick them up.

All the while the other Varshoo ships continued firing
on the
Jor
-El up until it fired another Nami at a
distant cargo ship that was far larger than any of the enemy warships. Pulling
the captured vessel that the Archons were on with it, the Ma’kri moved over to
and landed another dropship on it. Levi took to subduing that vessel himself,
then a series of commandos, Knights, and techs came over to it from the Ma’kri
and began setting up the cargo ship as a makeshift prison, with Jenna finishing
the transfer of her prisoners over to it, leaving the captured warship
unoccupied.

When the Ma’kri had moved only a couple of Varshoo
ships followed it, with the others staying back out of fear, and rightly so,
for less than an hour after the cargo ship was taken two more missiles shot out
and caught the warships nearby, with the big ship abandoning its other captives
and flying to
disable
their weapons before delivering
Jenna to one and Levi to the other, both of whom made short work of the crew
and began carrying their bodies one or two at a time to the hangar bays for
pickup and transfer to the prison ship.

It was after those two additional warships were
captured that Jenna finally sent a message out to the Varshoo fleet,
instructing them to either flee the system or surrender, with the threat of
similar seizures extended to their vessels as well. Their cargo fleet heeded
the warning and immediately began withdrawing to a ‘safe’ distance, but their
warships lingered in planetary orbit up until the Ma’kri eventually shot after
another one, displaying far superior engines to anything the Varshoo had seen
before, the Skarrons included.

When that warship was hit with a Nami, disarmed, and
captured within the
Ma’kri’s
shields, the rest of the
Varshoo fleet ran off elsewhere in the system to be tracked down later, for
only one enemy jumpship was insystem and it loaded up as many vessels as it
could and took off before it too could become a victim of the mystery ship,
carrying with it the news and warning back to the nearest Varshoo staging base.

9

October 25, 2735

Noop
System

Tieor

With the Marauders providing air cover, Jenna and Levi
made an aerial jump into the city of
Lethol
, coming
down onto one of the city streets rather than a rooftop. As soon as they hit
ground they were off and running down the mostly empty streets, looking for
targets. They dispatched the first few handful of Varshoo soldiers with stun
blasts on their way towards the main barracks the invaders had set up, then ran
up against a unit of 20+ that were coming out to meet them as more were being
roused from their bunks or other duties.

The two Archons were the only ground troops assaulting
the city, but the Marauder fighters overhead had made it clear that
Lethol
was under attack. Still, no one had known where the
pair was coming down, so they still had a great deal of maneuvering options
within the city if they chose to use them.

But they didn’t. They weren’t here to evade the
troops, but to confront them head on.

Already in battlemeld, Jenna and Levi split up and
moved to opposite sides of the street as they ran towards the lachar shots
coming at them, most of which missed but with a few impacting on their shields.
With their
footspeed
that wasn’t going to be a
problem, but if they let groupings like this have time to throw a lot of
firepower into their armor then they could get into trouble really quick.

Activating their Lew ability, the Archons created an
invisible energy conduit between the two of them that would transmit Ikrid
stimuli on contact. When they got to the attackers they didn’t shoot back or
dive into their midst, but rather ran along the walls and bypassed them, with
Levi having to punch one out of the way as he did so.

When the energy field passed through the troops they
dropped over unconscious, as if Jenna had individually targeted each of their
minds and put them to sleep, which she could have, but Lew made it far easier
because once activated neither Archon had to focus to get the desired effect,
just get the invisible ribbon into contact with them.

There was a limit to how far they could stretch it,
and unfortunately it wasn’t lengthy enough to allow them to circumvent an
entire building, but they did manage to widen their formation a bit when they
came out onto the courtyard in front of the hotel that the Varshoo had claimed
for use as their barracks. They managed to catch another few dozen scattered around
the area, with Jenna firing a shot wide left to catch another outside the Lew clothesline.

All the others were within that effective range, so
the Archons simply ran up to the barracks’ main door and took down the few more
that were coming out to fight…then they simply stood on either side out of
sight and let them run out into the trap, toppling to the ground unconscious as
soon as they hit the invisible barrier. Jenna and Levi used their
Nemsa
ability to strengthen their combined telekinesis and
dragged the bodies to the side, stacking them up in neat little rows to keep
the center lane clear and not give any clue that there was actually a trap
waiting for the Varshoo as they continued to scramble out.

They took down over 300 soldiers with that trick
before the flow finally ceased, then the pair went inside and hunted down the
few remaining stragglers, clearing and reclaiming the barracks before they
moved off elsewhere in the captured city and eliminated the remaining guards,
for most of the Varshoo assault troops had moved on to contested sites, not
expecting any major counterattack here.

It took over 12 hours to search the city and eliminate
the remaining pockets of Varshoo personnel, for which they had to rely on a lot
of local tips once the captured denizens thought it safe enough to start
helping them out. The Marauders handled those information duties after they set
down a collection team within the first hour and began picking up the
unconscious prisoners as per their agreement with Star Force that Jenna had
hammered out with Brayden, who was more than grateful for their return, but not
immediately keen on her plan. That said, he wasn’t about to turn down the kind
of help they could offer, and eventually agreed to her terms.

With
Lethol
recaptured, they
were essentially putting up a huge middle finger to the Varshoo, made all the
worse by the orbital beatdown that had already been exacted. Jenna followed
both with an edict to the invading troops across the planet, ordering them to
withdraw immediately and they would be allowed to leave the planet. If not, she
and her apprentice would be coming after them.

The Marauders made sure to capture, and then
distribute images of how the two soldiers had taken down the entire defense
team left in
Lethol
, hopefully sowing some fear into
the rest of the Varshoo, but whatever effect it might have had wasn’t
noticeable, for their armies didn’t even bother to respond, continuing their
pushes into other areas of the planet and further whittling down what remained
of the planetary defense force and their allied mercenary units.

Jenna had expected that would be too easy a victory,
but the edict had to be given to set the groundwork for events to come. So as
the Marauders collected the prisoners, took possession of the city and helped
to see to its population’s needs, and loaded the captives onboard Star Force
dropships so they could be taken up to the fleet of now prison ships for
safekeeping, the two Archons redeployed themselves out to one of the primary
zones of conflict rather than going after another guard force in an already
captured city.

Deciding to bite off the biggest amount they could
chew, in order to make the biggest impression and test their skills before
battle fatigue had a chance to set in, they had a dropship take them to the
outskirts of
Hamrathor
, where the largest Varshoo
army was stationed and currently pummeling a third of the city.

“You ready for this?” Jenna asked.

“Are you?” Levi echoed.

“Run and gun and don’t look back,” she advised.

“And when we run out of stun rounds?”

“We improvise, but no killing on our part.”

“And if the others have different ideas?”

“We can’t control them, so just focus on us.”

“This is still crazy,” Levi emphasized.

“We can call it off if you’re not feeling it,” she
said, knowing that the only way they were going to survive this was as a pair.

“Fortunately for you, I happen to like crazy,” he
said, looking across the grassy plain towards the city edge and the surrounding
tanks as he flexed his armored fingers in anticipation. “Let’s bring some
civilization to the savages.”

Jenna felt his battlemeld prompt and accepted it, with
their minds linking and able to read each other’s senses. Now they had four
eyes, four ears, and two bodies’ worth of
stimulai
between them, not to mention a host of special psionics at their disposal. Levi
was still missing several, but the ones he’d already developed would serve them
well, and she’d need him and his skills augmenting her own in order to have a
chance of pulling this off.

Without a word between them, the two began running
forward across the grass and up to cruising speed as they looked ahead at the
remains of one defense turret on the far left and the tanks that were currently
assaulting another one far right. They were running directly towards their
flank, which had hundreds of infantry in columns with them…and that was just
the units on this side of the city. Thousands more were already inside, with
their air cover swirling about shooting targets on the ground with no
opposition coming from the air, just an occasional anti-air burst from a
surface battery or defense tank.

Halfway across their run the pair of fighters that had
futilely chased off the Archons’ dropship turned back and angled towards the
pair of fast moving dots in the grass, stitching the ground around them with
plasma fire, which got the attention of the infantry ahead, who turned in their
direction now that they’d located the well-known threats, for those two suits
of armor were now infamous on the planet after the recent broadcasts.

Suddenly one of the
aerofighters
stopped firing and took a nosedive towards the ground, pulling up just shy of
crashing and skidding across the dirt into a gentle tumble as the other one
bathed the two Archons in plasma, igniting fires in the grass around and ahead
of them before flying by and making a long arc to circle back around, but as it
did so the two suits of armor emerged from the smoke still at a run, heading
for the infantry ahead of them and the tanks behind that were busy exchanging
fire with the defense tower that was on its last leg.

The infantry wisely stopped their advance and took up
firing positions, forming rows and waiting for the enemy to come to them. That
waiting didn’t involve holding their fire though, with the first row taking
wild shots at range that began to narrow in on the Archons, who didn’t bother
to do more than throw a little weave into their running approach.

With the fighter circling back around, it was going to
get one more pass against them before they met up with the infantry, but as it
moved back towards plasma range the dots increased speed
beyond
anything that should have been physically possible, then one of them shot
forward even faster, flying through the air like a cannonball and landing in
the front line of infantry…which collapsed around his impact point, dropping
over a hundred men to the ground instantly.

The fighter had a brief window of opportunity to shoot
the other one and accelerated in low to the ground and stitched a long line of
red plasma orbs up to the enemy soldier, then tipped the targeting reticule
down to try and keep the damage pouring on that spot as the fighter continued
to move forward. When it was almost overtop the target the pilot blacked out,
then his ship nosed into the ground and flip over end for end until it
eventually skidded to a stop in a long furrow of dirt off to the side.

With the rest of the Varshoo fighters further off and
no immediate threat, Jenna finished her run up to the infantry and threw a
linked telekinetic wall at a group of them that still maintained formation off
to their left and were peppering Levi with blasts. His shield were already
weakened from the fighter damage, and now they were getting hammered hard by
the dozens of lachar hits. Small as they were they added up, and it would take
time for their shields to replenish themselves once they found cover.

Except that there was no cover.

They knocked down 11 of them, taking them temporarily
out of the fight as Levi ran around the others, using a Fornax field to keep
them twitching on the ground while he chucked a few stun grenades into the mix,
taking the opportunity to down dozens of them before they could get up again.
Once Jenna got up to him they split and used their Lew to run around and knock
out more of them, all the while their shields were dropping into the danger zone.

Before they got through them all Levi’s went down and
his brown armor started taking a few dings from the lachars, but those quickly
stopped as he threw up a
bioshield
over himself. That
matrix had less power behind it, but its design was so much more advanced that
it was essentially worth 60% of the technological version so long as he sustained
the effort.

Jenna still had some regular shields left, so she kept
sprinting around and dragging their Lew line across the infantry and knocking
them unconscious with the invisible hits until one of the tank shots impacted
the ground a meter in front of her, with the concussion of superheated air
knocking her up and off her feet momentarily.

She landed in charred grass, immediately pivoting to
her right and darting to the side to throw off the next salvo. With her shields
down to a sliver, she put up her own
bioshield
and
let them start to recharge, catching a handful of lachar blasts that kept
coming her way. Throwing in several deviations in her running path she managed
to dodge some of them, but there was a continual chain of hits wearing her
down, as was expected.

There was no way around that, given the frontal
approach they were taking, but they’d almost gotten the infantry mowed down to
adequate size for them to throw their finishing move…but the tanks were going
to be a problem, for they were out of range and now coming after them with the
defense turret no longer showing any return fire.

Jenna knew they had to hurry, so after running around
and knocking down another 20 or so Varshoo with their Lew, the Archons came
back together and huddled up, with Levi literally wrapping his arms around
Jenna as they took a knee, trying to present as small of a target as possible.
His
bioshield
combined with hers, linking together as
the
Cerden
ability allowed, and grew far stronger
with the bond, allowing the next tank shot to hit and not breach.

They were extra vulnerable while stationary, but both
of them had to concentrate in order to bring the
Jini
saturation levels up to what they needed. It took a long few seconds, during
which the lachar blasts honed in on their position from the surrounding
infantry and added to the damage a second tank plasma blast did, along with a
partial third from another tank now gaining a firing line on them.

One second more was all they needed, then together
they emitted the
Jini
, sending out an Ikrid bomb
similar to the Lew, except that this one reached out like lightning strikes and
hit any mind within range, draining part of their charge without any conscious
control or effort.