Star Force: Nexus (SF57) (8 page)

Jaavblet
wanted their help
on a construction project. If they completed it the 18 of them would earn a
permanent upgrade to their status, which would mean larger quarters and a tiny
stipend of credits every cycle. At first the others refused, for they didn’t
want to leave their little home here, but
Nizzi
offered a compromise and volunteered to go look at the city and the
construction project so they could know what it was that was being asked of
them.

Jaavblet
agreed and
Nizzi
went with her, wondering what in the galaxy he was
doing as he followed her through the water tunnels and into new areas of the
city where he’d never ventured before, eventually heading lower and lower until
they came to a transit system that
Jaavblet
led him
to. They both got into a small water car that shot them across the underside of
the city all the way over to the ocean, with the transition being visible
through the clear ceiling of the car as the tunnel they were in disappeared and
the open water became visible…along with all the craft in it.

The edge of the continent was full of underwater
habitats and infrastructure, including ships, but they all were left behind as
the small car shot through the water just above the seafloor, traveling on a
solid rim that was propelling it all the way out to the distant city. It took a
long time to get there, but just before they arrived
Jaavblet
pointed out the window and
Nizzi
saw the construction
project that was ongoing.

It was another underwater city being built, and only
now in the early stages of construction. The water was too hazy to make out
much, but a flurry of lights showed movement all around, both large and small,
as people were working on the project.

When they got inside the city
Jaavblet
showed
Nizzi
almost identical quarters to what they
were now staying in, along with the upgraded ones they could get upon
completion of the project, then she took him out to the construction site and
showed him how he and his fellow Ollofan could help. What she wanted wasn’t
complicated, with them being little more than couriers carrying small parts
back and forth so the work crews wouldn’t have to leave their positions. It
would require four of them per day, if they wanted to make the deal as a group,
and it didn’t matter which four. They could even switch off during the day if
needed, for it would be a round the clock shift on the 24 hour day.

The planet’s rotation was 38 hours, but they were so
far down under water that the sun didn’t penetrate, so they kept with what was
standard for Star Force.
Nizzi
figured up the math,
seeing that it would take some work on their part, but by sharing the load it
wouldn’t be too much trouble. Before he made up his mind he asked if he could
try out what it was that they wanted him to do, with
Jaavblet
taking him out to the construction site and swimming with him as they navigated
the chaotic area, sure to stay away from the bigger pieces of equipment moving
about.

He was given a small satchel
 
of parts or tools, he wasn’t sure which, and
swam them out to the place
Jaavblet
showed him,
giving the other tailed ‘Humans’ the bag and letting them pull out what they
needed. When it was empty she took him back to a refilling point, showed him
which ones to pick up out of which container,
then
had
him swim back. No fuss, no problem.

Nizzi
repeated the process
for a good half hour, doing little more than swimming and getting a workout
while the larger aliens did all the real work. After he saw that it wasn’t much
more than a long series of swims that they were asking of them, he went back to
the others and told them what he’d learned. It took some convincing, but a week
later they relocated and began helping the Star Force Elarioni build the new
city, and in the process became acquainted with the other workers and the
larger aquatic community as a whole.

No longer did they shy away hiding from the world, but
began making it their home, tentatively at first, then becoming accustomed to
the other races as neighbors and even friends. They would never replace their
own kin, but the loneliness that
Nizzi
and the others
were plagued by gradually faded, leaving them with a new future free of the
Li’vorkrachnika and other worry, for over time they learned that Star Force was
both huge, powerful, fair, and wise…with the Ollofan immensely grateful and
later proud to become part of the empire and contribute to it in whatever tiny
way they could.

8

January 30, 2642

Vasper
System (lizard
territory)

Deegan

Nem’tran’cov
waited inside
the Protovic transport encased in a flexible body armor that was concealing
both his luminous body and the perspiration on his forehead. He and the other
infantry were about to enter combat, not in the defense of one of their own
worlds as his forebears had done countless times, but in taking the offensive
against the Cajdital on one of their worlds. It was to be his first combat
mission aside from the extensive training he’d received, and
he
as nervous beyond words.

The Protovic stood armor to armor with the others in
his unit, all veterans. He was the spur of the moment replacement for another
that had been lost, not to combat but to retirement. Thus he was being thrust
into a role that was, honestly, more than he was ready for, but the others
assured him that his training was complete and that he would fit in fine,
relying on their experience and simply following orders as they fought as a
group of 8.

There were far more than 8 in the transport, but those
to which he was assigned were right next to him, waiting for the go signal to
deploy. When it occurred there was no mad rush outside, as he’d expected, but
rather everyone simply walked off the transport and set foot on the extremely
dry ground of the enemy-held world.

Nem’tran’cov
lingered a bit,
looking around until he was nudged ahead, then he walked with the others over
to a prefab command post that had recently been set up. As they did so another
transport was offloading tanks and he could see a few Valeries in the air
above, but no sign of the enemy.

For some reason he’d been expecting to come out
fighting, but as he quickly learned they were in a processing base that was
handling all the incoming troop transports. He and the others would be deployed
out to a number of battlegrounds soon enough, but for now everything was calm
and orderly…which unnerved him even more. He wanted to get into the heat of it
to shake off these nerves and lose his rookie status, but for the moment he was
going to have to wait for another long ride.

His 8 man team was held over for several hours, then
were taken aboard a tiny aerial transport and flown across the flat, dirty
landscape to a mountain ridge several hundred miles away. It was only some 800
meters high, but on this world that counted as mountains and supplied the
little bit of terrain available. This mountain range held several Cajdital
bases, dug into the subsurface, and his team was to probe the area around known
entrances. Nothing major, just a bit of recon that would hopefully be followed
up later with a full assault, but without knowing exactly what was there, the
Protovic’s
nerves were as troublesome as ever.

The transport set down on the edge of the flat,
offloading the troops in a location that was blind to the known entrances on
the far side where Cajdital tanks had been seen coming and going from. Sliding
in 5th man in line,
Nem’tran’cov
followed the others
in a slow jog as they moved into the ‘foliage’ that covered the mountains but
was distinctly absent on the large plains. Rather than typical trees, the area
was covered with what looked like spikes rising up at all number of angles and
topping out at some 25 meters tall.

They bent over enough to obscure the location of the
troops, giving them some badly needed cover…as well as the enemy troops if they
were out and about. It wouldn’t be hard to hide a small personnel entrance in
the mess of spike trees, and if there were any here the Protovic recon team
needed to find them before the main assault occurred on the other side of the
range.

“
Scouting
reports are in
,” the local Protovic commander commented over
holo
to the distant Calavari firebase, “
and we’ve found several small entrances on
the far side. We should be able to force an entry there while you have them
distracted
.”

“
How many?
”
the Archon ranger asked.

“
We’ve found
eight in total, but there may very well be twice that number. We’ll have troops
stationed in the area to hunt down any that get out
.”

“
Delay your
insertion well into the battle
,” the Archon suggested. “
If they’re small entrances you could be
sending your men into a tricky situation and I don’t have the Archons to spare
to scan ahead
.”

“
We can handle
it. You have my word
,” the Protovic said without insult, for he knew well
how formidable the Archons were.

The ranger nodded. “
Very well. Attack will commence in approximately 3 hours. I’ll leave
you to judge when to go in.
”

“
Agreed. Good
hunting
.”

“
Likewise
,”
the Archon said, turning off the hologram and looking up at the pair of
orange-clad Calavari Knights beside him. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“You suspect a trap?”

“When the lizards are underground…always. Get the
mechs in motion and our air cover scanning the
area.
We’ll fly the troops in after we’ve got our support in place…and I’ll be taking
point.”

The other Calavari huffed. “Could have made credits on
that,” he said, turning around and walking out of the battlefield command
center to ready their men.

Vlad-195338 remained behind, sifting through the
intel
reports again as his staff were updating the battlemap
with what the Protovic sent to them along with the commander’s transmission.
The mountain ridge was one of many secondary sites on the planet that had to be
routed out, now that the primary lizard colonies had been destroyed from orbit
then invaded on ground. Most of them had subsurface levels that the rail gun
slugs didn’t reach and cleaning those out was always problematic, but a
facility like this that was entirely underground was going to be even worse.

Still, they had the advantage. Orbit was theirs and
the mix of Protovic and Calavari troops were spread across the planet hunting
down secondary targets and
safing
the destroyed
colonies for engineers to come down and start tearing apart the rubble. This
wasn’t a torch and run op like so many others in lizard territory and they
meant to keep the planet, which was situated just outside the ADZ and one of
many worlds that had formerly belonged to the Calavari. Several of their ruined
cities still remained, with lizards swarming over them, but most of what had
once been home had been destroyed or deconstructed, leaving a full blown lizard
civilization that they now had to dismantle.

Vlad and a few other Archons were here leading the
Calavari, but no other Star Force divisions were present. It was a joint op
with the Protovic, whose border wasn’t far off, and yet another small step out
from the neutral zone they’d been diligently patrolling and weeding of new
lizard invasions. The Calavari weren’t hard up for room to expand just yet, but
they fervently wanted to reclaim worlds that had been lost, despite the fact
that most of those fighting today hadn’t been born when their original
territory fell. Still, they were determined, and it fit into an overall strategy
that Paul and the Voku commander had brainstormed.

Vlad didn’t know the full extent of it, but he had
been told they were going after a number of systems near to the ADZ that they
intended to keep and see what type of reaction that drew from the lizards, who
were right now heavily engaged with the Skarrons. Orica looked to be soon in
their hands, but the Skarrons were drawing more and more reinforcements from
deep in their coreward territory, with those ships and troops headed straight
towards the lizards…leaving the ADZ virtually forgotten.

The reconnaissance of those battles was something Vlad
found more exciting than the entertainment
holos
, and
he studied them regularly. Two massive superpowers were literally throwing down
not too far away and Star Force was whistling through the graveyard while they
built and researched like crazy. The V’kit’no’sat pyramid would win them the
war in the long run, but until they delved further into its technological
secrets they had to lay low and avoid attention…which was why taking this world
and others made no sense to Vlad, but he trusted Paul to have something up his
sleeve, which the trailblazer always did, and was content to focus his
attention on the local fights while letting the padawans and now mages handle the
big picture planning.

That focus wasn’t blind delusion, but rather trust. He
knew they’d take care of business on their end and that he had to take care of
the Calavari here. They were Star Force troops, to be sure, and could handle
their own same as Canderous or the mainline troops, but they didn’t have
psionics or the Archons’ unique leadership skills, let alone experience, hence
he and several others had been assigned to lead them into battle, as they
always did, for within their growing empire whenever there was an invasion to
execute you’d find at least one Archon at the lead, if for no other reason than
to troubleshoot problems that might arise.

Vlad had operational command of nearly a third of the
Calavari troops on planet, with a few acolytes at his disposal, but they were
here to guide more than fight, leaving the heavy fighting to the Calavari,
which were more than eager to take territory. They were well trained, but the
lizards were devious and he never liked going after them underground…which was
why he was assigning himself to this mission and leaving one of the acolytes
behind to coordinate other matters until he returned.

After reviewing the new data and current positioning
of his troops across this hemisphere, Vlad went outside and up to the roof of
the command post, which had only been built two days ago to replace the prefab
unit he’d been using before. There were engineers and Kiritak everywhere
building him a small military base even as he worked his troops in and out of
the temporary structures. This location was secure, with constant air and mech
patrols across the flat terrain with no way for the lizards to sneak up on
them, save for tunneling, but he had active scans routinely running on the
subsurface to spot anomalies.

He doubted that any would be able to tunnel this far
out from their nearest base, but already the lizards had shown more hideaways
than he thought they’d have. They either made them as part of their standard
colonization package or they’d expected to get invaded and left plenty of
blinds to retreat into. Vlad wasn’t sure which was the case but they were doing
everything they could to kill at least a few of his troops, and he didn’t want
to lose any of them. So far he hadn’t, for the orbital bombardment had kicked
the crap out of their surface resistance, but he had lost a few mechs with the
pilots recovered when some explosive traps were triggered.

That was a new version of an old tactic, with the new
det
packs being upgraded and placed in the infrastructure
or even buried just under the ground to ambush troops or mechs with. The yield
was clearly designed for the mechs, but given their armored cockpits the
mechwarriors had survived even when their four-armed monstrosities had a leg
blown off…along with a huge amount of dirt and infrastructure, making it look
like a rail gun impact in the aftermath.

The mechs he had repositioning to the mountain range
were going to sniff out traps like that before the infantry came in, and had
sensor equipment added to them to assist in the task. The range was low, but
it’d give them some warning and allow them to shoot the traps before they were
sprung if they were cautious enough. Another tactic was having the Calavari
Valeries fly low and scan the ground, though if the
det
packs were mounted on walls of ruined infrastructure there was a chance they
could get caught in a proximity blast. Some of the triggers were pressure
sensitive, others were heat, and still more were either movement related or
remote controlled. The lizards had a full bag of tricks in play, and if the
Calavari weren’t careful they’d needlessly take casualties.

Same went for the Protovic, yet the Archons weren’t
commanding them. They worked well together, but without direct operational
command Vlad worried about their safety. They were seasoned warriors, but
again, these were the lizards. They adapted to everything you threw at them and
would spend 1000 lives to get one of yours if necessary. They had to be hunted
down and removed from this planet, but when Vlad had the choice between pushing
an offensive and biding his time he’d always do the latter. The lizards weren’t
going to get reinforcements, so time was on Star Force’s side and he intended
to use it.

When Vlad got to the roof of the building he took off
his helmet and took in a deep breath of the dry air, feeling it on his skin as
a light breeze blew in from the southwest. He looked around, seeing his troops
in motion, including a few stars of mechs to the north coming back from patrol.
The spaceport had been the first thing permanently constructed, and even now
there was an almost constant flow of dropships coming down from orbit bringing
additional supplies for the work crews to build with.

Slowly he spun around, looking in all directions and
seeing nothing but barren, dirty plains around his little nest of activity.
Very far off to the south he could just barely make out a bit of variation on
the horizon that was the ruins of a Calavari city. It was scheduled to begin
disassembly within the month, but until then Vlad had troops stationed to
patrol it to make sure none of the lizards slipped in and took up residence.