Star Force: Initiation (SF61) (9 page)

He took another shot to his shoulder, but most of the
barrels couldn’t target him in so close. Tucking his pistol away he reached up
and got a hand on the hole he’d just made, gripping the interior before letting
go of the barrel. He reached in with the second hand, feet dangling below him
over the ravine below, and pried open the turret enough for him to half climb
inside. He was going to shoot the vital components but accidentally pulled one
out when he was just trying to get a grip.

He nearly fell, but his left hand held firm as he
tossed the power conduit out beneath him with it dropping like a rope for a few
meters. Jason climbed up and into the turret as much as he could, then ripped
out more and more of the guts until he was sure that he’d fatally wounded the
turret…and given its placement the lizards wouldn’t be making repairs any time
soon.

The Archon grabbed the power conduit and slid down the
makeshift rope before letting go at the end and falling down to the ravine wall
some 20 meters below and braking with his jump pack before kicking of the
angled sidewall and drifting himself out enough to land in the flat bottom.

“One down,” he said, looking ahead at the next one in
the green vegetation outside the blast radius, “a million to go.”

9

March 24, 2692

Jafat
System (lizard
territory)

Irad

Provchad shot one lizard in the chest as it and
several others were rushing the Calavari, then he reached down with his lower
left hand and grabbed its corpse as it fell, still firing his rifle at the
others swarming around him and his brothers. He flung the lizard back into the
flow, knocking down several before jumping ahead to land on the body and the
small island it made amongst the rest. From there he proceeded to punch, grab,
and kick every lizard within arms range, making himself a decoy and taking a
lot of plasma hits while the others stayed put as gunners and picked off the
nearest targets.

Provchad knew he couldn’t stay out amongst them
forever, but his shields were strong and his arms even stronger, though he was
kicking as many of the short, scrawny enemies as he was hitting them.
Unfortunately that left his upper body as an easy target and his helmet was
more often than not the source of the plasma hits, each of which momentarily
blinded him as the superheated glowing gas washed over his faceplate.

With the distraction provided, the other Calavari held
their position and began creeping forward, firing as they went, and followed
Provchad forward until they got to a pass in a small hillside that the lizards
were flowing through. Once there two others came forward and relieved him,
allowing the Calavari to retreat behind the others and start recharging his
shields while they punched and kicked those coming through the gap while
pulling and tossing a few further in where the others shot them down.

Provchad inspected his armor, seeing a lot of small
divots in the orange plates as a tiny shimmer covered his body when the shield
matrix reformed at low strength. Pulling a pack of ammo out of his backpack he
began to reload his weapons when he visually spotted something running along
the top of the hillside underneath the trees. There hadn’t been any lizards up
there and he thought the rocky walls were too steep for them to easily climb,
but given the firing angle they had Provchad flicked a pistol up to target the
blur before it could fire down on them.

He pulled back when he saw a large black/gold mass
running at a speed the lizards could never match, but kept his attention up
there trying to make out what he was seeing. It was a Human, obviously, and by
the size he’d say a Knight but it wasn’t wearing Knight
armor
,
which was typically bright white. It also didn’t have a shield.

Provchad checked his battlemap to see who/what it was,
finding an ID tag but before he had time to check an explosion knocked him down
to a knee as the two Calavari at the front were thrown through the air as a
det
pack went off in their face. With no time to lose Provchad
took his ammo and stuffed it back in his pack, then ran up behind the others
ready to fight more lizards whether or not his shields were recharged.

Behind the
det
pack
explosion the infantry flooded in through the gap again and Provchad found himself
back in a firing line, mowing down as many as they could but with too many tiny
bodies running at them for the Star Force troops to shoot them all. The lizards
came right up to the big Calavari in their orange armor and fired their plasma
weapons into their larger hulks at pointblank range, whittling down their
shield strength with every hit.

Suddenly the black blur dropped down directly into the
gap in the hillside and every lizard within 10 meters of it fell to the ground.
When Provchad saw that he knew that the Human had to be an Archon, for no
weapon had been used to take the lizards down, but rather their infamous
psionics. As the Calavari continued to shoot the ones in between the Archon and
their line he saw the black/gold two-armed ally shoot those lizards on the
ground as they were helpless to do anything other than twitch.

Suddenly two more black blurs dropped down from the
hillside and fell into the lizards near Provchad, punching them away from where
they landed with bright lights on their fists. When they hit they had the
distinctive sound of plasma, but the Calavari had never seen such weapons
before. They glowed white rather than Star Force standard blue, but he was sure
it was a plasma weapon of some kind.

With one holding the choke point with his psionics the
oversized Archons helped the Calavari clean out the rest of the lizards on this
side then ran towards their twin, disappearing through the gap to the other
side and going after the lizards there.

Provchad knew better than to follow, for his shields
were down again, so he moved over to the two Calavari that had been hit by the
det
pack as the others slowly advanced to hold the choke
point against any more enemies coming through. When he got over to one he saw a
huge hole in his armor that ran from upper right arm down across the chest
plate to his left hip. Orange blood was flowing everywhere, but another
goo-like substance was
eeking
out from around the
edges of the armor and slowly stopping the blood loss like an instant bandage.

Provchad tapped on the
Calavari’s
helmet, trying to see if he was still conscious, and got a slight hand wave in
response. He didn’t know how bad the wound really was, but he was alive for the
moment. Knowing that he couldn’t walk on his own, Provchad grabbed a pistol
while putting his rifle back onto his rack, then used his three free hands to
lift his badly wounded brother up into a carry position up over his right
shoulder.

With his weapon ready to respond if anyone tried to
jump them, Provchad began walking the wounded one back the way they’d advanced,
hoping to get him to safety before he bled out or got jumped by any roaming
lizards, for there were so many corpses littering the ground there was no way
to be sure that they were all completely dead. If they weren’t, Provchad was
going to finish them with his pistol.

Setting a repeated ‘wounded ally’ signal on the
battlemap, he walked his passenger off, knowing that someone could up to take
him eventually, then Provchad would return to the front lines.

Darius punched the lizard jumping for his neck with his
left fist, knocking it back without delivering a plasma blast. That setting
only had a limited number of shots and he didn’t want to waste one now so he
kept to traditional hand to hand and broke bone with blunt force rather than
burning the lizards with plasma. The other two Arc Knights with him were using
plasma, both in the form of pistols, as the trio fought their way through the
pool of lizards that had collected on the other side of the hillside.

The Calavari had followed them through, fortunately,
for there were too many here for even them to take down head on and they didn’t
have time to be coy about this. They had less than 20 minutes to push this line
up to a convergence point with another assault group before a reinforcement of
lizard tanks beat them to the riverbank. They needed to get across in order to
take down a turret tower that was keeping nearby units well away from a
firebase that the lizards were literally spewing out of.

Star Force had a mech star moving up the river to try
and get close enough to the turret to take it out through the cover of the
forest, but they were pinned in close and half submerged in water walking
single file in order to make it through the narrow gap in this ravine bottom.
That would put them in a bad position if those tanks got to them and it was up
to Darius to make sure they never got that far.

He wanted to run ahead and take the tanks on without
the Calavari, but there was way too many enemy infantry out and about to
contend with while they were assaulting the tanks. They were going to be a
handful as it was, and they couldn’t have dozens of plasma blasts hitting them
per second when they went after them.

So they needed the Calavari there to deal with the
infantry and cover them while they took to the tanks…but the lizards had the
Calavari essentially pinned down, meaning the Arc Knights had to move the
line up
and they didn’t have time to be careful about it.
In typical Knight
tradition
they ran straight into the
heart of the enemy and took it to them like a punch to the face.

Their armor was more advanced than standard Knight
equipment
, but they weren’t carrying any physical shields
due to them needing to move fast through the forest and the big barriers
weren’t designed for that. Each of them had an assortment of firearms and
swords with them, plus their glove augments, which contained both plasma and
stun options, but for right now Darius was going to use his natural strength to
save ammo as long as he could.

To that end he punched two more back before
telekinetically picking up a pair of lizard plasma pistols and dual wielded
them as he ran forward shooting and knocking down more infantry, not caring how
many hits he took. He had to disrupt the lizards in order for the Calavari to
follow up and shoot them down, and to do that the best he needed to be in the
middle of them.

Once he got far enough inside the pool of enemies
waiting to go through the hillside gap he summoned up his mental strength and
emitted as large a Fornax field as he could, dropping well over 100 of the
lizards to the ground like an invisible blast had hit them from above. The
plasma blasts coming towards him stopped for a moment, then as he held them
down shooting the nearest ones around him the lizards outside the radius of the
fallen ones saw him and took aim, resuming the plasma barrage on him and
ratcheting it up now that he didn’t have a shield of lizards around him
blocking far-ranging shots.

Knowing he couldn’t take that much plasma and survive
for long he released the Fornax field and the lizards began standing up, some
of them right into the path of plasma and taking the friendly fire while the
other two Arc Knights pushed through other areas of the assembly pool, one of
which had brandished a plasma sword for the occasion. Darius hadn’t used his,
for he knew it didn’t hold that many charges, but the extendable blade would be
wrapped in plasma that would partially discharge on physical contact akin to a
pistol blast. With skill, one could deliver far more plasma strikes with a
sword than a firearm and that’s exactly what the Arc Knight had in mind.

He tore through the lizards around him, poking,
slashing and kicking them aside in a flurry of movement that even a Jedi would
have been hard pressed to match, for the 7 foot tall Human didn’t suffer the
typical ‘big guy’ slowness that the Calavari were clearly demonstrating, though
some of them were upwards of 8 foot tall.

No, the Knights were fast and the Arc Knights even
faster, akin to Archon speed and faster than many of them. Personally trained
by the original badass himself, the Black Knight, the Arc Knights suffered
nothing in movement when compared to the lizards and were able to outmaneuver
and outfight the tiny infantry with ease…there were just so many of them and
they had a deadline to meet.

Realizing that the other Arc Knight was right, Darius
pulled out his own plasma sword from his back rack and triggered the blade
extension. The stubby cylinder sprang out a meter and a half long blade that
was bathed in plasma with a second button press, held close and contained by
patches of smart shield that would only release with a prerequisite amount of
physical pressure. That amount was high enough that a mere brush wouldn’t
trigger a ‘shot’ but with the sheer power the Knights had in their arms, let
alone before the powered armor enhancements, there was no chance of the blades
not discharging when they meant them to.

Darius whipped his sword around and hit two lizards
with it in sequence, discharging a couple of shots into the first then hitting
the second with the tip. That half of the blade lost its glow for a split
second then returned to pure white a moment later. The Arc Knight didn’t try to
count the hits, but he knew that if he went hard at the swarm of lizards he’d
expend its charge within a minute…but right now that’s what had to be done in
order to get to the tanks in time.

Sending a Fornax wave out behind him to diminish the
shots into his back, he dashed forward swinging and hacking the glowing blade around
and dropping bodies in his wake. The blade didn’t sever limbs like a
lightsaber
, but it was capable of delivering multiple
plasma hits per swing if he wiped the blade across a target…which was more than
enough to kill them in a heartbeat.

Darius didn’t look back, fighting his way forward and
throwing in a few punches on the way, trusting the Calavari to follow him up
and knowing the other two Arc Knights would be doing the same. Sooner than he
expected the sword went out, leaving him with a metal rod that he continued to
hit lizards with, though he had to
amp
up the
strength of his blows to do enough damage that the lizards stayed down when
hit.

Nearly to the far side of the pool he retracted the
blade and stuck the hilt back on his rack as he telekinetically grabbed two
more lizard rifles and fought his way forward with them and a mix of psionics,
eventually getting to the other side and a trail that a scattering of
additional lizards were running down to join the others.

He held position there, shooting them and those behind
him while the other Arc Knights and Calavari fought their way up to him. Darius
didn’t have time to look, but the sea of trees behind him where the lizards had
been gathering was quickly turning into a corpse-filled park so thick that the
Calavari were actually having to pick up and throw bodies aside to make paths
for them to walk through.