Star Force: Internecine (SF55) (4 page)

“Damn you,” he said, turning the cleansing beam back
up to full intensity and cutting one of the Lacvamat ships in half with a
drifting shot.

He thought that would scare the other two off, but he
was wrong. They kept hammering the Scionate ship until its gravity drives were
destroyed and the blocky ship began to list, with only two weapons batteries
showing any return fire.

Jack gritted his teeth and fired again, bisecting the
second ship and then quickly the third when it wouldn’t turn back, leaving the
damaged Scionate warship drifting in towards the Sentinel at the same rate as
the Lacvamat pieces that probably still had living crews aboard in some
sections.

Finally Jack accepted the incoming comm.

“
I warned you
idiots
,” he said icily.

“
You dare to
strike us?
” the Lacvamat said angrily, following by a series of words in
its native language that the Archon didn’t understand, but got the gist of.

“
Stay outside of
range
,” Jack repeated.

“
If you want to
fight with these mongrels, so be it
,” the Lacvamat said, cutting the
transmission again as numerous dots scattered around the planetary map began
repositioning, abandoning those ships that they were chasing elsewhere and
beginning to head for the Sentinel, knowing that they could track the others
down later. Right now they had to get at the ‘safe’ ones, and to do that they
needed numbers.

“Shit,” Jack said, realizing what they were about to
do.

“Orders?” the gunner beside him asked.

“I think they’re about to dive in and try to get the
Scionate ships before we can kill them all.”

“Suicide run?”

“They know they can’t take down the Sentinel, but that
isn’t their objective. They want the Scionate and we can’t put shields around
them, only scare the Lacvamat off. They’re about to call that bluff which means
we have to shoot fast and hard and play defense with offense…and that means
it’s about to get very bloody. Barry, you’ve got herding duty. Get the Scionate
ships where they need to be as they come in. The more they can overlap shields
the better.”

“On it.”

“I’ve got the main,” Jack said, taking control of the
extra large
cleansing beam while leaving the other 10 large
versions to the gunners. He set the firing sequence into shorter bursts, giving
him more shots per cycle given the fact that it wasn’t going to take much power
to get through the Lacvamat’s shields and hulls. They were about to face a
zergling
attack, and when that happened the big guns were
pretty much useless. You needed the small, rapid fire or area of effect weapons
to manage the horde. The Sentinel didn’t have any of those, but it did have
short range weaponry.

As he began lining up his first shot and tagging the
ships that he wanted the others to target so they didn’t waste shots
accidentally doubling up, he saw Barry begin parking the Scionate ships that
were coming in by the dozens on the opposite side of the station from where the
bulk of the Lacvamat ships were approaching from. There were boomerangs coming
in from all directions, meaning there was no ‘back’ to hide the ships in, but
placing them opposite the largest number meant those ships would have to come
close to the station in order to get to them.

Making an alteration to the plan, Jack tagged a few
fallback positions in very close to the Sentinel and had Barry organize with
the Scionate so when the word was giving they could orderly come down within
the short-range defenses of the station if Jack and the others couldn’t keep
the Lacvamat off them at range.

With that done, Jack targeted the first ship cluster
to pass the line and opened up on it with the main battery, spitting bits of
cleansing beam that punched directly through their shields and hulls on single
hits, damaging them with ease as more and more Lacvamat approached and crossed
over the designated ‘safe’ line.

As they did the other gunners opened up and the region
around the Sentinel lit up like the night sky on the fourth of July.

4

June 14, 2553

Huey System
(Zeta Region)

Quacker
(Alliance World)

Donn dropped down from a decorative railing along the
ceiling of the
rightside
wall of the promenade,
landing in a crouch amongst the sparse pedestrian traffic in the
Javvi
city and scaring the nearby
octopeds
who scurried out of his way as he approached the security escort around the
Gnar
heading his way some twenty meters down.

As soon as she saw his black armor the envirosuit-clad
medtech
turned and ran, leaving her mix of bodyguards
behind to deal with the Archon…but she shouldn’t have bothered, for it took
Donn all of 8 seconds to dispatch them and another 6 to catch up to her, with
the Archon getting a firm telekinetic grip on her slightly plump body and
pinning her against the nearby wall.

“
Hello
Veen
,” Donn said casually, looking from his helmet into
hers…though hers was necessary, given that she couldn’t breathe a ‘normal’
atmosphere and requiring ammonia in addition to oxygen.

“
Release me at
once!
 
How dare you
…”

“
Cut the act.
You running is as good of a confession as anything. You should have played it
cool, not that it would have helped. We know what you did, and now you’re going
to give us the details
.”

“
What are you
accusing me of, Archon?
”

“
That little
mess between the Lacvamat and the Scionate
,” Donn said, telekinetically
moving her off the wall and forcing her to walk. “
Let’s move this conversation to somewhere more private, shall we?
”

“
You have no
right to take me into custody! I am a member of
…”

“
See this helmet
,”
Donn said, pointing at his faceplate. “
Underneath
I’m giving you the ‘I don’t care’ look, now move on your own or I’ll drag you
off.
”

“
No, I will not
,”
she said through her mask via electronic synthesis giving her a bit of a
robotic voice. “
You have no right…
”

Donn sighed and linked to her mind, shutting down her
voice and dropping her into a deep sleep as he caught her body and lifted it up
over his shoulders in an awkward carry, but with a bit of telekinetic assist he
got the armored little alien in place and carried her off, then turned around
and stared down one of the bodyguards getting up and coming back at him.

“
You don’t want
any of this
,” he said, not bothering to even take up a defensive posture. “
Just leave.
”

The
Calavari
returned his
stare, then calculating his odds of taking down the smaller Human that had just
beat him and the others within seconds decided to talk rather than fight.

“
She is our
responsibility
,” he said, almost pleading.

Donn hesitated a moment, sensing his conflicting
responsibilities. He wasn’t a Star Force
Calavari
,
but an independent hire to protect members of the EMT as they moved around the
ADZ, often through less than savory regions where they were hunting various
ailments.

“
This one is
going to prison, and will require your services no longer
.”

The
Calavari
huffed as
another of the bodyguards, this one a
Densan
, got up
and stood a few meters back. “
For what
crime?
” the four-armed giant asked, not believing that the healer could be
responsible for anything untoward.

“
She created or
helped create the bioweapon used against the Lacvamat. I assume you’ve heard of
it?
”

The
Calavari
looked from the
Archon’s helmet to the unconscious Gnar on his back. “
Are you certain?
”

“
Yes, and we
intend to get additional answers from her, so stand down. You can’t stop me
anyway.
”

“
Will you sign
off on her transfer from our custody?
” the
Calavari
asked, drawing a smile from Donn.

“
Sure. Follow me
and I’ll put everything in order
,” he said, turning his back on the guards
and carrying his captive off through the city with those he had just beat the
crap out of in the blink of an eye following him at a respectful distance.

Davis read through the report from the
Sului
System, amazed at the lengths both the Scionate and
Lacvamat were going to in order to kill each other. The Lacvamat had actually
gone up against a Sentinel in order to try and destroy warships that had
surrendered to Star Force in order to escape destruction. He gave the Archon on
site credit for offering them that out, and for enforcing it, for it seemed that
after the Lacvamat had lost so many ships and eventually left the system some of
the Scionate tried to go back on the deal.

The report noted some 13 Scionate ships that the
Sentinel had shot and disabled as they tried to ‘
unsurrender
’
and leave. The report went on to indicate that the civilian ships rescued from
the attack were allowed to leave and return to service on the condition that
they evacuated the warship crews, after which, having no means to take
possession of them given how few Star Force personnel were in the system, the
Archon ordered the empty warships destroyed.

An addendum to the report indicated that the Scionate
had requested permission to destroy the pieces of Lacvamat ships within the
firing radius of the Sentinel. The Archon on station had flatly refused,
wanting to rescue and take prisoner any survivors, but the Scionate wouldn’t comply
and waited for the varying pieces to drift clear of the Sentinel, after which
they pounced on the ship fragments with the handful of their own warships that
had survived the assault.

Those pieces that had yet to drift clear and contained
surviving crews were left to die a slow death, protected by the Sentinel but
without any Star Force ships insystem to rescue them. The Archon had tried to
co-op some independent shippers in the system into service but they all
likewise refused, not wanting to cross the Scionate whose umbrella they
operated under even for the ridiculous amount of credits he’d offered.
Frustrated to no end the Archon had gone up to orbit himself in a dropship and
managed to rescue a handful of Lacvamat before they died, then he’d brought them
back down to the outpost and almost had to fight the Scionate on the ground to
protect his prisoners.

They’d surrounded the outpost and demanded that they
be turned over, but he and his defense force held firm and the Scionate
eventually backed down but did not leave until the evacuation crews finally got
to the planet and began dismantling both the Sentinel and the outpost, with the
Lacvamat prisoners going with it as the Star Force personnel fully abandoned
the Scionate planet.

Davis didn’t fault the Scionate for defending
themselves, nor for their anger at being attacked, but several instances that
had come to the Director’s attention were proving them to be far less honorable
than their reputation and egos asserted. Killing helpless crews onboard incapacitated
warships and abandoning line units in battle to their deaths was unforgiveable.
He knew you couldn’t judge an entire race by the actions of a few, but then
again the actions of a few should not be repetitive ones, with this recent
report indicating that the Scionate were putting themselves and their agendas
ahead of honor when it became inconvenient…and honor wasn’t something you could
switch on and off at will.

And the Lacvamat were even worse. They’d been
attacked, and rightly were incensed, but they’d given Star Force all the information
they had and by no means did it finger the Scionate. Unless they knew something
they weren’t sharing then they were using the bioweapon attack as an excuse to
air old grievances and it appeared the Scionate were doing the same thing now
that fighting had broken out, with neither side interested in the truth or
honor. Both were out for blood and it looked like they were going to get it.

And neither race was happy with Star Force either
after the Sentinel incident. The report Davis was reading was an update, with
bits and pieces coming in to him through the relays as events progressed,
including scathing messages from the Lacvamat over the destruction of their
ships and Star Force’s protection of the enemy and taking sides where they’d
claimed to be neutral…as well as the Scionate’s utter vehemence over the
destruction of the warships that had surrendered to Star Force. Apparently they
hadn’t taken the ‘surrender’ seriously at all, and were more than angry about
losing so many needlessly, not to mention Star Force’s reluctance to defend
their planet as the Sentinel was put there to do in the first place.

Davis could sympathize with the latter bit, because
the Scionate in that system were probably not the ones making decisions for the
rest of their race and could well have felt betrayed by the surrender demand
made by the Archon on station, but Davis wholeheartedly agreed with the
solution he’d come up with. It kept Star Force out of the fighting while not
being party to a slaughter that simply watching and taking no action would have
been. Scionate lives had been protected, as the Sentinel was supposed to do, it
was just their ships that were lost, and Davis wasn’t going to worry about
those after how many drones Star Force had lost covering the
Scionate’s
sudden pullout.

Still, he realized that there were probably a lot of
people out there getting burnt because of the actions of others and he wanted
to minimize that as much as possible, but the economic penalties he was handing
down to both races were going to hurt them considerably. That couldn’t be
helped, but he knew he needed to do something else…creative, to move the
situation in a more civilized direction.

He wasn’t sure what that would be, but he was working
on it and was glad to get the Sentinel incident resolved in such a decisive
way. It would give him some more social ammunition to use and hopefully would
serve as a testament to Star Force’s stance. They weren’t going to take sides
in this war, but they weren’t going to be manipulated into becoming a helpless
bystander. Those individuals wanting to flee the fighting would have a
sanctuary to run to, and he intended to emphasize that point going forward.

But there were rumblings amongst the other races that
worried him, for the bad blood between the Scionate and Lacvamat was small
compared to some of the others, and now that there was blood in the water and
Star Force was shown to be too busy fighting to defend the ADZ to put a stop to
it…

Needless to say he had a bad feeling about this, and his
gut feeling was about to be proven right.

The Lacvamat had overextended themselves, hitting the
three systems they had with such numbers as to take two of them and being on
the verge of taking the third, and had taxed their military to the brink, with
the subsequent naval assault in
Sului
having drawn
off so many of their warships from their defensive fleets that the Scionate saw
an opportunity and chose to take it once the bulk of their fleets had returned
home to fight.

The Lacvamat capitol had been stripped of the majority
of its defenses in order to fuel the assault forces hitting the Scionate hard,
so while the fighting continued in those three theaters with increasing
tenacity a backdoor armada was put together as quietly as possible with the
Scionate taking better than 12% of their military out of view and forging it
into a hammer that they intended to crush the Lacvamat capitol with, ending the
war with one bold stroke by destroying the heart of their civilization that
otherwise would not have been possible if the Lacvamat hadn’t stripped their
defenses down to such an extent.

When the Scionate armada began to enter planetary
orbit over
Keeson
the hordes of civilian and
non-Lacvamat ships began to scatter like roaches, leaving only the weakened
defense fleet and a number of orbital platforms standing between the Scionate
and the planet. They engaged them directly, coming in with superior numbers and
equipment, then began landing their troops even as the battle raged in orbit,
with the Lacvamat unable to prevent them from getting to the atmosphere.

In a display of cunning strategy, yet barbaric
sacrifice, the Lacvamat fought and lost nearly 75% of their defense fleet and
stations before they sprung their trap. The Scionate knew the size and strength
of the Lacvamat military and knew they didn’t have the numbers to stop this
armada in orbit, nor to adequately resist the ground force they were bringing
with them and even now beginning to field on the planet below…but what they
didn’t account for was there being another player on the field, let alone
two
.

Jumping into planetary orbit from their hiding spots
elsewhere in the system, the Lacvamat’s allies closed the trap they’d cunningly
devised with both the
Gnar
and
Nammet
fleets coming in behind the Scionate and pinning them against what was left of
the Lacvamat forces. It was by no means an easy fight, but the three races
combined were now the superior in number and positioning, resulting in a very
bloody battle that left little opportunity for the Scionate to retreat…and on
top of it, the Scionate had been so overconfident they’d begun landing their
ground troops, with a host of transport ships now vulnerable to naval assault
in orbit and others trapped on the ground.