Star Force: Marauders (SF63) (3 page)

“Unconfirmed maps are more useful than blank ones,
plus I don’t need them for anything here. The surrounding area has been
confirmed, which you know.”

“Well, I do need to know if I’m chasing thugs in those
areas. Don’t flash your junky maps at me again, boy. You can give a girl all
kinds of wrong ideas.”

“Feel free to update them while you’re out there.
Until then I’ll use what I’ve got instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.”

Victoria just shook her head. “Reckless is he.”

“Don’t quote Star Wars to me.”

“Surprised you caught the reference.”

“After spending all that time with Dennis how could I
not?”

“True…”

“Ok, bottom line. If and when the Voku end up here I
can give them a comfortable stay, but right now I’m not sure how to further
integrate them if they’re only interested in passing through.”

“I don’t think anyone does right now. Davis is just
looking for suggestions.”

“Why does he want us to bond with them anyway…other
than the fact that they could kick our butts right now, technologically
speaking?”

“Steve says they consider them to be worthy of a
deeper alliance. Probably has something to do with Paul.”

“What’s the Grand Admiral up to nowadays?”

“I don’t know. He bounces around so much he’s
practically a ghost. And what was that about making Star Wars references?”

“Don’t you get the feeling that there’s something
bigger going on that we’re not being told about?”

“Yeah…I do.”

“Six years.”

“What?”

“Six years is all that separated me from the
trailblazers.”

“Our class started 4 years after theirs.”

“I know, but most of them are 6 years older than me.
If I’d been the same age then I’d have been one of them.”

“They’re also kicking our butts in the levels, so stop
your whining.”

“I’m just saying, I wish they’d quit keeping secrets
from us.”

“Like that’s ever going to happen,” Victoria scoffed.

3

December 9, 2734

Orica System
(lizard territory)

Inner Zone

Gahmorn Pro-
zel
stood behind
his command station on the oracle of the conglomerate he commanded. It was one
of the older models, as were all of the 178 conglomerates currently under his
command. The few new warships had gone with Cal-com, as they should, leaving him
with the ‘secondary’ forces to deal with this lizard rabble.

His fleet was still emerging from their braking runs against
the large red star in the binary pair, though this system actually sported
three stars, with the third situated in a high orbit around the central two.
Around them all was 134 planetoids, of which 83 were currently inhabited,
making this one of those rare golden systems that contained a small empire’s
worth of territory in a single location. Originally this had been the
Nestafar’s
capitol, which the old Human alliance had
massacred in retaliation for the
Nestafar’s
betrayal
to the lizards. Oddly, Star Force hadn’t been involved in that, yet the system
had been wrecked regardless.

The Nestafar had begun to rebuild, only to have the
Skarrons invade and take it from them…along with the rest of their territory.
Knowing the value of such a location, the insanely vast empire poured
significant resources into Orica to develop it into a stronghold of their own,
only to have the lizards attack and a very long battle ensue that would see the
system fall yet again.

And now it was going to fall to the Voku, but they
intended to keep it and give the system a proper caretaker. Pro-
zel’s
task was just that, purge this system of the lizards
and begin bringing in support convoys to establish a permanent presence. Orica
was soon to become part of the Voku
empire
, and
neither the lizards nor the distant Skarrons could do anything about it. ‘Old’
as their tech might be now, the ships and troops under Pro-
zel’s
command were still formidable and wholly outclassed those they were about to do
battle with.

As the conglomerates waited around the red star for
the remainder to join them, tiny pieces split off and shot out on microjumps to
scout their targets. The last update they’d received was more than a decade old
and had come from the Hycre, but with the way the lizards built a lot could
have changed in that amount of time.

The first scouting reports came back as the last of
the conglomerates arrived and a sea of lizard ships were waiting out of weapons
range for them to make a move. They weren’t running straight at them to die
easy deaths like many from this race typically did, which was a pity. It looked
like the lizards were going to try and make them earn this system rather than
just going out in a blaze of suicidal glory.

One after another the scout ships reported back
infrastructure and defensive upgrades on the varying planetoids, with another 4
having been colonized since the last report. The largest of them all,
population wise, even had large segments of a ring shipyard sitting in orbit. A
closer evaluation saw that those segments were in fact operational and building
ships even as they were being added to themselves. Pro-
zel
found that to be very industrious of them, but he was going to wreck it all the
same.

Both the Voku and the enemy waited patiently as the
scouts zipped around the system gathering
intel
, for
the lizards couldn’t catch them and Pro-
zel
wasn’t
going to give attack orders until he knew what he was up against. The awkward
stalemate lasted several hours before the conglomerates finally moved out of
their holding orbits and pushed towards the sea of cruisers nearby.

Those defense ships broke formation and retreated,
giving Pro-
zel’s
ships clear jumplines that they then
took to the various planetoids, splitting up and beginning their assault in
earnest. With the invading fleet reduced in number at the various locations the
lizards finally launched their counterattacks, with the Voku splitting up their
massive ships into more agile ones and taking the fight to them head on across
54 different worlds.

As usual it was might versus mass, with the lizards
possessing far more ships than the Voku had brought, but they didn’t have
enough to compensate for the superior technology and tactics of the dominant
race. They had been trained and equipped by the Elders themselves, and there
was no way Pro-
zel
was going to lose to these
primitive barbarians.

The orbital battles took quite a while to come to conclusion,
with more than a week of fighting before all the ships and defense stations
across the system had been taken out. Pro-
zel
had
lost only 4% of his ships in the fighting, and acknowledged Cal-com’s wisdom in
delaying this assault long enough to get a truly overpowering force assembled.
With the Voku fleet mostly intact, they began moving around and taking out
secondary targets, whether they be shipyards or cargo ships, while the first of
the ground troops landed on three different planetoids.

Those troops were also equipped with the ‘old’
technology, but even given the lizards’ deviousness and inclination to build a
mass of subsurface structures they weren’t going to be able to do more than
slow the Voku down, for Pro-
zel
was spamming these
three targets with his troops rather than spreading them out across the system
piecemeal. He wanted clean, efficient battles rather than true contests. This
wasn’t a mission to test one’s strength, but to clean out the vermin and take
possession of the system.

And to do that Pro-
zel
had
plenty of time, for there was no amount of reinforcements that the lizards
could reasonably send that would alter the course of events here. The Voku were
going to claim Orica for their own, it was just a matter of how and when. Given
that almost guaranteed eventuality, the Voku commander chose to take the
patient approach and clear out a few planetoids at a time, giving his forces a
base of operations to work out of that wasn’t contested, while simultaneously
sending word back for the supply convoys to start coming.

So long as the Voku had at least one planetoid that
was solely theirs they could begin building, for their fleet would keep the
lizards away even if they were still in the system…and the sooner they got
construction efforts up and running the sooner they could start building their
own defenses. Orica had to become an economic stronghold within the region and
was key to Cal-com’s plans going forward.

And Pro-
zel
intended to take
it with the minimum number of troops lost as he could manage. He didn’t like
the lizards lingering nearby, but there was nothing they could do to stop the
Voku, so he might as well put up with their presence for a while if it meant
preserving personnel and equipment for later use down the line. Because old or
not, this tech was still valuable, and would be used in forthcoming assaults in
the surrounding region, for the Voku were going to carve out a piece of the new
‘border’ inside of what used to be Nestafar space and hold it against the
lizards, Skarrons, or anyone else that came Star Force’s way.

But first the handful of chosen systems had to be
taken from the enemy, then the other surrounding ones had to be cleansed even
if the Voku weren’t going to set down roots there. It was a campaign that mirrored
what was occurring back in their home territory, for per the Elders’ wishes
they were expanding their borders and hacking a huge chunk out of Skarron
territory, not to mention safeguarding other neighboring races that had
previously been beyond their mandate.

Everywhere the Voku were expanding, making this an
exciting and dangerous time for the empire, for there was a lot of work to do,
and when you were pushing against opponents those opponents usually pushed
back. Fortunately Cal-com had given him enough conglomerates for this mission
to be one-sided enough not to be an issue, which had been the point. Orica had
to fall and fall quickly to set up a chain of coming events, the most important
of which was occurring simultaneously to this assault and other smaller ones.

For Cal-com would have been here, overseeing this
massive campaign himself, if he didn’t have somewhere more important to go.
Right now he and a much smaller fleet were traveling far beyond any world seen
by the Voku before and headed for the
Shaleth
System,
a target that Cal-com had said was chosen by the Elders themselves.

The Dafchor rarely confided in his senior commanders
as to what the Elders had told him, for his orders were unquestionable, but
Cal-com had explained the importance of this mission to him anyway,
underscoring that while he was taking Orica, a vital piece in the ongoing
strategic puzzle, he would be quietly taking a much more valuable one, from
which he would be operating out of indefinitely. That meant Pro-
zel
and others would be out of contact with him for some
time until a proper relay network could be established out to
Shaleth
.

Pro-
zel
didn’t understand
why the Elders had instructed the Dafchor to take that seemingly insignificant
world, but if they wanted it done then so be it. He and the other senior
commanders could operate independently as long as needed, and Cal-com needed
him here, in Orica, even after the last of the planetoids was cleansed of
lizard presence. Pro-
zel
was to secure the foothold
then organize the acquisition and defense of the Nestafar Region until he could
receive further orders from the Dafchor, with a huge responsibility being put
on his shoulders.

But that wasn’t anything new, for commanders all
across the Empire were being given tasks that only the elite few would have
been given previously. In a time of great expansion such as this, they were
being called on to handle tasks far beyond their previous scope, and in Pro-
zel’s
opinion it was about damn time. If the Elders wanted
them to sit and defend territory then he’d do it, but the Voku were a race bred
for action, and it seemed fate had finally gotten around to allowing them their
due.

Not in terms of territory or bounty, but in glory. The
responsibility for such great tasks was what they craved more than anything,
for the more they were asked to do the more valuable they were, and that put
them one step closer to the Elders’ equals rather than being whimpering
children begging for scraps of technology.

Pro-
zel
doubted they’d ever
progress that far, but he liked the idea of being battlefield allies more than
being inferior servants…and apparently the Elders agreed, else they wouldn’t
have been asking so much of the Voku and giving them so much more technology to
accommodate those requests.

No matter how you looked at it, this was an age of
change and Pro-
zel
was eagerly anticipating the days
ahead. These lizards were primitive, but given the scope of their empire and
their ability to build replacements quickly, they were going to be a formidable
challenge going forward, even if this current assault wasn’t.

Or rather the challenge wasn’t in achieving victory,
but in doing so as efficiently as possible to give Cal-com more troops to work
with going forward, and that was a responsibility that Pro-
zel
took very seriously, for the Dafchor had also confided in him that there were
tasks ahead that may be impossible to achieve, but that the Elders had
commanded them to try regardless.

That single bit of foresight made everything Pro-
zel
did now tinge with greater importance, for these
missions were laying the groundwork for the impossible one yet to come.

When Cal-com’s fleet arrived in the
Shaleth
System they found themselves above a huge, dying
star. It was a massive red giant whose internal fuel supply was nearing the end
of days…but given how long stars typically persisted there was no danger of it
‘going out’ any time soon. That said, the radiation levels were considerably
lower than they had once been, meaning the habitable planets in orbit were
becoming less so over time. Already the outer two had been encased in an ice
sheet that had killed off all the vegetation on the planet, with the innermost
third still clinging to a narrow band around the equator, though it had been
reduced to scrub brush in lieu of the massive forests it had once contained.

Cal-com didn’t know the history
Shaleth
,
he just saw a slowly dying system that still held use for both the Voku and the
lizards, for they had a sizeable colony on the inner planet. Far more so than
it would have appeared to warrant, given that this location wasn’t on any of
their known supply lines, but rather in a little nook of territory equating to
a ‘filler’ system located in between the major ones.

Cal-com suspected that this one had been around far
longer than those his forces were currently assaulting near Star Force
territory, hence the greater size. Never the less, it was his target and he
immediately dispatched one of his three conglomerates to neutralize the small
defense fleet while he took the others and split them up into blockade groups,
intent to keep all enemy presence contained to this location. Let a ship escape
or an interstellar signal be transmitted and he’d lose the anonymity the
Dafchor was hoping for, which was why he also sent a piece of his command
conglomerate straight to the lizard colony.

That piece flew ahead of the rest and dove into the
atmosphere, coming down atop the section of the lizard infrastructure that held
their interstellar transmitter. Three brilliant energy beams leapt out from the
warship, nearly on parallel lines, but they actually converged at a given point
several miles below the craft. At first the three beams hit the lizard defense
shield 200 or so meters apart, but the green, blue, and orange beams refocused
and moved towards each other until they overlapped on the same spot…