Star Force: Nexus (SF57) (11 page)

That had seemed a little off the wall when Paul had
first suggested it to her, but he and Cal-com had been going over and forming
this plan for years and he quickly explained that while the first few attacks
might be better with the Voku up front, the lizards would learn from survivors
what was happening and choose to run rather than fight and lose…which meant in
order to kill as many as possible you had to have a backdoor guard and the Voku
tech was best suited to that.

That was the plan, anyway. What would actually happen
once they started to dive deep into lizard territory and hit them where they
weren’t expecting was anyone’s guess. Kerrie felt they’d be able to stay mobile
and survive even if something went horribly wrong because they wouldn’t be tied
down to defending or assaulting any planets. That and they had binary drives
and the lizards didn’t, fortunately, though that wasn’t going to last forever.

So it was going to be hit and run for at least the
next two years. Nobody would know where they were going, nor did Kerrie,
because they would decide on the go and be as random and unpredictable as
possible. Paul had likened the hunting fleets, of which this would be the first
of many to come down the road, to what the Black Knight had done to them during
their basic training.

That had immediately sold Kerrie, for she remembered
well how much of a menace he had been…and a lot of it had been because they
never knew when or where he would pop up. Their Final Challenge had been
different, because they had come to him, otherwise she doubted they would have
ever graduated.

Well, maybe not ‘ever,’ but it would have been a whole
other matter to deal with.

Once the fleet checks were in Kerrie contacted both
the H’kar and Voku, getting confirmation that they were ready to move out. The
three fleets, which in the
Voku’s
case was only two
enormous ships, all made their way out of planetary orbit to the star and
transitioned over to a jumpline that would head them in the direction of Zeta
Region and eventually what had formerly been Calavari territory.

Kerrie sent her warships ahead first, then jumped the
Majestic Dolphin
out a few seconds
behind them, leaving the much larger H’kar fleet to gradually transition
through their jumps with the Voku bringing up the rear. Though they hadn’t let
the H’kar in on the fact, Star Force and the Voku were going to look out for
their new ally and babysit them to the max until they learned the ropes. It was
odd saying that about a race that had been fighting the lizards for longer than
they had, but it had become clear that virtually all opponents the lizards
faced eventually lost out, which Star Force being the shining exception.

That was why the Nexus had wanted to watch and learn
from them, and that’s why they approved the H’kar coming here. Kerrie wanted
them to learn, but more than that she just wanted their firepower in the here
and now. Star Force was building more infrastructure than ships at present, but
they were gradually increasing their fleet numbers to a level that would be
able to sport multiple hunting fleets, but until that happened she had to work
with what she got, even if it was the ‘green’ H’kar.

Their fleet was formidable, but their recent
experience against the lizards showed them to be little more than seasoned
newbs
. She and the Voku would watch their back as they
learned, then hopefully down the road they could take that experience back to
their territory and apply pressure on the lizards from there.

But that was well into the future, and as she’d
explained to
Mavrel
nothing was guaranteed. Right now
they just needed to find lizard ships and work on their kill count…then see
where it went from there.

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