Star Force: Resistance (SF75) (11 page)

Instantly that tumble of energy reduced, with visible
gaps forming in the cascading arcs. It didn’t stop its forward progress though,
heading directly for the Sentinel pieces and intent on either ramming them or
burning them if it had any weaponry left. Liam accounted for the first
possibility by sending ships to push the invoker out of alignment, but first he
had to get it disabled or any ships getting close enough to yank it away with
an IDF field would be shredded by what looked to be standard invoker weaponry,
though perhaps beefed up in intensity a bit based on how some cruiser debris
literally puffed into dust upon impact with it.

Liam fired another shot, then two more before the
energy arcs all but went out and the invoker was clearly aiming to ram either
the Sentinels or the base below, but a swarm of drones rushed to it like pilot
fish and pushed it aside using both IDF and their own hulls that gently rammed
the sides then pushed into it, often imbedding themselves in the craft as their
gravity drives shoved the invoker off its path.

The now dark ship passed by the Sentinel segments with
7 kilometers to spare…a near miss considering how big these constructs were,
but more than adequate. Now all Liam had to do was repeat the process and use
his fleet of drones to harass the assault pillars a bit longer, for the third
Sentinel piece was now locked into place with only one more to go.

The lizards knew they were out of time, but Liam’s
fleet was too well arrayed and the planetary battery was delivering too much
firepower to let the big ships ram it. One assault pillar tried though,
positioning far out for a jump that Liam knew was coming. He forced a group of
drones through the lizard lines, losing more than half of them in the reckless
charge, but the others he had break through the shields at two points with
concentrated attacks enough to slip a few drones through and onto the hull
where they became engines that he could use to steer the assault pillar a bit.

It still made its jump, but sailed past the Sentinel
and hit the planet a few hundred miles away from the base. The impact was
massive and sent tremors across most of the planet, not to mention debris all
the way back up into orbit that would be raining down on the planet in the days
to come, but it had failed to take out the Sentinel before the fourth segment
was attached.

When that happened the internal components realigned
and the power cores came online…along with the shield generators and all the
weapon systems. Its Keema batteries weren’t as large as the planetary one, but
this Sentinel had 24 of them…not to mention other short range weapons and a few
tricks to avert collisions.

Liam linked to it with his
Sav
-enhanced
mind and added its firepower to the ground battery and began tearing through
the lizard fleet that was surrounding it as the cradles fled. The Sentinel
floated over the planet, now suspended by its own gravity drives, and Liam
nudged it further up towards the bulk of the lizard fleet killing cruisers with
single hits and often taking out two with one penetrating shot.

When he got the short range weapons into play the
lizard fleet did not turn and run like it should have, rather the assault
pillars and invokers both attacked along with the cruisers, intent on taking it
out no matter what the cost.

Liam admitted this one might be lost, but even as he
pushed it further out into orbit more Sentinel pieces jumped down into the gap
with the planetary battery covering them while the Sentinel fought the lizard
fleet. It wasn’t exactly a ‘safe’ zone for assembly, but it was far more resistance
than the lizards had expected and Liam knew they’d get the others online, for
all the pieces that had fled to other parts of the star system and were being
continually chased eventually headed to Planet 13 and began assembling side by
side.

There was no way to stop them all now, and by the end
of the day three of the massive defense platforms would be destroyed, along
with a fourth being heavily damaged, but two would remain intact protecting the
planet, and from that point on Star Force had its foothold, as well as a temporarily
weakened lizard fleet to contend with.

And both Liam and Paul knew it was only going to
snowball in their favor from that point on.

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