Star Force: Resistance (SF75) (6 page)

Being patient and stealthy, he moved around from ward
to ward, hiding an explosive or two in each, then moving on to later stages of
development. Many of the chambers were the same, but once they reached a certain
point in the timeline they were transferred to the larger pods, which was also
a beehive of activity. He made sure to drop a present everywhere it would do a
lot of damage, not enough to bring the building down, but to junk the internal
equipment and cause them to replace all of it. It would also kill the
developing lizards, and as much as he hated spawn point camping this had to be
done.

These lizards hadn’t done anything against Star Force
yet, and if they’d been another race they wouldn’t have been using this type of
tactic, but never in the history of Star Force had a lizard not wanted to kill
them. These developing here would do the same when they got released, so it was
best to kill them now before they could fire their first shot. They were going
to be enemies regardless, every last one of them. If there had even been a
shred of doubt about that they wouldn’t be here doing this, at least not in
this way, but Brandon and the others were sure. They had to be, for one didn’t
want to make a mistake and kill someone who wasn’t going to try and kill you.

That was one disadvantage the lizards had…they were
all united with a common purpose. After so many centuries of warfare for Star
Force to learn about them through, they no longer needed to be careful to not
target the innocent bystanders, for the lizards had proved there were none
within their race. This planet had been given the opportunity to surrender,
which it hadn’t taken, and wouldn’t as the offer was repeated over the coming
years, so that meant it all had to be destroyed, right down to every last
lizard, including the ones in these pods.

Brandon and the others did keep running through the
logic in their minds though, rather than taking it as a foregone conclusion.
They had to make sure what they were doing was right, and in this case, on this
mission, it was, leaving Brandon without any regrets or doubts. He just hated
killing like this, but the lizards weren’t giving the galaxy much choice. It
was kill or be killed, and when it came to that Star Force could and would
prove itself superior in that skillset…it just didn’t usually show it off, out
of caution to make sure it stayed on mission.

But today, on this planet, that mission was
destruction, pure and simple.

Brandon kept moving around planting explosives and
calibrating them to the clock in his helmet to insure that they’d all go off
simultaneously, but there was one more place he had to go and that was in the
genetic repository that held the precious little hand-sized crates that could
create an army for each and every one of them. Typically the lizards didn’t
have many of those on hand, and guarded them carefully against destruction…but
since they didn’t know anyone was here, and this hatchery was still fully
operational, they should be located in the control areas where the monitoring
staff were.

That was going to be the hardest to sneak into, which
was why Brandon left it last on the list, for he was going to need the others’
help to get in there.

6

Jyra
walked ever so softly
in her armor’s boots, coated in dampening treads over top the hardened under
soles, trying to be as smooth as possible as she strode past a lizard at a work
station. There were 8 of them in the room, all doing this or that with 5 of
them staying put. Three others were roaming from station to station, based on
the patterns the Arc Commandos had been monitoring via Pefbar through the walls
and nearby rooms before sliding a tiny remote camera in through the doorway.
They’d used it to get more info on the control room, including the placement of
two security cameras that
Jyra
was walking
around…right in view of the rest of the lizards.

Those lizards were attending to their work and she
wasn’t noticed, for Mace and Brandon were working them over with psionics
during what they thought would be another few minutes of inactivity from the
roamers. Right now two of them were seated and the third was standing in front
of monitoring displays. It had been doing that regularly before transitioning
over to check another, more formal station.

Jyra
and the others had
spent over an hour watching their movements in order to plan this out, and now
that she was doing it she could feel the danger around her. One look was all it
would take to blow their cover and they’d be on the run, but they really wanted
to make sure the genetic material didn’t survive the explosions and the only
way to make sure of that was detonating one of their little hockey pucks
directly on them, else their protective shells would more than likely keep them
intact.

The three of them had planned this out prior to her
entry, and
Jyra
was walking a very deliberate course
around and through the workstation. The lizard directly to her left all but had
its eyes on her, but they were tilted down slightly to look at his station screen
and a heavy dose of Ikrid influence to make him keep them there.

Jyra
moved slowly, at
approximately the speed the roamers moved, with that image being put into the
minds of any of them that happened to turn in her direction. They couldn’t
psionically dampen all 8 at once, so they were working on the ones most likely
to spot her with
Jyra’s
psionics being used as a
backup in case something went wrong.

She made a hard left past its station, then ever so
carefully dropped to the ground and crawled past another station that had a
security camera over it, she turned right and went within a meter of one
sitting lizard’s tail that was sticking out the back of its chair, twitching
lazily in the air a few inches off the ground. She made sure not to touch it and
kept moving.

After a few more zigzags she ended up in the back room
where another security camera was covering the genetic repository, which was
basically an elaborate closet indented into the wall. The second camera was
there, covering it, for which she opened her hand and a small piece of material
they’d scrounged from the cover of a supply canister in the pod prep area
gently floated up into the air. Her psionics might not be that strong yet, but
make the object as light as a big pebble and she could work it around just
fine.

It rose up and put its flat width in front of the
camera mount, blocking the view and held it there. Both of the others were busy
keeping the lizard minds occupied, so it was her job to multitask and keep it
aloft in that precise space while she dug into her open pack and pulled out her
last bomb. There wasn’t much in the way of places to hide it, but they knew
from experience that the genetic material was so dense that multiple canisters
would not be needed for months, so the likelihood of someone coming over here
to pick up another one anytime soon was slim.

There was a small lip behind the cartons that held the
protective canisters and she set the explosive there, making sure it was out of
the line of sight of the camera. There was nothing covering it, but
Jyra
could only make out a bit of it from above when she
pulled her arm back, and fortunately the lizards were shorter than her.
Confident that it would go unnoticed despite not being hidden well, she began
to make her way back out into the control room, tugging the little piece of
thin material back into her hand.

If someone was actively watching the cameras then
they’d notice an interruption, but they wouldn’t see her black armor. Given how
low level the security was here, for there were no invading troops in this city
anymore, they’d wagered that not every camera in the entire city would be
monitored and were probably there for use in an active situation or for replay
after the fact. It was a bit of a gamble, and if someone was watching and came
to check on the camera it would increase the likelihood of the explosive being
found, which was why as she backed away she toggled the explosive’s settings to
include movement detonation.

Hopefully this planet didn’t have earthquakes, for
aside from that it wouldn’t go off unless someone picked it up or something
really big crashed nearby and vibrated the floor. But if there was going to be
someone to find the explosive before the timer expired, it would be best for
the rest of the lizards not to know what was going on and give them a chance to
search for more. Dead men tell no tales, and that would certainly be the case
with anyone who found this one, though the others spread throughout the
hatchery were not so set, for some of them were in locations where there could
be vibrations, plus they were hid a lot better.

Jyra
walked/crawled her
course in reverse, then casually stepped out of the control room and turned the
corner, breathing a huge sigh of relief as Brandon signaled danger to the
right. She stretched out her senses and found another mind approaching from
that direction so the Arc Commandos went left down the wide hallway and ducked
into a side room to let this lizard pass one way or another.

I can’t believe
we pulled that off
,
Jyra
said telepathically as
they hid out.
It never should have
worked.

Never
underestimate the stupidity of a lizard
, Mace responded.

Or the power of
psionics
, Brandon added as the one they were mentally watching turned to
the right and out of their hallway headed away from the control room and into
one of the growth chambers.
Let’s go
.

The three of them played their now familiar game of
hide and seek, crossing the hatchery and taking their time doing it to keep
their cover secure, all the time wondering if/when someone would show up to
inspect that camera. They didn’t pass anyone that looked to be in a hurry on
their way back to their entry point, but the sooner they left the better.

Psionics said the room was empty before Brandon
rounded the corner and looked inside with his eyes. The puddles on the floor
had since dried, but apparently no one had come in here to see the damage. How
long the lack of pressure would go unnoticed he wasn’t sure, knowing that this
was only one water feed into the facility. Had it been the only one an
immediate problem would have arisen, and in truth he didn’t know whether or not
a lizard team was already on the case, for looking at this mundane section of
pipe was probably not going to solve their problem…unless they expected an
invasion team to cut their way out of it.

“Leo, how we doing?” Brandon asked.

“Good to go. You all done?”

“Headed back through the pipe now,” he said, motioning
for
Jyra
to head in first.

Without hesitation she walked over and pushed her
helmeted head into the water, sliding into the pipe with her feet disappearing
last. Mace gave her a 5 count then went in after her, with both of them
splashing water out, though not as much as last time.

Brandon waited a bit longer, searching the area around
him with his Ikrid then checking on the status of the bombs in his HUD. They’d
lose their short range tracking signals soon, but he gave them one last pulse
command that triggered a return pulse. All of them updated on his HUD with an
extra hour on their timers, for it had taken them longer with the control room
than he’d thought and it would be best if they could make it back to their
speeders before they blew, though even with the extra hour there was no
guarantee of that.

He dove into the pipe after one last look around,
happy to have gotten this far successfully. Now it was time to run, but they
had to do so as carefully as before with a city full of lizards all around
them.

That thought was on his mind as he crawled/swam
through the dark pipe until he came to the bit of light at the far end where he
pushed his helmet back up into the air next to the mental signatures of his
team. Leo extended a hand down and helped pull him out, with his armor dripping
off excess water within a few seconds thanks to the non-stick coating on the
surface.

His boots stepped into a small puddle, but he didn’t
linger there as Mace was already out the door charting their way back.
Jyra
followed him out next, then Leo, with Brandon bringing
up the rear. They’d be in range of a kamikaze burst transmission for a while,
which could set off the explosives remotely, but the more city they put between
themselves and them would diminish the signal’s reach…plus one that loud would
be picked up by the lizards, cloaked nature or not. Brandon also knew that it
wouldn’t penetrate the shielding the lizard buildings had at surface level, but
if they were discovered in the next little bit he could still trigger the bombs
early.

Fortunately that wasn’t needed and the trek back
across the
undercity
was much like it was coming in,
with the dart across the highway becoming a bit more dicey. The long convoy of
crate pushers was gone, replaced by groups of individuals walking in either
direction. They had to wait it out looking for an opening then play
Frogger
to get across one by one while the others dampened
the minds closest to them. It took time but they managed to get everyone
across, then they worked their way back to the ventilation shaft and sent Leo
up first, with him psionically checking out the rooftop.

It was night already, a few hours in, and there were
no minds present, prompting him to climb on out and stand up in the planetary
atmosphere again after spending so much time buried in infrastructure. He
couldn’t feel the wind on his skin, but he could taste the difference in the air
as he breathed it in and relished the freedom it invited.

As the others came up he headed over to where they’d
stashed their two speeders, relieved to see that they were exactly where they’d
left them and that the two dark blots had ridden out the day cycle without
drawing suspicion from aerial traffic.

He pulled up the sheath on one of them and slid onto
the seat with Mace following him and working his armored body around his fellow
Arc Commando’s in a very awkward riding style, but after the climb through the
ventilation shaft and the water pipe this was easy in comparison, requiring him
to do nothing but hang on and ride.

Jyra
took the other bike and
Brandon likewise wrapped himself around her waist, then the two speeders pulled
up their landing gear and eased up over the rooftop and across to the next
building, beginning another hide and seek game to get themselves back to the
edge of the city. They took their time, knowing that being reckless right now
when they were so close to getting away would be the epitome of stupid, and
they were about 2 miles from the rocky wastelands beyond when the timers
expired and the bombs exploded.

Jyra
didn’t see or hear
anything, simply noting that the countdown inside her helmet expired. She
deleted it from her HUD and flew on, knowing that the lizards would be alerted
to some form of trouble, but right now it was behind them and they intended to
keep it that way.

With her and Leo being even more cautious on these
last few sections of building hopping and stopping more often than not, they
eventually came to the low buildings on the perimeter at the same location as
before, passing between defense turrets and dropping to the ground in the night
on the city’s edge, then slowly easing their way further out and using what terrain
there was to further hide the shadows that were their bikes.

Knowing that they were in the clear now both drivers
kept their movements fluid, retracing the path they’d came in by that was still
logged in their battlemap and which led them out to the other two hidden bikes
that were agreeably still where they’d left them.
Jyra
let Brandon slide off low to the ground then took a moment to swing her legs
off her pommel seat, stretching out a bit before the four of them mounted up again
and headed across the countryside for as far as they could get before having to
put down and make camp before the sun began to rise.

Six days later Alpha 9 came up on their extraction
coordinates, which were little more than an anonymous spot out in the barren
countryside near to the front lines and just on the Star Force side…but far
away from any of the captured cities or friendly firebases. They set down
inside a shallow canyon and sent a signal straight up to orbit where the
lizards couldn’t detect it, telling the fleet that they were here and needed to
get pulled out. Their speeders’ fuel cells were almost on zero charge, as
expected, and they couldn’t fly the rest of the way to one of the Star Force
held regions if they’d wanted to, though they didn’t, for that would invite
wisp attention that the speeder bikes were ill equipped to handle anyway.