Star Force: Resistance (SF75) (9 page)

Paul had them plow directly into the center of the
hundreds of thousands of cruisers ahead of them…something that he didn’t think
the lizards expected. They poured in on them like sand collapsing into a sink
hole, with his seda and the 3 command ships taking the heaviest of the
pounding, most of which came from collisions. But the genius of it all was the
fact that the incoming lizard ships were moving slower than even his seda, and
they couldn’t ram it
en
mass without making tiny
microjumps. Those jumps couldn’t happen through their own fleet, so they had to
ram it at slower speeds in groups that also had to adjust to the forward
momentum that somehow Paul was succeeding to randomize with constant gravity
drive adjustments to not only the seda but the entire fleet simultaneously.

They moved left, then up, then down and through a
variety of small, yet mathematically significant alterations that did not allow
the lizards to anticipate where they were going to be in order to set up more
damaging assault runs. He was lessening their damage potential with navigation
and forcing the lizards to act more spontaneously…which with their limited life
expectancy kept them from having any veteran commanders, Remmington suspected.
Such
newbs
, no matter how much genetic knowledge they
were gifted with, would react with less efficiency than commanders who had been
in tense combat multiple times before, not to mention relentless training
simulations that honestly made this level of insane combat feel…familiar.

Once the seda and the command ships made it through
the entire lizard fleet, punching a hole clear through to the other side, the
seda’s
shields were down to 12% and still taking additional
hits, but rather than run Paul had them come to a dead stop and the command
ships move out like extending flower petals as they turned back on the chasing
enemy that the drones, that had been taking shelter in the mass shadow of the
bigger ships, were now attacking in a frenzy like a bottle of soda that had
been shaken up and held in check up until now. Those tightly packed fleet
formations were exploding outward into the
the
lizard
fleet and began to eat away at it from the inside as more and more cruisers
continued to pour into the
seda’s
shields.

The enemy had a choice to make, with it seeming to
want the big station dead. Remmington held his teeth firmly together, knowing
what this would mean. They were the anvil on which the lizard hammer was going
to fall…all the while the smaller fleet of warships were going to devour that
hammer from the handle on up. The only question was how much of his seda would
remain once the shields fell, and how well had Paul calculated the potential
damage.

A quick check of the larger battlemap indicated that
there was no immediate lizard reinforcements coming. This massive fleet they
were engaging was to be their only opponent so long as this didn’t drag on
hours…which it very well could. Right now though the lizards had either been
caught off guard or they were confident that they could do what was necessary
on their own without additional ships.

Remmington didn’t know if they could or not, the
numbers involved were so large he didn’t have the ability to glance and assess
the dangers involved. He hoped the trailblazer could, but regardless of the
outcome Canderous served the Archons and would follow them into any battle
anytime, anywhere. If they did die here, which he thought would be unlikely
given how much mass this seda held and the bunkers at the center that would
preserve them against almost any pounding, then so be it. It wouldn’t be a
waste. He trusted the trailblazers enough to insure that, but found it much
more likely that Paul’s cunning would win out today as it had numerous times
throughout Star Force’s history.

And the bastard was probably going to do it with the
starfighters parked in the hangar bays.

9

January 4, 2936

Gvaris
System (lizard
territory)

Planet 13

Jasmine-CT294-17 ran into the hangar bay along with a
few other crewmembers and up the ramp onto the
Pantheon III
-class dropship and took her seat, allowing the others
to get situated in quick fashion and clear the narrow hallways allowing the
copilot to come forward after securing the rear hatch and insuring that all
were onboard. They lifted off from the RTL’s hangar deck and flew out the
containment shield and into space accelerating heavily. Though born and raised
in space, Jasmine still took a long, deep breath, knowing how vulnerable they’d
just become.

But then again the pantheons had been designed for
just this type of hazardous duty, carrying more armor and engines than
Mainline
dropships to get crews and cargo up and down from a
planetoid faster and more reliable under combat situations. The tradeoff was
that they carried less cargo, but as Jasmine agreed that wouldn’t matter if
they didn’t make the trip in one piece.

Planet 13 had never been inhabited, by the lizards or
anyone else known, hence it didn’t even have a name and in the two days since
she’d got here she hadn’t been informed that anyone had given it one yet. That
seemed rude, for both Star Force and the lizards were paying the world a lot of
attention right now with the sedas ringing the small planet like a necklace and
orbiting over the construction site constantly with the lizards trying to send
cruisers down into the gap to catch some of the thousands of dropships
transiting to and from the surface.

Both the Canderous and Mainline fleets were repelling
them, but she’d previously seen one or two make it through and the dropships
had to go evasive to avoid it. They were smaller and more maneuverable, but
even with their armor and shielding they couldn’t stand up to much pounding
from a cruiser. That danger wasn’t deterring the flow of supplies and
personnel, though the lizards had made much more of a fuss about it yesterday,
the debris from which was still visible in orbit.

The monitors in the passenger area showed the RTL as a
wall of green metal at first, slowly expanding to encompass the curves of the
giant sphere. The damage on the surface was obvious, with huge chunks having
been torn out by ship impacts. Jasmine knew that repairing such damage would
take years, and as long as they were in this system the wounds would simply be
patched over and contained while all available materials were being sent down
to the construction site that she had been assigned to along with a host of
other Canderian techs.

All of them were also trained soldiers, but they
wouldn’t be needed in that role in the coming days. Still, it felt comforting
to know that she would be working with other Canderians and not just the
Mainline
techs. They had some combat training in their
maturias, but it wasn’t anything compared to what Canderians had to endure.
Jasmine was a solider, but one who had chosen to focus on tech duties in order
to fight the enemy by other means…means that were being relied upon heavily
here to gain Star Force the true foothold it needed to conquer this system.

Her pantheon zipped down from their fairly high
orbital position to the airless planet’s surface where some 18 Mainline drones
were sitting on the rocky ground acting as temporary defense batteries around
the construction site, which on the surface stretched about 2 miles in
diameter, but she knew it was much more sizeable underneath where there was
already well over 50,000 crew working on harvesting resources from the planet,
as well as to construct the makeshift colony that was centered around the
planetary defense battery that was still under construction.

When the pantheon got to ground it floated down into a
rocky, rectangular hole until a lateral bay became visible with two other
Canderian dropships coming back out. They gently passed each other by as more
came down behind Jasmine’s ride, then hers set down on a crowded deck and the
passengers jogged out much like they had coming in, saving a few seconds here
and there that would amount to a full round trip eventually. A little prudence
now could have an effect down the line, and all Canderians had been taught from
birth not to waste time or resources, for both could be critical in combat and
survival operations.

She hadn’t brought any gear with her, not even a
datapad, but everything she needed to work was already on station, sent ahead
by other Canderians, and Jasmine immediately joined the work crews that were
helping the
Mainline
techs construct the massive
weapon. It was housed well below ground with the corovon-laced armored doors
being the first items that were constructed. Those covered what would be the
surface of the battery, though even they were encased beneath dozens of meters
of rock so the lizards wouldn’t be able to see what they were building and
strike it before it was completed. Shield generators were already up to protect
the site against kamikaze strikes, but the enemy had more than enough ships to
overwhelm them if they so
chose
.

Anonymity was the defense here, and it was her job to
help get the battery operational before they realized it existed. The
technology was the same as the smaller models within the seda she had been
living the past 52 years on, though it wasn’t her origin. That seda was CT and
located back in Sol, one of the permanent stations that could only be moved
around by cradle, for it didn’t have its own interstellar-capable gravity
drives. It was also a lot smaller than RTL, but it was where she had been born
and gone through her maturia training, hence it was a part of her name and her
memories.

She hadn’t helped build RTL, but she had assisted in
the maintenance of the Keema batteries and was familiar enough with the tech to
be assigned to one of the teams working directly on it while most of the others
were going to the mining or construction sites that were expanding on the war
colony. Living space was nil, with the Canderians having to be shuttled back up
to the seda after a few days of long hours and brief naps to recharge and
refuel. Other than bottles of water and snack rations, Jasmine was going to
have to make do with her current energy reserves, for until ample living
quarters could be established they were all going to be migrating to and from
the sedas on a regular basis along with the supplies, for there was almost no
industry present down here either…at least not compared to what they now had in
orbit.

Already the amount of raw produce coming back down
from the seda had exponentially increased the construction rate of the battery,
and the more raw materials that could be harvested from this planet and others
throughout the system would only snowball it further. The sedas were the
Canderians’ homes, and with them came everything they needed to survive and
flourish in the harshness of space, including the industry to produce every bit
of technology that weapons and ships required.

Some duplicate facilities had already been built
underground by the
Mainline
techs prior to their
arrival, but they had little to work with. Jasmine was mildly impressed with
how much they’d been able to build without even an
MCV
-class jumpship to work from, but when she got to the battery
itself her feelings plummeted. There was a massive chamber dug out of the
planet’s bedrock, inside of which there was very little weapon constructed.
There was, however, a flow of Canderians moving about the place in nothing but
their black/green uniforms that appeared to be getting a more robust effort
into motion.

Jasmine had no construction armor either, for there
wasn’t enough for all of them. This chamber was pressurized and heated, but
they all wore a small armband that held an emergency shield generator that
would encapsulate them should the pressure drastically fall off, giving them a
few minutes of life and oxygen recycling during which they could hopefully find
their way to safety…though if a warship came crashing through the armored doors
above she knew there would be little point in that.

The skeleton of the weapon was partially complete, and
she was directed to head to the ever growing barrel to join an all Canderian
crew that was receiving structural segments and attaching them Lego-style into
place and forming what looked like a crane ladder. It would stretch nearly the
full length of the spherical battery when completed, but barely looked like a
stub protruding up from the floor at this point.

When Jasmine got down to there, being flown over on a
small, four-man anti-
grav
sled, she realized that
they were going to be working in natural gravity. The hangar where they’d
landed and the facility they’d walked through had been AG equipped, but in this
chamber there was none, nor an IDF field to give them a 0G environment for
construction. It felt like .3 or under to her legs, and while that would make
lifting things easier than normal, it was going to slow things down. An IDF was
preferable and she wasn’t sure why one hadn’t been built here yet.

Maybe it was also on the work schedule, or maybe they
were prioritizing resources to the battery itself. If that was the case she
could agree, for getting this thing built as soon as possible was key to this
campaign, and if that meant some awkward construction environment then so be
it. She and the other Canderians were up to the task, and she didn’t doubt the
Mainline
crews would be either.

Jasmine climbed off the sled and onto a catwalk
network that had been built up around the growing barrel, found a tool set and
was given a post waiting for another segment to come down on the western side.
A much beefier sled carried it overhead and lowered it into position while more
than a dozen Canderians climbed up onto it and guided it in, setting it into
exact alignment using some calibration brackets while the sled continued to
hoist the majority of the weight.

When she got the word, Jasmine found one of the seams
and began sealing it with an injection filament, which looked like a straw the
length of her arm. She slid it into a hole on the new segment, with it
inserting at an angle that brought it down into the base piece. Once in place
she activated it with another device and the rod melted, with the liquid disappearing
down the hole. Had this been a 0G environment the tool would have pushed it in,
but in this case gravity was helping as the temporarily liquid material
filtered down through smaller and smaller passages and settled into the
microscopic gaps between segments.

The top segment had a hole in the base that the plug
on the bottom fit into, and that would hold the majority of the sheering
stresses, but this
Syfonate
would allow the minor
positioning that the size differential from plug and socket allowed. With
everything in place she used her datapad and sensor to confirm adequate levels
across all bonding points, then realized she needed to insert another half rod.

That was odd, so she did another scan and realized
that the segments were cut wrong. The plug was too small by a fraction, then
she realized it was probably due to an unanticipated difference between
Canderian and Mainline molds. The new piece was probably one of the first built
by the sedas over the past day and a half, with the one she was standing above
having been built on site by the makeshift factories.

But it would still work. She inserted another rod and
used a different tool to cut it off before liquefying it. She had to add a
touch more before getting full saturation, then Jasmine inserted a prompt into
the hole that made contact with the liquid there. She hit a button and sent a
triggering burst of energy that traveled the length of all the liquid filaments
that she had inserted, initiating a 6 second solidifying process that firmly
bonded the two frame segments together.

Another scan confirmed it, then she waited in place a
few minutes until another segment was brought down and she got the base of it
as well while the other techs were working on the lateral connections. The
barrel was in grid form at the moment, with more holes than casing, but it was
interlocked with secondary structural supports and even smaller tertiaries. By
the time Jasmine got through with the second one she and the other techs had
established a rhythm that kept them motoring through some 36 more segments
until they ran out of parts.

Beefy as the sedas’ industry base was, they could only
produce so many so fast,
so
Jasmine and the others
were shunted to another work project, then another, and another. Each was
building a piece of the mile-wide weapon, some on site while others were being
assembling in nearby caverns only to be moved into the main when they were
finished. Had Jasmine not worked maintenance on the Keema batteries before she
would have been thoroughly lost, but as it was she knew what everything was and
how it had to come together even as it was lying in bits and pieces across a
labyrinth of tunnels and rock-carved chambers that hadn’t even had walls and
framework built into them yet.

This was definitely a makeshift site, but it was an
orderly one that allowed her and the others to get to work immediately and
stick out an 80 hour shift before heading back up to her seda for a 20 hour
rest/training block, then she was shipped back down to work another shift and
would continue to do so indefinitely. Time blurred away and she knew to simply
delve into the work else she’d get distracted. When she returned to the seda
she didn’t check the status of the battles, focusing instead on her needs and
compartmentalizing herself to the task at hand.