Read Star Force: Nexus (SF57) for Free Online

useless with pinpoint
fire.
    Liam kept his chess pieces moving, waiting for the
right moment in several locations, then when it looked like the lizards had
them outnumbered with far too much plasma pouring into his ships for them to
sustain much longer, a few specialized drones that hadn’t been contributing
much firepower to the fight opened up armor panels, revealing concealed storage
compartments while the rest of the nearby Star Force drones pulled back in
close to the support ships, which created large shield walls in front of them
that began soaking up plasma…but that wasn’t their purpose here.
    The shield ships put everything they had into the
walls, dropping the rest of their shields and leaving themselves vulnerable to
flanking shots which the other drones tried to block as the specialized ships
spewed forth a swarm of tiny, self-guiding objects out through the gaps between
the shield walls as they too ducked behind any nearby.
    The seekers were each the size of a small dropship,
but as they flew out towards the closely packed lizard fleet they split up into
smaller pieces, each moving out on their own trajectories but linked together
by a remote timer. Liam held the detonation trigger himself, assuming priority
control and detonating each cluster when it got into prime position. Over the
course of the next 30 seconds the space surrounding the turtled up little
cluster of drones became a fireworks display of explosives that put the old
style nukes to shame in an area of effect attack that resulted in a lot of
damaged ships.
    Suddenly the overwhelming enemy numbers switched over
to being targets of opportunity, with the support ships pulling their remaining
shield energy back into defending themselves while the drones shot out on one
final attack run before retreating, hammering the wounded cruisers and making a
lot of easy kills in the face of the incoming reinforcements that were going to
be minutes too late to the party.
    Just as Liam issued the recall order to one drone
fleet he got a ping on his battlemap, alerting him to something he had not
expected to happen. The Gfatt warship, sitting high up in orbit and observing
the battle, had just jumped into low orbit and was headed towards one of the
lizards’ massive Atlas -class battle
stations.

 
 
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    The hourglass-shaped warship moved in towards the
lizard station, being barely a tenth of its size and only half the mass of one
of the Star Force jumpships, with its flat top pointed towards the incoming
plasma storm. No other ships were in the area, with the battle station being
left unguarded as the fleets chased the Star Force ships, and it looked like
the single, oddly shaped warship wasn’t going to stand a chance on its own but
once it got within short weapons range it flipped over, exposing the narrow
band around the center that held most of its weaponry, and unleashed hell at
nearly pointblank range.
    Multiple points of light appeared around the
midsection of the Gfatt ship, then they leapt out in series at the lizard
shields in squirt gun fashion, showing that whatever the weaponsfire was it was
partially matter but not plasma. The warship flashed six different attacks
every .68 seconds, creating a rapid fire torrent that built up on the stations’
shields, sapping them of strength and quickly breaching as the Gfatt hourglass
was likewise covered in plasma hits.
    Liam watched off and on, still leading his own
battles, but it wasn’t long until the lizard battle station was showing heavy
damage with scores of ships heading to reinforce and, fortuitously, drawing
them away from his fleet. He did a quick mental check, not seeing any advantages
to exploit, and continued the fighting withdrawal as he watched to see how much
damage the Gfatt would do. He hadn’t expected them to fight at all, but
suddenly now they were and he wondered why.
    The slugging match wasn’t over quickly, and Liam had
to keep turning his attention elsewhere as he