Read Online Star Force: Hamoriti (SF62) by Aer-ki Jyr - Free Book Online Page A

ships came down low enough to shoot the minions. They were waiting,
however, until the Hamoriti moved off from those it dropped beneath its mass,
for they couldn’t be targeted well from orbit. Some side shots were possible,
but knowing how many ships would be lost the Trinx were not making any attacks
that they weren’t fairly sure they could pull off in one strike.
    The Hamoriti didn’t stay parked over a single position
to shield them. Instead it kept moving, sinking into the surface periodically
to feed on the rock beneath. The surface soil had been stripped down with multiple
tsunamis, with hillsides having been shaved off and bare rock exposed, for each
time one of the massive blasts leapt out from the creature a cascade of damage
would touch everything around the Hamoriti, but for the ground at least it
appeared to be spread out whereas anything in the atmosphere was literally
vaporized on contact.
    On closer inspection of the surveillance data the Sety
were gathering from afar, it seemed the tsunamis were hemispherical rather than
truly omni -directional. None the less, the sheer
amount of power the Hamoriti had to be generating to affect an area with a
radius in excess of 1000 miles was beyond fathoming. What would occur on one of
the Nexus worlds from such a blast would be nothing short of utter devastation,
even if surface structures ate up and spread out the damage as the topography
here appeared to be doing.
    There had to be a limit to what the Hamoriti was
capable of emitting, and while the original 7’s limitations had been explored
and documented the Oracles had no data on this one. While the Trinx were wrong
in their approach, they had been correct about the need to gather intel , so as long as they were making their strategically
pointless suicide runs there might as well be someone here to document it.
    The Trinx fleet, hundreds of thousands strong, sat in
orbit around a nearby planet and continually fed ships over to the danger zone
as needed, but they didn’t leave them parked nearby just in case the Hamoriti
took flight. It might be slow in terms of starship standards, but two of the
other Hamoriti had pinpoint weapons that were able to reach much farther than
the tsunami. It wasn’t known yet if this one did or not, for its skin/hull
defied inspection, but there was no point in risking the majority of the fleet
by keeping them so close.
    The Sety were here to take the opportunity to strike at
the minions if the Hamoriti left the planet, or to strike at the minions if
they tried to leave the planet. So far they hadn’t been allowed to develop even
close to that level, but if/when the Trinx finally failed to prevent their
growth the Sety were going to diminish their numbers as much as they could
short of sacrificing themselves. They needed to preserve their warfleet, small
as it was here, and had been ordered only to engage when they had the
advantage.
    And to stay the hell away from the Hamoriti no matter
what the circumstances.
    The other members of The Nine were gathering their
fleets in the neighboring systems, not risking to bring them directly here and
relying on the Sety to stay in contact with them. If there was a move by the
Hamoriti or the minions they would respond to it, hopefully heading off any
minion seed ships and getting to the destination systems ahead of them. If the
Hamoriti moved, then they could come in to the present system and see what
damage they could do to the minions here
    But without the Sety or Trinx insystem there was no
way for them to know what was occurring, for they were so twitchy about being
near the beast that they wouldn’t even send a ship to drop a probe in the area.
    Each race of The Nine was comprised of widely varying civilizations,
but all were presently developing plans for evacuating their populations and
heading off far into the galaxy, intent to stay ahead of the Hamoriti spread
rather than to stay and watch their people get annihilated. That was why