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

they
were willing to fight the minion spread, to buy time for evacuation ships to be
built and scouts to be sent out searching for uninhabited worlds to use as
waypoints. Every year they could delay the Hamoriti, the greater the chance of
preserving their populations, but sacrificing their ships as the Trinx were
doing was counterproductive.
    The Sety were not expecting any other fleets to
arrive, so when hundreds of jumpships began braking into the system they did not know what was going on. As soon as they identified
them as Li’vorkrachnika they immediately began to deploy into strike groups to
go after them and kill the meddlesome idiots who’d released the Hamoriti in the
first place.
    Before the Sety warships, each shaped like a globe
with root-like tendrils growing out from it by the dozens, could get into
firing range the handful of Trinx vessels waiting near the star signaled them
to fall back, heading into the enemy fleet themselves and pacing alongside them
as escorts. The Sety fleet commander didn’t know what was going on, then an
explanation came from the Trinx indicating that they had invited them here to
help fight the Hamoriti.
    A short but fiery exchange occurred between both fleet
commanders, for the Li’vorkrachnika were an enemy of the Nexus and the Trinx
themselves had wiped out what was left of their fleet that had awakened the
Hamoriti. Furthermore the Trinx hadn’t informed The Nine of this plan of
theirs, but the Sety eventually decided to just sit back and watch, as they’d
been sent to do, while sending a courier ship out to get to a system within
range of one of the Nexus receivers so it could transmit the news back to Qitor .
    With the Sety successfully backed off, the Trinx ships
escorted the fleet of jumpships to the nearby planet where their own fleet
waited, then the Li’vorkrachnika began undocking their cruisers and spamming
orbit with them. The jumpships then left, heading back to wherever they’d come
from to pick up more cruisers and ferry them here. Those that they left behind
numbered in excess of 10,000, but were all equipped with their primitive plasma
weapons as no upgrade patches were available yet.
    That didn’t matter, for the minion seeds had to be
destroyed. The Li’vorkrachnika fleet commander conferred with the Trinx and was
remarkably agreeable in terms of letting them make strategy. He knew his ships
were going to be sacrificed, and seemed only to care about them being able to
accomplish the task as efficiently as possible. There was no concern for his
crews evident in their conversations, only a focus on accomplishing the
mission…which was something the Trinx responded to well.
    The first attack the Li’vorkrachnika were involved in
came two days later, with the Trinx continuing to carry the burden until then.
At first there was only a single Li’vorkrachnika cruiser sent down to the
planet, and it was allowed to enter the atmosphere and move about. No tsunami
followed, so it crept closer and closer, trying to prompt a reaction, but none
came. Eventually it came to one of the minion seeds that the Hamoriti had moved
on from and came under fire from the seed itself, getting hit and destroyed
within 30 seconds, but not before landing some plasma blasts and one well aimed
streamer onto the target.
    It damaged the growing minion structure, lightly, but
it was enough for the fleet commanders to analyze to determine how many ships
would be needed.
    Next they sent in 8 cruisers, again not drawing a
tsunami from the Hamoriti that was some 200 miles off. They attacked the seed
and badly damaged it before 4 of the ships were destroyed, then inexplicable
the other four turned and began firing on each other. It took a while for the
Li’vorkrachnika ships to kill themselves, for the minion seed stopped firing as
they did so, returning its internal energy to healing and growth as the
remaining enemy ships no longer were shooting at it.
    That put this Hamoriti’s psionic