Star Force: Resistance (SF75) Read Online Free Page B

then
flanked it, loosing their slugs at the lizard cities
without the ability to aim properly given the distance, though hitting their
miles-wide shield plates wasn’t going to be an issue.
    When the first few fell to ground the anti-air
batteries hit them, but couldn’t stop them. Slightly deformed from the light
strikes they rammed into the flat shield discs over top the cities and began
draining them of power…but at a rate far too low to be effective on a
planet-wide assault, else the invasion force would have come equipped with far
more. Lizard shields had upgraded to the degree where physical impact didn’t
drain them as much as it once had, ironically giving them more of a defense
again the kamikaze attacks they themselves employed regularly.
    The railgun slugs were basically that, though on a much
smaller scale. The anti-orbital batteries couldn’t track and hit them, given
the speed at which they were falling, otherwise they never would have made it
to ground. After a couple minutes of bombardment the command ship joined in,
save for the fact that it didn’t have any rail guns.
    What it fired down towards the planet were much larger
objects, but at the same insane speeds. Essentially large asteroids, these
slugs would do considerably more damage when they hit…but they weren’t aimed at
the cities, rather a stretch of uninhabited land in between where they came
crashing down with huge craters being carved out from the impacts and the
resulting dust clouds filling the air even as a rainstorm was wetting the
ground.
    All together the command ship sent down 134 objects, with
the drones’ railgun bombardment continuing a few minutes more before cancelling
the attack well prior to the massive shields being penetrated. The ship and its
escorts retreated back up to its holding orbit, with the anti-orbital guns ceasing
their likewise ineffective attack, leaving all quiet for the moment at the attack
sites while the ground battles continued to occur in 5 locations to the east.
    Where the dust cloud was being chewed into by the
rain, what remained of the asteroids were shielded from lizard view being
located at the base of the newly formed craters. The giant ‘rocks’ had held
together fairly well, with the exterior having been deformed by the impact,
though the shields protecting it had done well to soften the blow before they
breached and the material took the rest of the hit. But inside those
house-sized rocks were hollow pockets with IDF protecting the contents. So long
as the shells didn’t breach or the fields overload, the Spark -class drones inside didn’t feel a thing in the crashes, soon
coming online when the cases were explosively released opening up the contents
to the falling rain.
    With controllers in orbit handling them, the little
anti- grav spheres lifted up out of their protective
cocoons having bypassed the planetary defenses and were now located behind
enemy lines a bit. Each of the 134 craters were spaced out so none ran the risk
of hitting each other on impact for they were totally unguided on reentry, so
each of the little groups of sparks began to flow out of the craters like a
line of ants heading towards mutual rendezvous points where they would form up
into 6 different columns, traveling overland rapidly towards the flank of the
lizard armies that were continuing to push Star Force’s troops backwards.
    But these sparks weren’t headed for the main battle,
rather they were headed for the lines of reinforcements feeding them, intent on
ambushing those overland convoys for while a lot were being moved in vehicles
there were so many lizard infantry units in play that they were approaching on
foot from the nearest cities. Those were exposed while the bulk of the wisp
swarms were well ahead playing tag with the Star Force anti-air defenses.
    Whether they stayed there or redeployed to counter the
sparks wasn’t an issue. Getting those units into the field at the position they
did was key,