Free Star Force: Bloodlust (SF54) by Aer-ki Jyr Page B

squishy ground she didn’t injure herself.
    Rolling onto her feet she got up into a run as the
nearest exterior entrance opened up and Hobbits flooded out into the forest
chasing after her. She got four steps into her run before a geyser of dirt and
steam blew up in front of her as a plasma blast from a strafing fighter burst
through the canopy and hit two meters away.
    The trailblazer jerked and juked but kept running,
knowing her speed was her best defense as she put distance between herself and
the outpost, but heading in a zigzag around the perimeter rather than running a
straight line away that the enemy could anticipate and follow with or without
seeing her. She didn’t know how well the sensors on the fighters would
penetrate the foliage, but if she could lose them then she was going to do her
best to do so…and if not she was going to make herself as hard a target to hit
as possible.
    She knew she could outrun their infantry, so long as
they didn’t have any outside the perimeter already to collapse back down on
her. It was the fighters that were the problem, and given the little
demonstration she’d just made of her combat prowess the Skarrons knew she was a
high value target and they weren’t just going to let her slip away.
    Morgan pressed hard, covering 4 kilometers in just under 10 minutes but unable to lose their fighters that were
stitching the forest around her with plasma. However they were tracking her it
wasn’t precise, for they were missing most of the time but every now and then
she’d get a wash of plasma that would take her shields down and melt a touch of
armor. Fortunately the material had corovon flakes in it that resisted the high
heat well, leaving her with the ability to take several direct hits, but while
her shields would regenerate her armor would not, leaving every nick the
Skarrons made a permanent victory for them.
    Eventually she came to a break in the canopy and had
to turn to her right, running along the side of a lazy river to avoid direct
visual contact with the fighters. Wondering where she was going to go next as
another plume of fiery foliage burst out in a spherical ‘pop’ to her right, she
made a rash decision and veered left, jumping into the river and submerging
herself as far as she could, down about two meters and digging her hands into
the silt on the bottom to pull herself down the rest of the way.
    The filter on her helmet locked up, keeping the water
out and engaging her backup oxygen supply. It wouldn’t last long, but she
should have a few minutes without holding her breath and the water would block
the plasma. Question was , could they track her under
water?
    Not staying in place so their infantry could get to
her last known position, Morgan pulled herself upstream against the light
current, clawing her way across the riverbed and glad that it was muddy water.
She could see where she was going thanks to the battlemap sensors that gave her
a crude proximity map, but she one upped that and clicked on her Pefbar,
getting a much more detailed visual. Once she got about 20 meters upstream a
cascade of plasma came down where she had been, churning up the river and
tracking up and down it…both ways.
    One of the fat fighters came to a hover over the
river, close enough for Morgan to make Ikrid contact though she resisted the
urge to bring it down. She hacked into the pilot’s mind and observed what it
was seeing, and with a bit of translation work got the feeling that they were tracking
her shields.
    That was odd, because to date they’d never shown an
ability to do that. When she’d hit the water she’d turned them off so they
didn’t waste power against the physical pressure. Pulling herself further
upstream she got some more distance as the fighter began moving along the
narrow riverbank, with the foliage on either side only a meter or two away from
the craft as it moved downstream searching while others zipped by overhead.
    Keeping her shields in standby