Free Star Force: Initiation (SF61) by Aer-ki Jyr Page B

amongst the flood and dropping lizard bodies
everywhere, now almost exclusively through hand to hand combat.
    A few more shots and Niken was out of ammo as well,
but knowing that they only had to kill a few thousand more he pulled up a rare
command in his HUD and triggered his armor rack to release from his back. He
caught it in his right hand as it slid off and whipped it around in front of
him, reattaching the dead pistol next to his other depleted weapons and
grabbing the two short cylinders off it that he carried for good measure.
    Dropping the weapon rack into a bush he carried a
cylinder in each hand and ran on, now lighter and more agile than before but
with a silver-armored body that was showing numerous melted spots from plasma
damage. His shields took another hit as the lizards saw and focused their fire
on him, and Niken knew that as long as they did so his troops would have a
little more breathing room to work with.
    The Archon ran towards the thickest group of the
lizards as they continued to run forward in tightly packed lines through the
trees, bottling up near the Bsidd as their forwardmost infantry were cut down by plasma rods or knocked through the air by physical
blows. Some of the Bsidd were picking up the enemies as they shot into their
armor and hurling them like rocks back towards the others and bowling them
over, for without their rifles they were having trouble keeping the lizards
from grouping up in too large of numbers and pumping plasma into their already
beaten and often broken armor, with many of the Bsidd visually bleeding out
through burn marks.
    Niken jumped as high as he could after pushing his way
through the scattering of lizards in the front, then did a half flip in the air
that brought his feet around over his head and into a lateral battering ram
that smashed one of the lizards back into the others as the Archon fell to the
ground amongst them, opening a small space for him to stand up in. As he did
the cylinders extended out with a button press and formed two stun swords, one
in each hand, that he whipped around before they were
even charged and knocked several lizards in their small heads.
    The next few started dropping to the ground with even
small hits as the Archon ran through the horde. He knew they weren’t dead, and
while he could pick up the lizard plasma rifles and use them against their
makers the Bsidd couldn’t for their lack of fingers. They were the kill power
and he needed to be the distraction…and right now he could take more lizards
out of the fight with a stun sword than he could with one of their rifles, for
even the slightest brush of the blade at full power would knock one out, even
if he only caught them in the wrist.
    Niken began downing them at 5 or 6 times the firing
rate of one of their rifles on one side, but with two swords he was mowing them
down on both wings as he ran, cutting a huge swath out of the horde and drawing a lot of attention his way, causing some
of the lizards up front who weren’t totally engaged to turn back and throw
their plasma fire at him when they could, though they were having trouble doing
so without shooting each other.
    Enough lizards were close enough to get off at least
one shot before he poked or whacked them unconscious, with his shields going
down not long after he jumped into the fray. Though he didn’t have time to
notice, a group of Bsidd followed him in through the path of unconscious
bodies, jumping into those around them and letting others trailing them poke
and jab most of the unconscious ones with their plasma rods as they passed over
them.
    Before he knew it Jayce was in front of him, having
beaten his way through from the other side and signaled to him with a simple
telepathic touch. Niken retracted his left stun sword into its hilt and tossed
it to the other acolyte, whom he saw had been reduced to using a lizard rifle.
Jayce fired one more pointblank shot into a lizard’s chest, then he caught the
sword out of