Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) by Lee Guo Page A

around Meerlat
    Dictator Room…
     
    “Yes, Subjugator. I am gracious for you granting me control of our orbital guns. Our warriors are descending now!” Terrestrial Commander Sha-Vas lifted his paws from his black plated chest and bowed his gigantic armored body to the image of Fleet Commander Hal-Dorat.
    When Hal-Dorat’s holoimage vanished, Sha-Vas returned his concentration to his interface globe and stared at the hologram of the planet beneath. To his temporary surprise, the ground Pra had launched missiles and other projectiles at his descending ground forces.
    Immediately, he analyzed the sensor data about the Pra’s counter-fire...and laughed.
    The missiles weren’t even gravity propelled! He knew for a fact that the Pra still used gravity as the primitive propulsion method to move their space vessels and space-born missiles, but apparently they haven’t even solved the atmospheric problem that prevented gravitic propulsion—primitive as it was—from being used within a gaseous environment. Thus, the Pra’s missiles, all 15,000 of them, were still chemically propelled. Chemically.
    Really, what type of barbaric civilization was he facing?
    These missiles were small, too. Much smaller than their space-born missiles, and Sha-Vas wondered what types of warheads they contained. He probed deeper and saw that they were armed with standard fusion warheads. Good, at least this civilization hadn’t solved the size-constraint problem that prevented tiny vessels from being able to carry antimatter.
    “All landing craft, fire M-D flak as soon as possible,” Sha-Vas ordered. “Take out those missiles.”
    “Yes, Sturka!” replies came from his seven leading subordinates.
    Eyeing the hologlobe, he watched as the Pra’s missiles rose through the planet’s atmosphere. At the same time, the first beams from the planet’s primitive laser cannons smashed into the shields of his landing craft. He saw the shields on his ships take the blow at full force, bending the beams of electromagnetism so that their impact on their hulls was much less damaging. Sha-Vas nodded with approval. His landing craft took the blow of the diffracted lasers, which only corroded their armor, but nothing else. Then he ordered, “All orbital vessels, fire kinetic rounds at the origin of their lasers and missiles.”
    The acknowledgments came eagerly.
    All fifty of the orbital ships of his superior’s fleet opened fire with their kinetic slugs on the ground below.
     
    Planetary Defense Command, Meerlat
    Operation Room…
     
    “They’re firing on our missile and turret platforms!” the young lieutenant announced.
    Streit nodded, fully expecting such an event. What he had not expected was that the enemy, those aliens, could deploy grav-shielding technology within a gaseous atmosphere. Human technology so far could not find a way to create stable gravitons within an atmosphere, but somehow the aliens circumvented this blockage. As a result, his laser beams did minor damage to the enemy’s landing pods. Then after the enemy’s kinetic orbital rounds slammed into his ground based laser turrets, those laser beams never will.
    Now, it was up to his missiles to hit the enemy’s landing craft and perhaps take a few of them out.
    As the minutes passed, Streit watched calmly as two things happened: one, the enemy’s kinetic-kill slugs slammed into every surface gun and missile position, destroying all of the human-made equipment into gigantic fireballs. And two, many of his missiles were neutralized by what appeared to be alien flak that seemed to disrupt space-time in dazzling cascades of god-knows-what.
    At least those laser turrets were automated, Streit sighed. As for his ground based missile pods, he was glad at least that all his missiles had already been fired.
    He eyed his subordinates as they cried frantically in the theater like command center. Humans were losing, of course. They were losing even before the battle happened. The tense