Star Force: Shame (SF59) by Aer-ki Jyr Page A

other races were likewise as stretched, and he
wasn’t automatically assuming so, then they wouldn’t have the numbers to hit
the lizards on as many fronts as needed, and to be truthful the H’bat’i and
some of the other races they had fought against were clearly higher level than
the lizards, if not so widespread. It was a bit shocking at seeing the power
gap, but Roger was soaking it all in and getting up to speed with the ‘big
dogs,’ though they still didn’t fare well in comparison to the V’kit’no’sat.
    That said, if the two ever went head to head it
wouldn’t be a total slaughter on the part of the dinos .
    With no obvious mechanism detected for messing with
the Dsevmat weapons Roger dug into the construction and function of them with
his analysis assistants, learning that all Dsevmat weaponry was based off of
Ketara energy. The trailblazer played dumb, letting the snakes inform him of
what it was and how it worked, but he already knew from the pyramid database
that it was a cloying field that, rather than breaking the bonds of molecules
created new ones with a rabid appetite.
    That meant that a burst of Ketara energy hitting the
hull of a warship would effectively condense whatever material it hit like a
mini black hole, forming a crater with a condensed nub of matter in it. That
meant whenever the Dsevmat attacked something there would be no explosions,
which made for odd battle holos because Roger was
used to at least a shrapnel spray, but these weapons were very tidy and oh so
nasty.
    They had several versions from orbs, to beams, to
streamers and even some net-like fields they’d throw against a target. All were
Ketara-based and worked decently well against energy shields as well, enough so
that the Dsevmat had decided to go all-in on the tech and really refine it to
potent status. That said, Roger knew the V’kit’no’sat didn’t use the energy
because it had a glaring weakness, not to mention it was weaker than their
other available weapons. With a special shield modification the energy could be
completely neutralized to the point where virtually no amount of weaponsfire
could penetrate it, similar to trying to shoot fish in a barrel with a flame
thrower.
    That type of shield matrix was well above Star Force’s
head at the moment, and Roger got the feeling like the Dsevmat didn’t know
there was a counter for the technology, which meant that probably no one else
in the Nexus or the region they dominated did either.
    That counter hadn’t been in play here, for the H’bat’i
shields weren’t anywhere near as sophisticated…but they were extremely thick,
with more emphasis going into the shields than the hull armor, which was a
favorable place to stand when going against the Ketara weaponry, for like a
Ta’lin’yi they really racked up the damage when they hit solid matter.
    That said, they were almost useless in atmosphere
because they’d hit and cause the air molecules to fuse together into solid
particles that became pebbles or dust depending on density of the environment.
That was going to be an issue during the ground invasion but the Dsevmat never
made it that far. They’d been routed in orbit and never even had a chance to call
in their troop transports waiting outside the system, which had fortunately
spared them from destruction.
    As it turned out in a thorough examination of how the
Dsevmat military was constructed, they used an almost exclusively drone army
system given their lack of limbs. Control snakes would be inserted into the
combat zones and would then run operations remotely from outposts or large
command centers. They didn’t operate them from orbit, which Roger felt was more
tradition than function, but they had multiple variations of mechs and
infantry, some which he’d never seen before.
    It was side quests like that where Roger was trying to
dig up more information, for the Dsevmat were quite correct in their initial
analysis…there was no viable explanation