by Aer-ki Jyr
1
February 17, 2826
Trium System (lizard territory)
Nefti
Krimja Hakti reclined on a small bench with his numerous appendages draped over the sides as he studied the tactical displays that detailed the progress of the orbital bombardment of the lizard world. The Bsidd monitored all 17 ships involved in the attack, seeing them firing their clear Keema beams down at the distant planet’s surface while numerous phaser beams were fired back towards the drones, though their range limits were passed and the enemy beams were losing coherency, meaning they did considerably less damage than normal.
But the shields on Krimja’s drones were still dropping, not that fast, but with the amount of time it was taking to punch through a lizard shield plate there was no way one drone could sustain that much cumulative damage. That meant standard rotational patterns had to be employed with the Bsidd remote pilots cycling the drones in and out to maintain a constant rate of fire while not losing any of their ships.
The Bsidd Admiral preferred to be on the bridge as much as possible during the assault, but they’d already been at it 2 days now and had only destroyed a handful of colonies. The planet had hundreds of large scale cities and thousands of smaller settlements covering its surface, but the more they could take out from orbit the better to not expose their ground troops to any unnecessary fighting…the downside was these orbital assaults took forever because there were only so many drones equipped with Keema strong enough to outdistance the lizard planetary defense phasers, with the rest of the drones and even the jumpships sitting back and waiting patiently while a handful of Star Force ships ate away at the lizards with impunity so long as they kept the shield rotation strategy employed.
But this is what had to be done. No longer were they assaulting expansion colonies, but worlds that the lizards had been on for a very long time and developed in depth. That meant heavier defenses, and aside from the newer planetary defense guns there was a whole lot of nasty stuff on the ground should they need to invade and take out the rest of the cities the hard way. Krimja’s troops could do it, he knew, but only if they had to. The lizards had to be purged from this world, but it wasn’t worth a single limb off of one of their ground troops to get in a rush. They had time and would use it, while the lizards had to sit and wait while their civilization on Nefti was taken apart piece by painstaking piece and made all the longer due to their continual shield upgrades. They weren’t enough to stop Star Force’s weapons from eventually breaching and destroying the emitters beneath, but with every new model employed it took them longer to do so.
Krimja expected this orbital assault to last months at the minimum, but he still wanted to be overseeing as much of it as he could just in case something went wrong, and with the deviousness of the lizards that was always in play no matter how controlled a situation looked.
On the status boards before him the Alpha watched the firing status of the Battlecruiser-class drones. The Keema built into them could be fired indefinitely so long as power was available, unlike plasma weapons that required a matter component in each charge, and these drones had been doing so non-stop save for swap outs. Right now there were two additional ones sitting back out of range recharging their shields while the 17 currently engaged were hammering away at one colony in particular with individual batteries, for each battlecruiser could only hold 1 Keema.
That was because the range needed had required a massive battery to be built, and even it was too large to fit on the heavy cruisers. A new, larger class of drone had to be created, with adjustments made to the carrier jumpships in order to fit them inside the hold for they were longer than it was deep. These had been carried horizontally rather than vertically, then stacked over the top of with additional drones. Each battlecruiser was 3 times the size of a heavy cruiser, making them almost too big to be classified as drones, but fortunately the size of jumpships they were using nowadays allowed for them to be fit inside regardless.
Krimja saw each of the batteries charging and discharging as expected, knowing that these few weapons were the only way to take this world without excessive loss of machinery through a typical orbital assault, blasting away with a large drone fleet and in return losing many ships to create a hole in the planetary defense grid. They’d then take out the cities via a ground campaign and remove this infestation the hard way, as they’d done many times before, but these handful of battlecruisers were allowing them another route to victory and that made Krimja want to keep an eye on them constantly, even if there was no obvious concern.
With his main two legs straddling the bench, Krimja used his other appendages to manipulate the control boards as needed, though most of what he was doing now was just oversight and that required watching rather than acting. He was an Alpha-variant Bsidd, which meant he was their ‘standard’ variety and stood just a little shorter than a Calavari. His musculature was average and his appendages numbered only 14. Most of the naval division was comprised of Epsilon and Theta variants, with him being one of a small minority of Alphas to rise through the ranks of the smaller Bsidd to become one of the 378 Admirals in the current fleet.
Bsidd population was managed by the Humans, with them determining how many of each variant to hatch per year, and Alphas were low in number. Most of them found their way into niches dominated by other variants with none to call their own. That didn’t matter to Krimja because Star Force was designed around the individual rather than groups and allowed him to go wherever he could earn his way. A lot of Alphas went straight civilian, but he’d wanted naval because the war against the lizards was largely being fought on that front…and if they ever lost their advantage there it would doom Star Force into turtling up and holding onto the systems they already had.
That would be a win for the lizards, with their only hope at defeating them coming through conquest of those systems they already possessed. The Bsidd and their Star Force allies were busy cutting out a whole new region of territory for their empire and they were doing it strictly out of lizard systems that the old Alliance wouldn’t have dared to touch. That’s why the density of the targets was increasing, along with their difficulty to take, but with each victory came another world, another system for Star Force…and with the Bsidd able to reproduce so quickly, so long as they had sufficient material resources they were populating a lot of those worlds themselves while acting as caretakers and watching over the empty ones.
The Bsidd Region was quickly going to outgrow the ADZ itself, but they were still a long way from the lizard core systems that had an equally impressive number of conquered systems on the far side. Lizard territory was huge, and that wasn’t even counting all their conquests from the Skarron empire and everything coreward of Star Force. Krimja knew the key to victory lay in taking it one invasion at a time and denying the enemy their prizes while Star Force grew ever stronger, with the Bsidd taking a greater and greater share of the workload with their surging population.
Krimja took pride in that, but knew that the Humans were the key to it all. They were the ones who had rescued the Bsidd and gave them a place in Star Force, along with many other races, and they were fighting to protect everyone they could. Had it not been for them the ADZ would not have existed and all those who had taken refuge there would have been wiped out or forced further on, trying to stay ahead of the lizard advance for as long as they could.
Unfortunately not everyone in the ADZ felt that way. Krimja wasn’t well connected to the non-Bsidd portions of Star Force territory but all were interconnected through the relay grid with communal information databases and news services, so he had some idea of what was happening elsewhere and had studied the other races with interest, especially those th
at had taken refuge within Star Force’s boundaries without joining them.
A great many of them were ingrates, complaining of this and that but offering no solutions themselves. Almost all of it centered around a lack of control, citing that Star Force and the Humans had too much and the races under their ‘care’ had no say in their own future. Krimja knew that was absurd, for those races hadn’t earned a say. If simply having population numbers gave you authority then the Bsidd would rule everyone else. It didn’t work that way, and the reason the Humans were in control was because they had responsibility for everyone and had seen to it that they not only had sanctuary from the lizards and other threats, but an opportunity within the Star Force economic system to grow and advanced as they were able.
Did the Humans rule? No, they didn’t. They led, with the difference being that they allowed freedom that many of these other races wouldn’t if they held dominance. Star Force set some ground rules, and many people didn’t like those, but beyond that you were free to do what you wanted. No one was entitled to success, only life, for which Star Force provided a comfortable existence. Anything beyond that you had to earn, whether you were an individual or a race.
Some didn’t like that, wanting to be given status and resources that they hadn’t earned simply out of birthright or because they thought that protesting would entail them with appeasement. Both were laughable, and at the end of the day anyone who didn’t like being a guest of Star Force could leave their territory and take their chances elsewhere.
Almost all of them chose to stay, however, so their mindless protests had no real merit. Star Force didn’t censor them, and there was almost constant news coverage of discontent here and there in the non-Star Force races, but those people who had earned their way didn’t care. The whiners would whine and the protesters would protest. If they went beyond speaking their mind and into disrupting traffic or vandalizing they were shut down instantly by security…with more complaints about the militant attitude of Star Force.
Stupid people. The reason why they were alive was because Star Force was militant. People used that word as if it was a negative but here, in orbit of a lizard world that they were in the slow process of retaking, ‘militant’ was a prerequisite. Pacifists held no power, and anyone thinking to negotiate or appease their way out of the lizard threat were fools. You either stood up to them and fought, or you were run over and obliterated.
Unfortunately that attitude wasn’t only present in the lizards, and had Star Force not been so dominant some of the races under their protection might have been doing similar things to others. Some people wanted their way no matter what, whether it was logical, reasonable, or true. They would fight, cheat, con, and kill their way into dominance…then when they lost they cried foul and tried to demean the responsible ones who stopped them.
Krimja was glad that the Bsidd were a Star Force race, for he could see the vast difference between what he grew up in and what else was out there…and he knew it was probably worse outside of Star Force territory. That only went to prove that it wasn’t your race that dictated your behavior and potential, it was mainly your culture. Nobody chose when or where they were born, but those lucky enough to be born into Star Force had a huge advantage over everyone else, for their training programs were so advanced that Krimja couldn’t understand those that had been born outside them. They were everything to him and the others, and as a result the culture within the Star Force races was so much more unified than the others.
And Krimja knew that was because they had each been told the score and earned their way, like he had all the way up to a position of Admiral. That journey of advancement through merit, not appointment or promotion, gave him and the other Bsidd, as well as the other Star Force races, a sense of kindredship above and beyond them being in the same empire.
It was a major advantage that Star Force had, but the lizards likewise had their own unity…and since theirs was accomplished through restrictive means it was far stronger. Not better, but stronger and seemingly without deviation. The lizards fought as one team, sacrificing themselves for their race’s goals no matter how small. They’d die just so their civilization could test a theory, and that bond was not something to underestimate. It was wrong, but it was impressive none the less.
As the bombardment continued Krimja’s comm officer was periodically repeating an offer of surrender to the lizards every hour during times like this and more often than that during heavier action. So far in this assault they hadn’t received a reply back, and in all the other campaigns he’d been a part of had been the same. Surrender wasn’t an option. They would win or die, and they were all of the same mind.
Star Force had people that didn’t agree, wanting to do things differently and often stupidly. Rather than suppress them through various means of control they were left alone, with those like Krimja having to earn their way into the ranks of those that held the power and responsibility. In that way those within his fleet here were just as united as the lizards, leaving the dissenters back in the civilian wings of the empire.
But there was one other factor to consider, for while the lizards rightfully appeared to be superior as far as unity was concerned because they didn’t have a portion of their population that wasn’t in sync with the rest, they had a high turnover rate. Star Force, because it stressed individual advancement, had the luxury of self-sufficiency. That wasn’t something that could be bestowed upon someone, it was something that had to be earned. Those who achieved it outlived those who did not, with the dissenters’ ‘opinion’ amounting to nothing. Reality was not based on opinion or point of view. You were either right or you were wrong, and in the case of self-sufficiency those who were wrong didn’t sustain themselves and died out, leaving larger and larger numbers of responsible people behind.
That was a sad reality, but one that Star Force was built upon. Everything was geared towards the objective rather than the subjective so people could measure and learn the truth. Opinion for the sake of opinion was pointless and worthless. The truth mattered, and anyone who had attained self-sufficiency understood that.
As far as Star Force knew the lizards did not attain self-sufficiency. Little was known about their inner society, but their computer systems had been hacked enough times to gain some knowledge of how they operated and there was no mention of self-sufficiency or its equivalent. Strength seemed to be based off of natural attributes and the only training they did was to maintain their abilities rather than enhance them.
Of course when you spent personnel so freely the idea of trying to extend your life was somewhat counterproductive. Theirs was a civilization that grew the society rather than the individual, whereas Star Force was a civilization that upgraded the individual in order to expand their society…and therein lay the conflict between the two in a nutshell. The lizards would attack without concern about losses, but Star Force wouldn’t allow so much as one death if they could prevent it, for the longer their troops lived the stronger they would get, meaning it was better to let go an immediate objective in order to play for future gains.
Star Force didn’t like losing, but knew that the death of a soldier was its own defeat and that trading one life for another was insanity. Star Force fought for everyone and sacrificed no one. That more than anything gave them a type of unity that the lizards would never have, and coming from a race that reproduced just as fast, Krimja was very fortunate that the Bsidd had found their way into Star Force rather than taking on the expendable philosophy that would have probably seen him dead long ago.
One of his status boards pinged with a visual marker as a new ship entered the system. It was one of theirs, a jumpship that had been on scouting duty further into lizard territory ahead of their invasion corridor. It was cycling back to rejoin the fleet and report, though it was odd that it was coming here rather than to a world on the grid so the info could be sent out immediately.
Krimja got his answer a few minutes later when a message from the ship c
rossed his console. It wasn’t directed to him specifically, but to the invasion fleet. He was in command at the moment so he read it, seeing the reason for the scout ship’s diversion. One of the systems they’d been sent to explore was not lizard territory…at least not yet, for it seemed there was a race there that had not yet succumbed to their attacks.
2
Krimja tapped three of his appendages together in a cyclical pattern making rhythmic noise as he read. This unidentified race was occupying a major system that contained 18 habitable planetoids. It appeared that six of them had already fallen under lizard control and there was a fight still progressing over the remainder. The natives still had a naval fleet in play with a number of large defense platforms ringing the worlds they possessed, though one of them was right now under assault…or rather was when this scouting report had been made.
The Admiral looked through the recordings, seeing that the natives were using a form of mauler point defense system. It wasn’t the telltale blue that Star Force was used to, but the sensor readings confirmed it was a derivative and the long range beam weapons were a spot on match for sammies, which made sense given that they were somewhat linked to the maulers, physics wise. That meant this race had tech still superior to the lizards, for while their phasers were considerably more advanced than plasma they didn’t pack the punch of the weapons they were squaring off with, though it did appear that the native’s versions were less potent than what Star Force used.
Krimja pulled up the few recordings taken of the fighting, seeing the distinctive yellow/tan cruisers of the lizards en mass assaulting a native station that was black as obsidian save for the weaponsfire. It was a mess of curves, more artistically designed than functional, but it was putting up one hell of a fight and it looked like the natives had at least 300 of the stations in orbit around this planet to supplement their defense fleet. Those vessels were angled blades, each at what looked to be just over a 90 degree bend forming stemless arrows. Rather than obsidian those warships were the stark opposite, looking like pale white stone and showing up easily to the eye even without their weaponsfire.
