by Aer-ki Jyr
As usual the lizards had numbers on the defenders but the natives were sticking it to them, and given the location of this system they had to have been doing so for centuries. If all they’d lost in that time were a handful of planets then they were holding out better against the lizards than anyone had save for Star Force. Then again, if they’d been holding out all this time and the phaser upgrades had tipped the balance of power this race may have been looking at a losing curve, but still they were so well fortified that it was going to take the lizards a great deal of time to conquer them.
Krimja looked over their numbers, seeing a considerable fleet but with no major chess pieces. Was that because this location wasn’t important enough to warrant them or because these natives had a way of getting to them? He would have loved to have a full history of this war to study, for to date no one else had fought them, conceivably, this long and survived. The H’kar were the closest, but they’d gotten their asses kicked and their empire conquered before running to eventual sanctuary with The Nexus. These natives were an entirely different matter, especially because this appeared to be a single system civilization.
Then again that could just be an assumption. The surrounding systems were all lizard or unoccupied according to the scouting reports, but not all empires kept to adjacent systems. This race may have dozens of systems scattered throughout lizard territory or just this one…and all this time they thought that the mass of lizard-occupied space was completely dominated by them. Krimja wondered if this was just an anomaly or if there were other holdouts out there that weren’t bowing to the lizard fleets, having been swallowed up by their empire as it expanded around them, but refusing to be conquered themselves.
This one was fighting hard, but as far as the ground war was concerned he didn’t have any data. The scout ships had stayed too far away to get anything useful, but there were position plots on the contested planets and the lizard occupied ones indicating weaponsfire. From the look of it the lizards hadn’t been able to fully pacify their conquests in the system, leaving them still in contention, or perhaps rebellion. It was impossible to know from these records, but there was fighting still going on in a big enough way for spacebound craft to recognize and from the yields being measured there was an enormous amount of carnage taking place in there.
As he continued to pour through the records he did find several instances of starfighters being used, something that Star Force strictly banned. Even the lizards didn’t use them, though not for the same reasons. Star Force didn’t risk personnel needlessly, and in space combat starfighters were easy targets. The lizards used their cruisers as their naval backbone, reserving their wisps for atmospheric combat where they would be effective, but this race was using the fighters in space combat and apparently doing well for it. There were losses noted in the records, but whatever type of craft they were using was showing to be effective against the lizard cruisers.
“Busy morning?” a voice asked from behind him.
Krimja half turned around on his bench, with virtually every appendage he had bending in response to the surprise presence behind him. “You are far too quiet when moving.”
“I only have 4 limbs to worry about,” Mike-448 said as he walked up beside the Admiral and noticed some of the battle recordings he had displayed. “What’s this?”
“A scout ship dropped this data packet off two hours ago, I was just reviewing the contents.”
“Where is this?”
Krimja poked and prodded several different control buttons designed for his fingerless physiology and brought up a starmap showing the system in question only 39 lightyears from their current position.
“Who’s winning?”
“The natives still hold the majority of the system, but if they’re fighting now then that probably means they’ve been winning for a long time.”
“Send it to my console,” the mage said as he walked over to his commander’s chair and sat down with a plethora of data being shunted over to him as the all Bsidd crew continued to go about their tasks with shipboard operations and the planetary assault. In fact, Mike was the only Human onboard the ship that had been designed specifically for Bsidd physiology, but there was enough redundancy to accommodate all the Star Force races if necessary and he had a set of quarters designed for Human use along with a few spares in case any others came onboard.
All together there were 51 Archons in this invasion fleet and two Calavari, the latter of which were squadron commanders in the aerial division. The rest of the 569,000 troops were Bsidd, as were all of the jumpships and drones in the fleet. Any operation of this size and importance called for the leadership of Archons, but unlike a lot of other joint operations this one was entirely on the back of the Bsidd.
That went for every piece of equipment in the fleet aside from the Archon’s and Calavari’s armor, which they naturally brought with them. Everything else had been Bsidd designed and produced, though the jumpships were all standard models with slightly modified interiors. The drones were not the standard blocks that Mainline used, nor the spear-like designs the Calavari fielded, but rather thick discs that stacked on top of one another in cylindrical tubes within the jumpship. They were built of the same tech as the other models, but the Bsidd preferred the curves versus the angular lines of the blocks.
The blocks were stackable for maximum volume consumption, whereas the discs would always leave space in between the tubes due to those curves, but support apparatus was required for all drone models and the Bsidd had incorporated that into the gaps, meaning their choice of design left little wasted space. Additionally, those supports were mobile and could be arranged to accommodate different sizes of discs and even the other models of drones. The same went for all Star Force warships so they’d never encounter a situation of having to pick up and put a square peg in a round docking apparatus.
The jumpships could share drones if needed, but most used those that were built for them and all the drones in this fleet were the Bsidd discs. They were still in cutter, corvette, frigate, destroyer, cruiser analogs, meaning approximately the same internal space, engines, weapons, etc. The differences came in aesthetics and angular attack patterns, for like the Calavari drones the Bsidd had a narrow cross section to point towards the enemy if they were able, whereas the Mainline blocks were more built for omni-directional combat. All the drones were, but the remote pilots of the Bsidd discs like to bring them edge in against their targets to present as little surface area as possible for the enemy to strike back against.
The battlecruisers that were continuing the planetary bombardment were more like plugs than discs, but they held the same circular shape as the rest of the Bsidd drones while also being the widest. The smallest of them were the cutters and looked like game tokens they were so small and flat, but dock them together and interlink shields and you had a very strong defensive tactic to utilize. More often than not that ended up being a row of 12 or more cutters docked together being flown into enemy lines and surviving due to their linked shields, then breaking up and engaging individual targets, for while docked only their ridge weapons were given firing lines and that limited their damage potential.
That was just one little wrinkle in Star Force’s combat philosophy, and there were others for the Bsidd, not to mention the Calavari, Scionate, and every other faction. They all used common and compatible equipment but allowed for some diversity of design. That gave Star Force a few extra options in joint campaigns, as well as allowing for distinction and pride, with the Bsidd being quite proud of the drones they produced and the few extra tactics that they created.
Nothing in Star Force existed for tradition’s sake, with functionality and effectiveness always being the top priority, and that instilled an even greater sense of pride in a faction when something that was unique to them proved valuable. Paying lip service was a concept that had virtually disappeared from Star Force save for some of the civilian sectors, and everything that was built had a purpose. No pandering,
graft, or waste. The Bsidd civilization had been built from scratch under the Star Force model and as a result, no matter how alien they physically looked to Mike, he always felt at home with them and had no trouble living on a ship with an entirely Bsidd crew. He was Star Force, they were Star Force, and they worked together seamlessly.
Mike was a member of Clan Meteor, which was Larissa’s Clan and therefore had the most Archons working with the Bsidd since she’d been the one to design their civilization and escort it through those first fragile years. Ever since then they’d maintained close ties and a good number of Bsidd were now part of the Clan themselves, for ever since Randy had taken a bazillion Kiritas into Clan Star Fox and claimed the title of ‘largest Clan’ by far, other Clans had been experimenting with recruiting non-Humans in far greater numbers than before, with most of the Bsidd going to either Clan Meteor because of Larissa or to Clan Ninja Monkey because Morgan was offering them a chance to fight immediately rather than doing mostly training and building like the other Clans.
Mike knew Clan Meteor was engaged in some of the invasions like this along with the Bsidd, but the vast majority of its members were working hard in either exhaustive training sessions or in constructing new colonies and upgrading the ones they already had. There was literally a mad rush on amongst the Clans that he’d never seen before and he couldn’t quite explain it himself, but everyone was prepping as if the V’kit’no’sat were coming back tomorrow…and it was theoretically possible that they would…but that had been true since the inception of Star Force and he’d never seen this kind of fanatical drive amongst them.
He didn’t understand it, but he did appreciate it. Everyone was psyched up and working harder than they ever had before, from Archons down to techs, to increase the power and prestige of their Clan…and when it came to prestige within Star Force, that boiled down to just one thing.
Responsibility.
Those who could handle the fights, the resource collection, industrial production, recycling efforts, colony construction, etc were the ones that had the power. Not so they could order someone else to go do it, but so they could do it themselves. The Clans wanted missions and to take on the toughest opponents, but only those who were capable within Star Force got those missions and responsibilities.
Back in the day before Star Force existed the word ‘responsibility’ was seen as a negative. Something that you had to do whether you wanted to or not. Now that was just the opposite. It was a privilege to be the one that others depended on, and you only got to be in that position if you were a badass, whether it be a faction, a Clan, a planet, a city, a group, or an individual. You wanted to be the guy in the hot seat when the time of crisis came, not the one running away from it and shirking the duty to give to another.
Likewise Star Force was responsible for the security of the ADZ and all the non-Star Force races within it. Why? Not because they’d been told to. Not because they were being paid to. Not because it was a burden they bore and didn’t want and couldn’t transfer to someone else. No. Star Force did it because it needed to be done and they wanted to do it. Not for reward or compensation, but because that’s what badasses did. They saved people, took on the challenges, and came through in the clutch.
That’s what it meant to be superior. You didn’t tell someone else to go fight your battles for you, you tell them to back off and let you handle it because you’re more capable. That was the proper place of the superior, on the front lines, not hiding behind a wall of ‘lesser’ valued personnel and planets.
And that’s what the Clans wanted. They wanted to be superior despite their small size. They wanted to matter when the times of crisis came rather than being stuck in the stands watching the action go down when the big dogs stepped in. The Bsidd were now one of those big dogs, and despite the skill level in the Clans being higher, their civilization size was far too small for them to handle more than a few ‘small’ missions.
The Clans wanted more than that, as much as they could get in fact, which was why they were pressing so hard. If the V’kit’no’sat came back 50 years from now, each of the Clans wanted to be the ones to engage them while others evacuated and ran, and there’d be a long line of volunteers for that duty, but only those most capable would get it.
That was the Star Force way. There were no sacrificial pawns like in chess and the disgusting warfare practices of other empires, with the lizards taking the prize as the most gruesome to date. Sacrifice was abhorrent, no matter how effective it might be in some limited circumstances. A properly outfitted and trained military would kick the crap out of any that used such darkside tactics, and with every year that progressed that military would grow stronger due to the fact that they wouldn’t lose people to attrition. Self-sufficiency was about more than just staying alive, it was the means to take the ordinary soldier and make them extraordinary over the course of centuries through a slow progression of skills and experience.
The longer that military existed and survived, the stronger it would become. That was why Star Force was now able to beat the lizards in virtually every battle and why their swarm tactics were becoming less and less effective. Technology aside, Star Force’s troops were just plain better and growing in skill with each passing year…whereas the lizards’ were dying off and having replacements grown, maintaining their current strengths and not advancing.
That was one of the many illusions in life getting busted in epic fashion. Many people thought that darkside practices were the way to greater strength, and that sacrifice on the battlefield helped the civilization by winning a battle on a single day at any costs…but the truth was the cumulative effect of keeping your people alive and training indefinitely pooled into some truly remarkable feats that were only now becoming evident.
And many races within the ADZ still denied what they saw, partly because they couldn’t understand it. A single Star Force commando with a few centuries of training to their name was now literally a demi-god when going up against ‘normal’ people, and even though a lot of what happened in the war against the lizards didn’t make its way into the news, Star Force security used commandos to deal with internal matters and those soldiers did interact with the ADZ races.
Many people claimed they were given cybernetic enhancements or other cheats, unable to simply accept the fact that being the good guys, while seemingly having short term disadvantages, gave you mind boggling power in the long term so long as you were wise enough to maintain and cultivate it over the progression of years.
To quote an old Star Wars philosophical debate, the darkside may have been the quicker, easier path, but at the end of the day the lightside was and always would be the stronger.
And what did the lightside badasses do more than anything? Save people.
“Admiral, cease fire and start loading the drones back inside the warships,” Mike said after giving the data packet a thorough look.
“We’re leaving?” Krimja asked for clarification.
Mike nodded. “The damage we’ve done here won’t be quickly erased, and either we or another fleet can come back and finish the mission later. Right now we have a more important task before us.”
“A rescue mission?”
“If these guys have survived this long, then we’re going to make damn sure they don’t get wiped out a few years prior to the safe zone reaching them. We’re skipping ahead and coming to their aid.”
“We don’t have any linguistics on them.”
“I know. We’ll have to make do when we get there, but once we start shooting the lizards I think our intentions will be clear enough.”
Krimja tapped one of his appendages against a console, giving a familiar signal to his bridge crew to carry out the order they’d just overheard. On his display screens the battlecruisers immediately stopped firing and began a slow retreat up to higher orbit as the lizard planetary defense batteries continued to paint one of their shields with diffuse beams.
“Drones are withdrawing,” he confi
rmed, turning around fully as he stood up and looked down at where the Archon was sitting reading through more of the scouting report. “Are we going in alone or calling for support?”
“Both. Dispatch a courier ship with an update and get this data back on the grid. If they want to send backup they can, but we’re not waiting. We’re heading straight there and taking pressure off these guy as soon as possible. If we can save lives by getting there a month sooner, we’re getting there a month sooner. Drop a few monitoring probes on our way out. I want to see how they respond when we’re gone. Schedule and log data retrieval before we jump out.”
“Gladly,” Krimja said as he walked back to his station and sat down, opening up the orders panel to craft and file the necessary requests to be sent back onto the Star Force grid with the courier as Mike continued to study the scouting report with great interest. Though the circumstances would have changed somewhat since the time this report data was collected and would change more during their travel time there he wanted to get well acquainted with the party the lizards were throwing for the locals before he crashed it.
3
February 22, 2826
Aphat System (Unknown race)
Inner Zone
The Archer 7 pulled away from its deceleration point in low orbit around the giant white star follow the pair of warships that had preceded it as the sensor feeds began to get returns. There was a small lizard fleet also in orbit around the star but some 36 degrees around the perimeter. There were many jumpships among them and Mike instantly knew this was either a troop or supply fleet holding station to resupply the lizard forces assaulting the system, for they wouldn’t leave empty jumpships just sitting around for months or years on end. They’d have a flow of supplies coming in, meaning these were probably at least partially loaded.
