by Aer-ki Jyr
Kamalat poked his friend in the chest, hard, to make him focus. “There were too many people, and holding the planet was our last chance to save our empire. We had no other choice.”
“Easy, brother. I meant no offense.”
Kamalat gestured with his hand to forget it. “Where is this place you speak of?”
“Beyond the war zone, at the moment. It’s a region centered on Star Force territory. They’re holding a line against the Cajdital on the farthest end, and the Hycre seem to think they will continue to do so. So do their Calavari conscripts that I’ve talked with. There are a few on planet if you’re fortunate enough to run into one.”
“Fortunate?” Kamalat said with disgust.
“I thought the same at first, but if you talk to one you will quickly find yourself in the wrong. The rumors are not true. They have not submitted. They are not servants.”
“Is that where we are being sent?”
Nemaba cringed. “Yes, it is. They have a world in the Sanctuary Zone known as ‘HTC’ that has been given exclusively to us. There is where the others have trained, then returned here to do battle.”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this…” Kamalat said, turning around and looking at the line of Calavari behind him as they were being processed through an identification checkpoint, then escorted off to who knows where. “I can’t believe you’re a part of it either,” he whispered angrily.
Nemaba spun him around and held his upper and lower shoulders firm. “You know me, brother. You know I would not lie to you. The Star Force Calavari are our future, and if you take a look at the ships in orbit you’ll see a handful that belong to them. Warships that are far superior to what we’ve had to work with. You of all people should understand the significance of that.”
“I will not serve a Human.”
“There are no Humans onboard those ships. Only Calavari. I do not fully understand their relationship with the Humans, but they told me they are treated as brothers, not servants, though ultimately the Humans are in command.”
“A soft leash is still bondage.”
“If they trust us enough to give us ships and technology without so much as a single observer onboard, is that truly bondage?”
“I do not like this, Nemaba. I do not like this at all.”
“As I said, neither did I at first. You’ll be stationed here for a while with no Human connection. Look around, see what’s happening. Find the truth. The Hycre have always dealt with us fairly, and they are fully behind this plan. They know we’d never willingly become slaves, yet they are devoting a vast amount of ships and resources to pull our people out of the war zone. Consider the logic in that, my friend, and I will talk with you later. At the moment I have duties here.”
Kamalat put a hand on his upper left arm. “No promises. But it is good to see you alive and well, brother.”
“Come with me,” Nemaba said, passing Kamalat through another exit in the long check-in barrier that currently had 5 stations operational that the lines were feeding into. He logged his information in personally and sent him off to a temporary billet, with instructions on where to go and not go, and giving him a pass card for greater autonomy than the rest of the refugees were afforded.
On the other side of the processing center Kamalat passed through a checkpoint that let him out into the city, or rather the rail line that led into the nearby city, around which numerous extraneous facilities had been and were being built. Once he got inside the realm of the more permanent denizens he was shocked to see that 1 out of every 3 people on the streets was an alien.
There were Urik’kadel, Scionate, Gnar, Irondel, Nammet, Gardeen, Lemickas, and even a scattering of the flying Hammids. All were moving about as if they belonged there, rather than having been guests on the Calavari planet. That felt most odd of all, right down to the fact that the rest of the Calavari acted as if they belong there as well.
And not only on the streets, but in the air. Transports were coming and going from the spaceports built around the city, with nearly all of them being non-Calavari. The Calavari transports were heading to the city interior, where he assumed they were setting down at their own spaceport, but the airspace was literally crawling with outsiders, making him wonder just what the hell was really going on here.
Kamalat sought to find out, venturing into and out of a variety of Calavari establishments and getting the locals’ take on what was happening. In fact he spent the next 13 hours doing so, feeling the need to find the truth as his friend had insisted, and in doing so found himself very confused.
The Hycre were in fact the glue holding together this part of the Alliance, and their vast fleet of jumpships were moving around the starships of other races, most notably their transports, and shuffling around people and resources at a frantic pace to try and stay ahead of the Cajdital advance. Sashneo was one of some 12 worlds that came up in his conversations on which the Hycre were doing the same thing, 9 of which were Calavari worlds, with the others belonging to the Gardeen, Gnar, and Reen, the last of which wasn’t even officially part of the Alliance.
All the worlds in question were being used to evacuate Calavari out of their dwindling territory along with evacuees from other races suffering a similar fate…all of which were then being transferred off to other locations that eventually led, as he was told repeated times, to Star Force territory where the war had yet to arrive.
That didn’t quite mesh with what Nemaba had told him about the Humans already fighting the Cajdital, but if they were holding their own, as impossible as that sounded, then the region past that contentious line would truly have been a ‘safe’ zone…but for how long, he wondered.
For so many races to work together under the Hycre’s leadership was quite a feat, and he didn’t see the logic of the Hycre putting all this effort into a futile gambit. More likely, he expected them to pull back their support like the Kvash did and defend only their own worlds, especially since the Cajdital couldn’t seem to get at them inside the atmosphere of their native gas giants.
If they were dedicated to this endeavor, then it meant they thought it had a good chance…or at least a decent chance of working. But did they really think they could stop the Cajdital advance after so many repeated attempts and failures, the most recent being Varasiss, or were they expecting to keep running year after year trying to stay ahead of the war zone?
It wasn’t until he ran into one of the nefarious Star Force Calavari did he get some answers…which started with a double left uppercut that sent him spinning to the ground when Kamalat insulted the Humans and their ‘ownership’ of the Calavari. A few punches later and the two of them were deep into a discussion about what was really going on, with the convert insistent on making Kamalat understand, given his military rank and knowing the need to bolster their naval forces as much as possible.
At first Kamalat was defiant, but several more ‘attitude adjustments’ finally got him listening. He told him that while everyone thought the Hycre were behind this mass exodus that it was really the Humans leading it. They had a small fleet, he was told, but one with technology, training, and tactics to put the rest of the Alliance to shame…and they were sharing virtually all of it with the Calavari in order to rebuild them into a force that would be capable of fighting and winning against the Cajdital. He was told that the Humans had adopted them into their brood rather than making them allies, and had done so with one other race called the Kiritas that he wasn’t familiar with.
Together, they were going to beat the Cajdital, and the other Calavari almost convinced him on the spot with the conviction in his voice and the confidence he bore, both of which were a welcome change to the depression swirling through the rest of his race. But there was a catch, he said. The Humans were small, not just in physical size but in numbers and worlds. They didn’t have enough to beat the Cajdital on their own, not yet anyway. They needed time to grow, resources to build with, and as many skilled individuals as they could get to teach th
eir ways to, and in turn to learn from.
He said that the Calavari’s pilots had taught the Humans much, and that the Valeries that they now flew were hybrids, combining the knowledge and tech of both into the new fighters, though the Humans still preferred their skeet designs…but it was rumored that those too had been augmented with Calavari tech. Kamalat’s race wasn’t just being taken in as refugees, they were contributing to a mutual goal, and as much as Star Force was giving them, they were also giving back.
He told him that in time the Calavari refugees would outnumber the Humans within Star Force…if they could get to them all, which the Hycre were adamant about making happen. They were joining with the Humans, who wanted them as strong as possible, rather than fearing them and restricting their access to resources, tech, and knowledge. Given time the Calavari would reassert themselves as a major power equal in prestige to the Humans, and both would be considered Star Force.
Then he went on to tell him that the Calavari on HTC, the training world, were well away from the Cajdital and the Nestafar, but that the Calavari that had already proven themselves there and joined Star Force were staking out territory on the edge of what had been their original territory. They had made Drema their foothold and were gradually expanding out from it, forming one edge of the Sanctuary Zone and ready to defend it against the Cajdital and the Nestafar, the latter of which had already attacked and been defeated several times.
That changed things for Kamalat, because it meant they weren’t running away. They might be losing most of Calavari territory, but they were going to hold onto at least a small part of it. It might be part of the Sanctuary Zone defenses, but it was home to the Calavari, and the fact that Star Force had seen fit to protect it rather than pull their forces back to their own territory told him there was more to the truth than the rumors, for like the Hycre, defending Drema wasn’t in the Humans’ best interest.
If they were using the Calavari as conscripts they’d have them defending Human worlds…and that wasn’t the case. Once Kamalat accepted that, he had more questions…many more, and spent the next few hours getting some of them answered before heading back to his tiny billet and trying to sleep, but finding he couldn’t. Too many thoughts were running through his mind, and by the time his friend came to find him the next day he was sit sitting on his bunk staring at the wall.
“Ah, I know that look. Eyes opened, eh?”
Kamalat twisted his neck and top shoulder so he could look up at Nemaba.
“Tell me everything you know.”
7
March 27, 2473
Llone System
Scion (Scionate homeworld)
“Hurry,” Om’ra insisted as the quadruped sprinted down a narrow street towards the spaceport with Dre’for half a head behind her on the right. “They will on the transports within moments.”
“Don’t wait on me,” Dre’for lectured. “I’ll get there when I can.”
Without another word Om’ra sped up, moving in her armor far faster than Dre’for could have managed on his best day. Normally she was too polite to show her superior speed, but with the evacuation of their people complicated by a surprise attack by Mershak raiders, formality wasn’t given as much credence.
Four fifths of the planet’s population had already left, along with a significant portion of Scion’s defense fleet, though the cheetah-like race hadn’t been stupid enough to leave it under-defended. They had the 8th largest navy in the Alliance and was one of the few that hadn’t seen much combat, save for in the one system they’d lost to the Cajdital. They’d held it long enough to evacuate their people, rather than devoting the resources necessary to rid the pair of planets of the enemy surface bases the Cajdital had set up and were expanding.
Unlike most other races the Scionate didn’t build large cities that spanned continents, rather they preferred a more open landscape dotted with settlements. That kept their planetary populations low, but that gave their society a more relaxed feel than the claustrophobic megacities that the Calavari and others built, though none were worse than the Bsidd, who they had contact with on their upper border.
The Kvash weren’t much better, whom they also shared a border with, and the three big races were suffering for it when it came to evacuations, being forced to leave many behind to die…and that was something the Scionate were not going to do, thus the foreplanning and ongoing evacuation of their capitol before the Cajdital arrived.
But the scaly creatures weren’t the Scionate’s only enemy, and one that had been their personal bane and continual nuisance had decided to drop in to say goodbye, having launched several raids down onto the planet, bypassing their defense fleet in orbit, and causing what trouble they could. Dre’for didn’t know what they were here for, precisely, but whenever they had encountered them before they were as much interested in looting resources as they were in killing his people. If they only waited a while longer they’d have a planet of technology left to plunder, so why they were coming now he didn’t understand.
By the time Dre’for made it to the spaceport Om’ra was already lifting off in her Scionate-modified Valerie, and he saw two other pilots arriving as well into the half-full hangar that sat underneath a solid shield that blocked out the sun and rain, but allowed the wind to come underneath as well as the fighters, that on the ground sat in open-ceilinged berths.
Dre’for leapt up onto the short staircase near to his personal fighter and hopped across a short gap into the open cockpit, settling down onto the belly pad and sliding his four paws onto control pads as he bit into the primary control bar and began rotating it around in his mouth, powering up the fighter and closing the cockpit.
The pointy aircraft lifted up on anti-grav and drifted above the short walls bracketing it, then Dre’for slid the fighter to the east, rising up over a circular retaining wall and climbing into the gap between it and the high roof. From there he accelerated out and into the open air, seeing the distant weaponsfire on the outskirts of the city, coming from both the ground and the sky.
Less than a minute later he was within range of the enemy aircraft, finding a knot of them overtop their battle tanks with a few Scionate icons intermixed as they hunted them down. He picked one of the enemy’s cubical fighters and raced after it, tagging it with plasma after a few quick maneuvers that the raider couldn’t match.
It dropped from the air, then pulled a tight curve and continued to fly with extensive armor damage…but no anti-grav hinderment. Dre’for cursed himself for falling for the ploy and raced after it, coming across another that cut across his path in pursuit of Om’ra, who had another two on her tail.
Dre’for broke off and followed them, using the distraction to take down one before she looped around in a corkscrew that the enemy fighters couldn’t match and tagged another, then he left her alone with the last one as he tipped the Valerie’s nose towards the ground and made an attack run against one of the battle tanks blasting into the city’s exterior defense turrets.
A belly-mounted plasma cannon built up a thick orb as he held the trigger between his teeth, then released it squarely into the top of the giant tank when he released pressure and turned away from his collision course, skimming the grasslands and nearly running into another tank that was already smoking from plasma damage.
He didn’t bother to turn back on the one he’d shot, or even look to see how much damage he’d done. Dre’for knew time was important and that he and the other few pilots on station had to take down the fighters as quickly as possible, then they’d be free to harass the tanks, whose normal ground opposition was no longer present in this region, already having been evacuated to the Scionate jumpships and their massive Hycre cousins waiting in orbit.
The Mershak fighters were fast, but only in straight lines, and they carried no shields, only heavy armor, which likewise diminished their maneuvering capabilities. They had strong plasma cannons, but the agility and firepower of the Valeries clearly made them the dominant fighters,
allowing them to eventually take down all of the enemy, but not before the tanks reached the city’s edge and unleashed their ground troops.
Given time the Valeries took out the tanks without losing any of their own despite an anti-air turret that all of them carried, but after that Dre’for and the others couldn’t do much but fly over the buildings and streets and hope to catch one of the Mershak infantry out in the open. That happened occasionally, but not nearly enough, leaving the raiders with an essentially empty city to disappear into, with only a handful of their own infantry in place to try and protect the last of the evacuees coming out on a road heading towards another city where the evacuation transports were landing.
The vehicles carrying them had been kept safe from the tanks, but they weren’t all loaded yet, meaning there were people walking freely through the streets towards the vehicle loading points that the Mershak could hit, and too few infantry to do anything but guard the vehicles. Realizing that Dre’for sent his fighter to ground, or rather to a thick rooftop where he set it down and leapt out of the cockpit, sliding down to the edge of the roof and falling off the edge.
He landed on all fours with his battle armor moving up along his neck to cover his head, leaving him fully protected as he sprinted off towards the last known position of the evacuees that had yet to reach the vehicles, intending to do some ambushing of his own where his Valerie wouldn’t reach.
Several hours later, when the last of the city’s non-military personnel had been evacuated and the other Valeries had left to fight the Mershak at other settlements, Dre’for returned to the rooftop where he had parked his Valerie and was relieved to find it exactly as he’d left it. He climbed back in using some clawholds on the exterior and lifted up into the sky just as the last of the personnel transports were assembling for ‘last call.’
