Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) (2 page)

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 crossed 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.

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.