“In any case,” Baeven continued with his line of thought, “the Jalleth usually reduce the population of their conquered worlds by half as a matter of policy. This reduces the numbers of able bodied adults who can resist them, weakens the natives, and frees up vital resources that the Jalleth can make immediate use of.”
Naero almost spat on the floor. “Haisha, that’s horrific. We must stop these assholes. Jia, did you get that tight beam off to General Walker in the Spacer High Command?”
“Just like you said, N. Do you think it will do any good? How can they help us way out here?”
Naero sighed and shook her head. “We have to try something. If you folks want me, I’ll be back in Hold 243.” She flashed to that cargo hold of her flagship and continued to tap Cosmic energy enough to create a small army of her latest Shetanna reps.
The Wellington Irregulars only had about one hundred and twenty-some fleets in the contested area. That number had been shrinking since the invasion started.
The Jalleth struck with slightly more than eight hundred fleets of forty ships each. Their fleets were slightly smaller than the local fleets of fifty, but of course, they currently enjoyed numerical superiority.
Naero only had a hundred fleets with her small battle group, reducing the upfront odds to about four to one. That wasn’t that bad and Naero’s fleets were the most advanced. The problem remained that the defenders had no reserves to count on. Could the enemy bring in more forces?
It might be two or three weeks before any additional GSA or other forces could come to their aid.
This was it, and they were on their own against a substantial new threat.
Naero sent half of her fleets on an ambitious strategy to reduce the numbers and effectiveness of the invaders. The fixer clouds would also throw up planetary shields around every world they could.
They would also learn and transmit vital data about these new foes, and how they thought and fought.
Naero and her people would do the same. But their primary mission was to break the siege of Zungo-5, defeat the enemy ground forces, and put up a planetary defense screen there.
The first objective was to deny access to the border worlds that the Jalleth needed to control region and its strategic resources. The second objective would be to defeat the invader fleets up in the black, or drive them from those contested skies. If possible, Naero wanted to learn where the Jalleth had come from within the Beta Quadrant.
“That could take weeks, perhaps months as things stand now,” Baeven said.
“Let’s start with rescuing Jaer and Bodii and their people, uncle.”
Naero waited for the Jalleth to respond to the heavy attacks from the GSA fleets at the far ends of their lines. She and Om carefully analyzed all of the tactical data from those initial engagements.
As she expected, the invaders sent fleets out to assist their forces that were being reduced. But they kept up their battles around Zungo-5.
When the enemy forces in and around the primary area appeared substantially weakened, Naero launched an all-out naval attack against the invader center.
The GSA attacked the Jalleth from the rear in every place that they could. They uncloaked close in for maximum surprise and concentrated firepower.
The results devastated the invader formations initially.
Naero, Jia, and Poly deployed their ground forces on Zungo-5 during the confusion. Jia and Poly supported forces on other continents.
The stricken Jalleth recovered, regrouped their superior numbers, and brought them to bear against the defenders once more.
Naero’s fleets melted away and attacked once again from different vectors.
GSA spyfixer clouds had a planetary defensive screen up in less than two standard hours.
Jia made initial contacts with General Jaer’s ground forces. “Naero, it’s worse than we thought. Jaer and Bodii only landed a hundred thousand troops, divided among four continents. We’ve brought about the same with us. But the enemy brought four million troops with them, plus support elements, also split between the four continents of Tarod, Mezal, Aedom, and Ellett. That’s twenty-to-one odds, at best!”
“We can’t let that stop us,” Naero said. “We’ve faced worse before, and this time we have a trio of Alliance Cosmic Champions on our side. Let’s make it work!”
Bodii connected with them first on Tarod. “Gaito! Naero of Clan Maeris.”
“Yava teega, sesti,” Naero responded in Iceni.
“Come, val sesti. Join the dance of fire. The fires are many and very intense. We are honored to have you fight beside us. Our foes are like the teeth of the dragon, and give good battle. Soon you will see for yourself.”
“Bodii, I want to talk strategy and tactics. Here’s how I think we should defeat the Jalleth ground forces on Zungo-5.”
“I’m listening, N. Now that you are here, I have some suggestions of my own.”
“Do you have secure links with Jaer, Alphonse, and the other generals?”
Off and on, Naero. The Jalleth keep finding new ways to jam our coms. Give me some secs and let me see what I can do. Jaer’s holding his own on Mezal. Alphonse is pretty busy up in the black.”
“Alphonse’s getting help from my fleets now. They’ll be all right. Check your links and I’ll check mine. I want them to know what we’re doing.”
The naval battles were tough going from all that her fleet reps reported.
None of this conflict was going to be easy in any way.
A tight beam message from Ty reached her. “Heard you were in a tight spot and outnumbered, N. Try using the synthezoid constructs–the super adaptoid Remos. Here are the latest versions and new developments. Your fleets and fixers have the tek; you can make as many troops as you like. Good fortune, Naero!”
Ty has a great idea, N. Why don’t we try it?
I’m fine with that, Om, but it will take days to implement, and who will control the Remos? We’ll need millions–tens of millions.”
How about the people of Zungo-5?
Possible, Om. Get the fixers on it and see if it will work. Too many of the locals are currently busy fleeing for their lives. Millions have perished and continue to perish. How can we get enough of them away from all of that to control our Remos? Where can we secure such large numbers of adults?”
We will come up with something. They only need the will to fight. The rest we can teach them, be they young, adult, or old. They can fight for their world, and surely they have learned to despise the invaders by now.
Let me know when we hear back from General Walker. I was hoping we could use an integrated form of the splitting technique on a large scale, in order to link elite Marine minds with some of our most powerful Remos. That would be a game changer here.
Perhaps a combination of both efforts could bring us the victory we seek.
Stay on it, Om. We and the locals must survive the next few days and reduce the enemy by attrition until these efforts can bear any fruit.
The enemy slaughters the natives at will, in great numbers, Naero.
Haisha, Om. We are all very aware of that fact. That is always part of overall Jalleth strategy. They want to lure us into spending ourselves defending the civilians, and thus lose the war. However we despise these tactics, we cannot give in to them. Winning the war as fast as we can will save more lives in the end.
True. If the Jalleth are victorious, most of the adults, fifty percent of the population will be exterminated as a matter of policy. That will be an even more horrific genocide. But can we do nothing?
Naero clenched her fists. We shall see, Om. When the time is right, we will make these murderers pay, and they shall know fear as they have never imagined it before.
With her ground forces set up and deployed, they wasted no time linking up with the battered defenders and implementing the new strategy.
They engaged with the enemy in multiple key locations.
The Wellington Irregulars were professional warriors, acc
omplished soldiers. They did their duty beyond the letter, and fought and even died, if necessary with aplomb–even èlan.
Yet to Naero, she had no intention of spending the lives of any of her precious troops without great need.
They began hooking all of their troops up to synthezoid Remos–even the wounded who’s minds were still sharp and willing to fight.
The new psyonic headsets that Tye, Zhen, Alala, and Ommo had developed by working closely together, and in record time with the fixers, were nothing short of amazing.
For one thing, they completely eliminated the need for each combatant to be on a medbed, a huge advancement and cost savings.
With these next generation modifications, they could even be used for the splitting technique as well. She had put Om and Alala onto solving that problem.
Most of their troops went out as Remos therefore, and if the synthezoids perished, more could be created.
There were a few drawbacks. If a Remo died, the headset burned out, and the subject remained safe, but exhausted. Headsets could be easily duplicated by the fixer clouds. Depending on the subjects, they could recover and be out fighting again, within two to four standard hours.
That became their primary advantage.
In many cases, that was the only way that they could keep fighting.
The use of the locals even as Remo troops, at first, was frustrating at best. Most sentients were either fighters or not fighters. Fighters could be trained further. Those who were not fighters served in many other non-combatant capacities.
Acting as Remos, they still hesitated, and gave in to fear. They broke and ran, and did not stand and fight.
Even meeting death as a Remo, once or over and over again took a toll on each subject. Some could not bear it.
Naero strove to be everywhere at once, and naturally she exhausted herself that first day.
On Tarod, a large unit of real defender troops became trapped amid a network of rocky valleys. They had fallen into a deathtrap.
Each pocket of thousands held out, pounded and assailed by tens of thousands of the invader or more.
They did manage to hold out, until Naero Prime and her reps swooped in to flash them out.
If she had any strength left, Naero would decimate the packed forces of the Jalleth with Cosmic hyper bombs before she fled. She also did her best to take out command and control and invader warships being used in ground support mode or for air superiority.
On such a planetary scale, she could not be everywhere or do everything on her own. Her great powers remained finite, and she struggled desperately to expand them further, at the same time that she strove to find the way to spend them best each day.
Every attempt to negotiate or parlay with the Jalleth failed.
They had no interest in such. They appeared to be utterly ruthless.
Even when Naero eliminated their leaders, the invaders simply promoted more in their place almost instantly. In some ways this was admirable, and in other ways, frightening. Their war machine was efficient and defiant, they took the initiative and they sought victory without hesitation.
They lacked compassion as a people, as a species, even for each other. Once dead, they treated the bodies of their own casualties as less than garbage.
The fighting over the next six days, therefore, blazed fierce and cruel by any standards.
Naero created more of her reps on a daily basis. That and the Remos eventually made things a fairer fight.
Finally, Naero was at last able to link with Baeven again and report their bitter but substantial progress.
Her uncle updated her on the naval struggles. “Your reps, Kali, Nesheel, Alith, and Jevine know their stuff, N. They’re almost as good as you. Along with that crazy fucker Alphonse, we’ve reduced the enemy numbers by thirty-three percent–a bloody miracle. And with minimal losses on our part, I might add!”
Naero grinned slightly. “That’s my girls. And Al will always surprise; you can count on that.”
Baeven uttered his grim laugh. “Together we’ve kept the invaders guessing. They don’t know what to think anymore. I’ve helped out quite a bit as well, here and there.”
Now Naero laughed. “I can only imagine, uncle.”
“And the battles onworld?” he asked.
“Like all of you, we’ve survived the first week. We’ve made the invader pay. Now we shall continue to implement their defeat. The groundwork has already been established, but at a substantial cost, I’m afraid.”
“Naero, it will still be two long weeks before any reinforcements of ours can reach us, and most likely, they will be too few and arrive too late. Even the GSA does not have the fleets we need. The invaders are still too many.”
“I know,” Naero said.
“Intercepted intel from the Jalleth warns us that the invaders have also sent for reinforcements of their own.”
“We shall deal with them when they arrive,” Naero said. “As for now, we keep fighting. On the four main continents of Zungo-5 we harass the invader at every turn. Queen Bodii and her she-devils fight alongside General Brenda ‘Fancy’ McCallister, with the bulk of my Shetanna reps on Tarod. I make more of the latter each day before dawn. All of our forces strike the enemy hard and fast every day, wherever the Jalleth are most vulnerable. We have given them no rest.
“On Mezal, Jaer and General Houston T. Brittles attack the Jalleth bases, supply lines, and starports. Jia is their wild card on that Continent. I fight on Aedom alongside General Mo Vickers and his Myrmidons. I sent Poly to assist General Khammal Jasper Guglielmo on Ellett, with his elite, 4th Division Zouaves. The invader knows no peace.”
Baeven sighed. “Yes, Naero. Under the circumstances, we are doing very well. Yet that is neither defeat for the Jalleth nor victory for us. You and I both know that very well. Zungo-5 is still up for grabs. The enemy makes progress as well, despite our best efforts. They have attacked nearly every Gigacity and megacity. The entire population of the planet has been put to flight. The resulting Chaos is immense. The Jalleth are close to claiming victory.”
“This is how we take them down,” Naero told him. She used psyonics and teknomancy to send him their complete, exact strategy.
She waited for him to study her detailed plans. ‘I’ve mentioned many of these elements in passing. I’ve chosen only the ones that are feasible.”
Baeven was silent a bit longer. “Bold…even reckless at times, Naero. It’s the best chance we have. I like it, even if it won’t work. It’s simply too ambitious. There are too many variables.”
“Haisha,” Naero said, “it’s up to us to make it work.”
“I love you, my sister’s daughter. But even you cannot pull this one off. Don’t destroy yourself in the attempt.”
“I have no intention of doing so. The Jalleth must fall. If we crush them here, they will collapse and flee. The tide will turn.”
“As I said, N. Your brilliant plan is the best chance we have. I will support you and it in every way, even if it fails. We will still be better off in the end. Let’s go!”
They began on Ellett.
Khammal’s Zouaves still fought their astounding battle of attrition. Poly flashed in to help them out of tight spots wherever those occurred. They had no answer in the field against a Shai mantid battle princess
But the invader still absorbed the resulting casualties and focused on capturing every strategic point on the continent, including all of the vital resources they needed.
The Jalleth fortified their priority positions.
All the while, they crushed the Gigacities and megacities, and butchered the people of Zungo-5 at will, driving hundreds of millions into the wilds and the wastes.
Those hundreds of millions took refuge where they could, or simply remained out in the open.
Soon, almost everyone wore odd, compact headsets that appeared as if by magic.
Before the rings of death where the invaders encircled the civilians and slew them, first tens, and then hu
ndreds of millions of enraged synthezoid constructs rose up out of the very ground.
They rampaged into the Jalleth and overwhelmed them and their well-organized and disciplined forces. The Remos fought like Jellethian nightmares, and if hundreds of thousands fell, millions more swarmed over the continent to take their place.
The Remos were anything from the size of a human up to a ten meter tall behemoth. In form they rivaled the imagination. Inspired by Poly’s great battle form, many assumed Shai mantid shapes and did battle as she did.
The Jalleth of Ellett launched a desperate barrage of atomics to obliterate this startling threat.
But the GSA spyfixer clouds intercepted, neutralized, and turned them to dust.
For the first time, the invaders found themselves on the receiving end of the slaughter. When they tried to escape in ships and transports, Poly and Khammal’s irregulars shot them down out of the sky.
Next, on Aedom, General Mo Vickers allowed his forces to be trapped at sunset against the towering walls of a high mountain range. The enemy there swept in for the kill and pounded the Myrmidons in the darkness that night, planning on finishing them off at dawn.
Yet the enemy learned from the massacre on Ellett.
When Naero’s waves of Remos charged the enemy lines, they ran into self-replicating webs of energy mines that held even the most powerful Remos off.
This was a very clever response.
They also tried to blanket the defenders with atomics, but the fixer clouds negated them once again.
But even Naero could not take out so many foes at once–not without killing everyone.
Things looked bad for Mo and his brave troops.
Then blast rings or tremendous power erupted among the enemy forces.
Dark towering figures like gigantic meks broke up the enemy formations. The most powerful weapons of the Jalleth did not seem to harm them.
These were gigantic Spacer Marine energy constructs, operated by the elite minds of entire Marine divisions, and they brought ruin, wrath, and death with them.
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