by Aer-ki Jyr
That’s why the few civilizations that Jason had learned about, via the V’kit’no’sat database and other intel, that were pacifistic to the point where they would only fight when attacked got abused regularly if they didn’t hold a significant technological advantage. It made you a huge target, and fear for your own safety was a weapon you had to wield. If you declared up front that any enemy would not be counterattacked then you were just begging them to come out and use your worlds for a weapons test…then they could just turn around and run safely away.
Races that were totally pacifistic…well, they didn’t last long enough to make the historical records for the most part. The Zargor had wrongly assumed that Star Force was partially pacifistic and they weren’t the first. Doing what was right didn’t mean you were weak, though it did mean you didn’t always strike when you saw an opening. An enemy had to earn that marker, and whereas the Zargor would attack anyone who they saw was vulnerable Star Force would not, nor would they use the most efficient means of killing people.
The Zargor thought winning meant killing or enslaving all of the enemy. For Star Force, defeating the enemy was the objective…and that could occur in many different forms.
The Zargor had misjudged Star Force badly and were now doing the first wise thing he’d seen out of them. They were running away, back to within their original territory for the most part and Jason would kick them the rest of the way back if needed, but he had no illusions that they were going to change their ways. There was always the possibility of that, and they were certainly going to have the time to make a change and prove him wrong, but the Archon would bet credits that they just turned their attentions to targets that weren’t on this side of the map.
And while that meant others out there would come under attack far sooner than before, at least it gave the people in Jason’s assigned region a bit more breathing room…as well as allowing him to reposition pieces of his Sangheili and Belledeir fleets, which he was going to start doing now in the wake of the confirmed Zargor withdrawals.
Jason brought up fleet positions and strength levels on the starmap then got to work moving his virtual pieces around, sending out orders via the relay grid or courier where needed, and transmitting a thank you message to Paul for getting the big bad wolves off his back.
“Do we have confirmation?”
“Yes, Dafchor.”
“Show me,” Cal-com said from the bridge of a conglomerate that he’d been fighting from for the past 12 years on the edge of Skarron territory as he took system after system that he then left his builders in custody of as he pressed onward carving out the new border region the Elders had dictated.
The reconnaissance report from a recently arrived scout ship popped up before him showing a distant Skarron system that was a high traffic trade route within a portion of their empire that the lizards had not encroached upon yet, but were moving steadily towards. The reports showed gradually increasing amounts of ship traffic coming out through that system towards the front, but nothing on a scale that would alarm him. It was just an escalating reinforcement as one would expect when the enemy was pushing into your territory. When fleets were destroyed they had to be replaced, thus the flow of ships in would always be greater than those going out save for the exception of an evacuation…but it appeared the Skarrons weren’t budging and deciding to fight it out to the last ship and last breath.
Cal-com watched a speedy retelling of events the scout had recorded, then slowed it down rapidly as the flow of ships suddenly jumped. There wasn’t a huge convoy coming through, but several with over a thousand ships each. The Skarrons didn’t use jumpships, so it was easy to tell what class these vessels were. Most were warships and they had a small amount of cargo vessels that were probably logistical support traveling with them for however far they’d come to get here.
They didn’t stay in the system under surveillance, but moved through without even bothering to stop until the 9th large grouping redirected to one of the inhabited planets and appeared to be restocking on supplies. There was no visible battle damage being attended to, so Cal-com suspected these ships had come from so far away that they needed to stop off occasionally for provisions, and the fact that most of the convoys coming through didn’t stop here suggested they were travelling different lengths…which meant different points of origin.
The convoys continued to come out of two different jumplines, but they left on the same one. Another indicator that this was a convergence point and probably not the only one. The reinforcements coming in were significant, but not overwhelming, and he didn’t yet understand why the scout ship had returned prior than instructed until he scrolled through the timeline of ship arrivals and saw the numbers continuing to escalate until there was almost constant transit around the star from both incoming jumplines.
“So this is how it looks,” he said softly enough that only his closest aide could hear. “They don’t move en mass, they just send out word to come and they get here whenever they can.”
“How is that not en mass?” the other Voku asked, pointing to the hundreds of thousands of warships moving around either side of the star like a string of ants to get to the outgoing jumppoint, save for a few moving off to refuel at nearby planets.
“There are subtle variations in the fleet movements that tell me they are not under a unified command. The traffic density tends to blur it all together at a casual glance, but these are unique fleets passing through the same location at the same time.”
“The ship counts remain the same regardless, and if this rate continues to persist…”
“It will escalate.”
The other Voku looked at him silently, not voicing the obvious question.
“It is like a flood,” Cal-com elected to explain. “First a little bit trickles in, then a bit more, and a bit more. You have a flow that continues to gain in speed and volume until you suddenly find yourself in over your head and swept away by the current. These ships have not been brought together at a waypoint and then sent here…the front with the Li’vorkrachnika is their waypoint and they will continue coming in far greater numbers from across the Skarron Empire as they get funneled down into fewer and fewer jumplanes.”
“This is sooner than I had hoped,” the Dafchor continued, “but the Crusade is manifesting. If they throw their full might against their primary target then we will have time to complete our invasions and strengthen our defenses, but if they split their attention and send some of their forces against us immediately…”
“What are your orders?”
“Unless the Elders counsel otherwise, we continue as planned and assume they will go after their priority target. If that is true, let us hope the Li’vorkrachnika do them enough damage that they will rethink the wisdom of coming after us in the aftermath. If not, then we stand our ground and find out which civilization is the superior. Either way, we have fighting to do and the clock is ticking.”
10
February 18, 3550
Ozpin System (Occupation Zone)
Middle Zone
“What is it?” Baron Tajmon asked as he heard two pairs of footsteps approaching from behind him and he spun around in his chair to turn his glowing blue Protovic eyes toward them.
“We’ve got our 17th slot,” the Human told him. “Ships are beginning to arrive already.”
Tajmon frowned. “Why haven’t I been notified?”
“An Archon brought them in and just notified us two minutes ago.”
“A special entry?” he asked, rising from his chair and following the two staffers out of his office towards the main control room on the space station that sat in a lonely orbit around the central star, keeping it separate from the 13 habitable planets that were in varying stages of construction.
“They are in great need,” the Kiritas answered. “He cited emergency standard 4.”
“Damn,” the Baron said, knowing that meant these guys, whoever they were, were close to dead due to bad living conditions
and other attrition factors. None of the other 16 races sent to this system had rated a 4, and while that meant they weren’t in danger of starving to death it meant he was going to have to handle them with kid gloves as far as work orders went…and that meant he was going to have to recruit volunteers from the other races to help out initially while these guys healed up.
“Who are they?” he asked as they turned out of the hallway and into the Beacon control room for the entire system. This wasn’t the only location for the newest Star Force faction, but everything here was under the Baron’s command and he exercised it from this neutral seda that housed experienced personnel in all categories that were responsible for helping the refugee races sent here assimilate and become part of the empire. Normally that meant his people would advise and demonstrate while the newcomers did most of the building work, but if these newcomers were a standard 4 then it was going to take months, if not years for them to recover health sufficient to join the workforce and he didn’t have the luxury of waiting that long.
“Their name is Dotopa and they’re between 4 and 9 inches long, avian, feathered, and quadruped.”
“So much for manual labor. We’re going to have to start minimech production facilities, but at least we won’t need as much infrastructure to house them. How many are we looking at?”
“93 billion.”
The Baron stopped in his tracks at the top of a staircase that led down onto the main platform.
“Say again?”
“93 billion is the number the Archon quoted me.”
“Which Archon?”
“Vex-761, ViLord ranking.”
“Ok…not a newb then. Did he say how much foodstuffs 93 billion Dotopa would require?”
Neither Administrator knew the answer, but an analyst with incoming data on her screen overhead the question and gave him the number before he was halfway down the stairs.
“440 million, Human equivalent.”
“That’s still a lot,” the Kiritas pointed out.
“Where’s our prep work put us…assuming the Dotopa don’t require special foodstuffs?”
“Bioharvest facilities on planet are 71% complete.”
“310ish then,” he said, doing the mental math as to the output potential. They’d been building up infrastructure in the last empty slot in this system not knowing who or what would come in, and the design goal had them stopping once they hit 500 million Human equivalent foodstuff production. None of the other races sent here had more than 72 million on arrival, and the Baron had thought he was being prudent in his planning, but they were going to fall short. “What are their current reserves?”
“There’s a fleet of Kiritak jumpships escorting them and providing them with supplies. Expiration date anticipated in 8 months, 4 days without additional resupply, but ships are already enroute to extend that mark.”
“Good,” the Protovic said, walking his glowing face up near the equally glowing hologram and competing for luminosity as he saw the ship icons coming into the system near the star. “Route them into a holding orbit around 17 and get an evaluation team assembled. We need to find the healthiest ones and get them into indoctrination immediately. And start assembling construction crews of Berthal and Renti, as many as can be spared from their own assignments. We need those bioharvests up and running at 440 capacity as soon as possible.”
“Materials?”
“Syphon off from others until we can get the food production stabilized, and do we have any information on why we weren’t told they were coming?”
“None, but the Archon’s ship is coming here. ETA just under 4 hours.”
“Good. I want to know why protocol has been breached. If we hadn’t been building ahead...nevermind. I’ll find out what’s going on, meanwhile get everyone activated and in scramble mode. We’ve got 93 billion people to get organized, and their being tiny doesn’t help. Most of this system’s future population is in those ships and we need to get them sorted before any more die.”
“Standard 4 means imminent death, not fatalities already,” the Human pointed out.
“Not in large numbers, no, but out of 93 billion you could lose a million here or there and no one would even notice. We’re not going to be that sloppy, so get on this now.”
“Already am. You were the one with meditation lockout on,” he said with a smile as he grabbed a console of his own and started waking up the people under his command on this station and the various planets out there.
“So I was,” the Baron said, referencing the information blackout he used when he needed to do some contemplative thinking…which was why they’d had to walk in to tell him what was going on. Right now it’d have to wait, for the thinking required meant incorporating data as it came in from the refugee fleet and its Star Force escorts, so he stayed on the main platform walking around the system holo as he oversaw his administrators and other staffers and troubleshooted as issues came up until the Archon’s ship came within realtime comm range, then he retreated to his office and got a life size image of the ViLord standing next to his desk.
“Sorry about the rush,” the Archon offered.
“Yes…what’s the occasion?”
“We didn’t know these guys were coming until they showed up on our doorstep. Took the black hole routes on their own volition then popped up at Garadan asking for sanctuary. They had some pursuers a few days behind them that we dealt with, but it’s safe to say any ship that couldn’t keep up with the flock was lost, and according to their sketchy records more than half didn’t make it.”
“Where did they come from and who was after them?”
“Nexus territory and a race we’re unfamiliar with. They called them the Traquim, and their ships fled as soon as they saw one of their own puff like confetti when we intervened. Low tech on both sides, and the Dotopa have the equivalent of slave syndrome. They’re a mess in the head, and I don’t envy the task ahead of you.”
“Slave syndrome? Are they escapees?”
“Sort of. More like picked on and bullied rather than actually owned. When their worlds eventually got wasted they packed up as many as they could and ran. Numbers from that are…hard to swallow. What you’ve got here is a tiny fraction of their former population and all that we think are left.”
“93 billion is a tiny fraction?”
“So you can understand how messed up in the head you can get when you see so many more die helplessly.”
“Military?”
“Other than ships, no. They have no concept of mechs and most of their construction is done on assembly lines. When a ship is damaged they can’t even repair it unless it can get back to ground. These guys are a mess on numerous fronts.”
“We’ll get to work on them. Thankfully we’ve got a full deck now and that means more help than just pre-existing staff.”
“To which I’m adding more, which I’ll be transferring over shortly. About 22,000 instructors and techs.”
The Baron blew out a relieved breath. “Much appreciated.”
“I’ll be over myself soon and help you make introductions. In the meantime know that their airlocks are a bit…odd. You’ll have to make modifications on your end to access them, and they don’t have dropships or shuttles.”
Tajmon facepalmed, and when he looked up again the Archon’s hologram was gone.
“Save the hardest for last I guess…”
“Alright, impress me,” Rio said as he walked into one of the advanced research labs in Atlantis.
“If you insist,” Yiori Bessmot said, waving a hand towards a display table at the far end. The master tech was among only a handful of researchers working to push the limits of Star Force’s tech as they explored the remaining untouchable technologies in the V’kit’no’sat database, but he’d gone a bit off the reservation on this one and supposedly built something inferior that they had never thought of or cataloged anyone else as having designed.
Rio frowned. “That box?”
“Inside it.�
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The trailblazer looked for a lid, but seeing none visually he switched on his Pefbar to have a look on the inside, the top of which was hollow. A little telekinetic pressure on the underside and the seams materialized with him pulling it off entirely and setting it to the side while throwing Bessmot a look.
The tech frowned. “Thought it’d take you longer than that to figure out.”
“Pefbar works wonders,” Rio said, pulling out a wad of material that was slick to the touch and felt like clothing. “This is armor?”
“Put it on. There are three pieces.”
Rio fished around in the bundle and pulled out what looked like pants, setting the rest on the table beside the box. There were no holes in the legs, so Rio just stepped into them and found that they stretched around his shoes loosely, but there was no waist band and they wouldn’t stay up, being far too big for him.
“Explain.”
“You’re supposed to put the top on first. Just hold them up telekinetically for now.”
Rio did as instructed and pulled the top off the table. It had a neck hole but no hand holes. He slid it on and let the baggy shirt hang loose over his waist, with it coming down halfway to his knees.
“And now?”
“Find the zipper and hold for three seconds.”
“Zipper?” he asked, looking in the general area and finding a tiny hard coin, barely the size of his eye’s iris. He pressed his finger to thumb with it in between but nothing happened. When he was about to ask he noticed an identical coin on the shirt edge. He brought them together and pressed, waited three seconds, then the edge of both melted together at the coins and quickly continued out both directions snugging the two together with the extra material disappearing.
“Well that’s nifty,” he said, standing in now trim but still loose clothing and having his hands inside flaps of material without even any finger holes or slots.