Star Force: Internecine (SF55)

by Jyr, Aer-ki

  So it was with some surprise when a Scionate jumpship arrived insystem, with it quickly making contact with the planet and asking for the senior military and diplomatic officers.

  WHAT DO YOU REQUIRE? the diplomatic officer on station replied, not bothering to contact the others unless this inquiry was deemed worthy.

  “We have come to discuss the current war,” the Scionate answered in his native language, knowing that the computers were going to have to process it into the Hycre’s own, intelligible language.

  WHICH ONE DO YOU REFER TO? THERE ARE THREE.

  “I’m referring to the Lacvamat assault on our worlds, which the Gnar and Nammet have joined in.”

  I AM TOLD THAT THE HAMMIDS HAVE DECIDED TO ASSIST YOU, AGAINST THE WARNINGS STAR FORCE HAS ISSUED.

  “They have, and we do not take orders from Star Force.”

  WE AGREE AND SUPPORT STAR FORCE’S EDICTS. YOU JEOPARDIZE ALL RACES WITH YOUR INTERNECINE. THE LARGER THIS CONFLICT GROWS THE WEAKER THE ADZ BECOMES.

  “We only defend ourselves against the Lacvamat. They were the ones who began this war.”

  ACCORDING TO THEM YOU STRUCK FIRST WITH THE BIOWEAPON ATTACK.

  “A lie.”

  WE DO NOT KNOW EITHER WAY. REGARDLESS YOU AND THE OTHERS ARE WASTING LIVES AND SHIPS THAT COULD BE PUT TO USE SECURING THE BORDERS. IF THEY FALL THE ADZ IS ALL BUT LOST. ONLY THE HUMAN CORE, OUR WORLDS, AND PROTOVIC TERRITORY WILL SURVIVE. THE REST OF THE ADZ IS WEAK AND VULNERABLE. YOU SHOULD BE CONCENTRATING YOUR RESOURCES ON STENGTHENING IT. INSTEAD YOU DESTROY.

  “We cannot help that now, save for ending this war quickly. For that we ask for your assistance.”

  WE WILL NOT TAKE SIDES IN THIS CONFLICT. OUR FLEET IS CURRENTLY FIGHTING NECESSARY BATTLES.

  “Securing the ADZ is necessary. As I said, we did not start this fight, the Lacvamat did. Then they recruited other races to join them in their push for our destruction. We were fighting on the front before they attacked us, they were not. We would like to return to fighting our true enemy, but cannot while our worlds are at risk.”

  ARE YOU WILLING TO COME TO TERMS IF WE NEGOTIATE?

  “It is not us that are the issue, it is the Lacvamat and others. I do not believe they are interested in a settlement.”

  BUT ARE THE SCIONATE WILLING TO ACCEPT ONE?

  “This war must end, and if a settlement is feasible that is preferable, and acceptable so long as the terms punish the Lacvamat accordingly. We will not accept a simple desist. We have lost too many lives for that.”

  AND YOU WISH TO LOSE MORE IN COMPENSATION?

  “We wish to decisively end this. We would have accomplished this on our own had the Gnar and Nammet not intervened. We have been betrayed twice, first when we were attacked while the bulk of our troops were fighting on the front, then again when we struck their vulnerable capitol and their secret allies ambushed us. They destroyed enough of our fleet and troops that we will not be able to quickly defeat them, even with the Hammids’ help. We require someone with greater strength that can force a surrender through either negotiation or military force.”

  IF WE DO NOT KNOW WHO IS AT FAULT WE CANNOT FORCE AS SURRENDER, ONLY A CECESSATION OF HOSTILITIES.

  “That will not be enough. Two Scionate systems are currently in Lacvamat hands. They must be returned.”

  WITHOUT KNOWING THE SOURCE OF THE BIOWEAPON WE CANNOT GIVE JUDGEMENT OTHER THAN TO CONDEMN THIS WASTE OF RESOURCES.

  “For the sake of the ADZ this has to end and end quickly. The Lacvamat are intractable. The only way to end this is to overwhelm them and force a surrender. The Humans will not intervene and the Calavari are now on their leash. The Protovic are defending their own territory, as are we, and we will not ask them to pull ships away from their own worlds to save ours. The Hycre are in a different situation, and we ask you to involve yourselves so that we can put an end to this.”

  DO YOU KNOW THE SOURCE OF THE BIOWEAPON?

  “We do not.”

  IF YOU WERE STRUCK BY IT AND BELIEVED THE LACVAMAT WERE RESPONSIBLE, HOW WOULD YOU REACT?

  “That’s irrelevant now. They had no proof it was us and they attacked anyway. The bioweapon is past history, with the current conflict made of long held grievances.”

  WE CONCUR WITH THE SECOND POINT, BUT THE BIOWEAPON ATTACK IS OF IMPORTANCE. HAVE YOUR PEOPLE LEARNED NOTHING OF ITS SOURCE?

  “We have had other concerns and no access to the attack site. We know nothing more than the Lacvamat do. Our concern is with events going forward.”

  HAD YOUR WORLD BEEN THE ONE ATTACKED YOU WOULD LIKEWISE BE OUT FOR BLOOD. A NEGOTIATED END TO THIS WAR WILL NOT BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT KNOWLEDGE OF THE BIOWEAPON SOURCE.

  “Then a military victory is the only viable solution. Your assistance will make it much more bloodless and preserve more of the ADZ’s resources. Without you the conflict will grind on for years, perhaps decades. The Scionate will not yield, but our enemies are stacked against us and this looks to be a very long conflict. The sooner it ends the sooner our forces can return to the Skarron front. For this reason alone we ask you to intervene.”

  AND WHAT IF WE INTERVENE ON THE SIDE OF THE LACVAMAT? WILL YOU SUBMIT?

  The Scionate’s hologram scowled. “We are not in the wrong.”

  IRRELEVANT. WILL YOU SUBMIT?

  “We will not submit when we are in the right.”

  THEN WHY DO YOU EXPECT THE LACVAMAT TO DO OTHERWISE? THEY WERE FIRST ATTACKED WITH THE BIOWEAPON. FROM THEIR POINT OF VIEW THEY ARE IN THE RIGHT. WERE YOUR SITUATIONS REVERSED YOU WOULD DO THE SAME.

  “Then we are at an impasse and fated to destroy one another.”

  SO IT WOULD SEEM.

  “Is there nothing you can do? We are willing and able to contribute to the front, the Lacvamat are able but not willing. They conserved their fleet while we expended ours for the benefit of all. This does not make us equals, yet you regard us as such.”

  YOUR PAST CONTRIBUTIONS ARE NOT OVERLOOKED.

  “Then I ask, what would you suggest we do?”

  STOP FIGHTING.

  “How? The Lacvamat will not stop until we are all dead.”

  IF THE SKARRONS BREACH THE FRONT YOU WILL BE JUST AS DEAD.

  “And if we don’t fight back the Lacvamat and their allies will destroy us long before the Skarrons can get to us. We did not start this fight, but we will defend ourselves. You would do the same if your worlds were to come under attack.”

  OUR WORLDS HAVE COME UNDER ATTACK BY THE CAJDITAL. WE DID NOT WISH TO ABANDON THEM, BUT WE WERE WISE ENOUGH TO REALIZE THAT THEY COULD BE RECLAIMED LATER. MOST OF THE POPULATION OF THIS WORLD CAME FROM LOW PRIORITY WORLDS THAT WE EVACUATED IN ORDER TO PRESERVE OUR MOST VALUABLE ONES. DO NOT LET YOUR PRIDE OVERRIDE YOUR STRATEGIC WISDOM.

  “You would have us concede the worlds the Lacvamat have taken from us?”

  YOU ARE CURRENTLY WASTING VAST AMOUNTS OF RESOURCES TO RETAKE THEM. ARE THEY TRULY SO VALUABLE?

  “They are our home. We will defend our territory no matter how large or small the world may be.”

  THEN YOU WILL BLEED YOUR FLEET DRY.

  “Which is why we need your assistance. We have no wish to annihilate the Lacvamat, merely to recover what is ours and put an end to this.”

  YOUR ATTACK ON THEIR CAPITOL SUGGESTS OTHERWISE.

  “Taking out their leadership was deemed the quickest way to end the war. It would be over by now had their allies not intervened. They had severely overextended themselves.”

  SO YOU BELIEVED. THEY KNEW THEY HAD SUPPORT THAT YOU DID NOT. THAT IS NOT OVEREXTENSION. IT IS AN ERROR ON YOUR PART. YOU SOUGHT THEIR DESTRUCTION AND FAILED. NOW YOU TALK OF PRESERVATION OF LIFE. YOUR MILITARY DOMINANCE OVER THE LACVAMAT HAS BEEN EFFECTIVELY COUNTERED AND YOU HAVE AN EVEN FIGHT BEFORE YOU. WE WILL NOT TIP THE SCALES IN THAT FIGHT.

  “You would have us annihilate each other? How does that benefit the ADZ?”

  IT DOES NOT, BUT NEITHER SIDE IS INCLINED TO DO OTHERWISE. THE SCIONATE WILL NOT YIELD. THE LACVAMAT WILL NOT YIELD
.

  “It is not a matter of who will yield but of who is in the right. They invaded us. We are not at fault. We did not create the bioweapon. The Captain of the ship that exploded in their atmosphere was Scionate, but he was not affiliated with us any more than the independent Lacvamat mercenaries are with their government. We have been wronged, and our blood is running freely. We cannot tolerate this.”

  AND WE CANNOT INTERFERE WHEN WE DO NOT KNOW WHO IS RESPONSIBLE. WE ONLY COMMENT ON THE INEVITABLE OUTCOME. IT IS A WASTE THAT WILL WEAKEN THE ADZ FURTHER.

  “We agree. Something must be done. That is why I have come here to ask for your assistance.”

  THE ASSISTANCE YOU SEEK WILL NOT HAPPEN. WE WILL NOT FIGHT IN THIS WAR. NOT FOR YOU OR THE LACVAMAT.

  “Then fight to stop it.”

  IF SHIPS ARE TO BE DESTROYED THEY WILL NOT BE OURS. WE HAVE BIGGER THREATS FOR THEM TO COUNTER.

  From there on the conversation continued to loop for multiple days as the Scionate tried to plea their case to varying Hycre on the planet, none of which would accede to their requests in even the smallest way. The Scionate diplomat couldn’t understand their resistance, because the Lacvamat were clearly the ones to blame. After the incident with the Humans and the change of bloodline leadership the Scionate had been extremely faithful to the Alliance and they had not initiated this fight, despite their past bad blood with the Lacvamat.

  They had been attacked and defended themselves. The issue with them pulling out from the front so suddenly was a separate matter, with the inclusion of the Gnar and Nammet making it clear that the Scionate didn’t have the luxury of only using part of their military to fight the incursion. They were in a fight for their very survival and had to go all in.

  And that’s what they ended up doing, recruiting allies from every race that would listen, right down to independent military units and mercenaries that were willing to work for hire or favor. With the Hycre unwilling to take sides the Scionate were left on their own…and they were willing to take up that challenge. The condition of the Skarron front concerned them but honestly there was nothing they could do about that now…short of letting the Lacvamat kill them and end the war that way, which was never a thought in any of their minds. Besides, the Lacvamat weren’t going to help out on the front anyway, so the only way to get back to bolstering it was to win the war and free up their troops.

  Now that wasn’t a foregone conclusion. The Scionate were in trouble, having to fight a real war and not just a series of skirmishes, so they pushed aside all thoughts of the Skarrons and focused on their immediate enemies…races they had once called allies or at least associates, and who now were out for their blood.

  6

  July 3, 2553

  Vensi System (Protovic Territory)

  Ven

  “You two ready?” the dropship pilot’s voice asked in their helmets.

  “Always,” Travis answered for the both of them just before the aft boarding ramp cracked open and a flurry of wind shot inside, with both level 2 rangers waiting on the edge in armor and jump packs as a countdown began inside their helmets linked with the navigation system. Both of the twins watched it diminish down to a handful of seconds as the falcon zipped across the mountainous landscape, sometimes so close to peaks that that Karen felt she could literally reach out and touch them.

  There was also the occasional plasma orb visible, shooting up and missing the kamikaze dropship and its insane pilot as they flew deep inside enemy held territory on the last of two contested planets the Skarrons were holding onto in Protovic territory…and holding onto with a vengeance. Most of the Protovic cities had either been evacuated or captured, with a band in the southern hemisphere still inhabited and fueling the planet’s resupply. That band was where the heavy fighting was occurring, with the Skarrons pressing their army advantage even while the naval situation in orbit was up for grabs.

  The Protovic were holding their own up there well, with a bit of assistance from Star Force, though that ‘assistance’ was racking up far more kills per ship given that all of the drones in play were equipped with Talon cannons. Had there been more of them Star Force would have been able to push the Skarrons from orbit, but right now they were just barely managing to keep the Protovic fleets in play as they systematically chewed up ships given their superior gravity drives, often ambushing the enemy reinforcements coming into the planet.

  Virtually everything in the region that the Skarrons were getting past the Voku was coming here, with several other systems having been abandoned or evacuated…with their troops redeployed here or to the neighboring planet in the system, Dahwa, where there was also heavy fighting. Every other star system in Protovic territory was now back in their hands save for one…though most were wrecked beyond immediate repair. Their fleet was also thin, not to the point of cracking, but after so many decades of continuous warfare their numbers were down and they desperately needed a breather to build up their ship count and train new personnel.

  They were throwing most of their remaining army units here, attempting to stall the full Skarron takeover so they wouldn’t have a second uncontested foothold in their territory. Star Force was assisting with what few troops they had available, for most were deployed to Dvapp territory where the Skarrons were making more gains…and with the pullout of the Scionate several of the worlds just on the far side of the border that Star Force had been assaulting, either to reclaim or remove the enemy presence, were now back in Skarron hands and growing, slowly with the lack of adequate supplies, but the longer they were left to develop the easier it would be for the Skarrons to launch future assaults.

  Ven and Dahwa were the key points now. If the Protovic were allowed even a short respite from the war they’d come back stronger than ever and be able to kick the Skarrons out completely. If the Skarrons were able to hold onto and even secure one of the two worlds, let alone both, they’d dig in hard and play the waiting game as they held onto their footholds while the rest of their empire found a way to deal with the Voku on Achkor, and even if the Protovic could reclaim one of the systems they wouldn’t have the strength anytime soon to take the second, meaning the Skarrons were going to be around to stay for a long time.

  A number of reserve Star Force units had been pulled out of the core to replace others in Beta Region on ‘secure’ worlds, freeing up the more veteran units there to redeploy to the front in order to counter the Scionate pullout and make several strategic pushes in key places while the rest of the engagements in 9 systems played for a stall. Some of those were minor league battles now, with neither the Skarrons nor the Alliance sending reinforcements. They had to make do with what they had available, which burned Star Force even more because with the Scionate’s help they could have been able to at least marginally reinforce those positions and sweep away the Skarrons…but right now, even with all the reserves they’d pulled up, their outcome was still up in the air.

  Karen and Travis has been pulled off their special ops work long ago and had spent the past two years fighting on another Protovic world as they maintained their remarkable advancement rate despite their irregular training. Now rangers with Karen holding the barest of leads over Travis in their training marks, they were being deployed into the Skarron rear to cause some havoc…which was what they’d been doing for quite some time now that their commanders had seen what they could do with their battlemeld psionics. Rather than splitting them up, which having two rangers together for these missions would normally have been considered a waste of resources, they were being sent out into more dangerous areas together, always together, and taking down key facilities or drawing heat off the major engagement zones.

  Though in truth what they were doing was minor compared to what was happening down there, but even the loss of 1000 Hobbits could turn the tide in a close engagement, and as of this campaign their kill count stood at 3,421 with an additional 85 Skarrons…which the two were keeping track of by reviewing their helmet telemetry in their few spare hours. />
  In truth they were probably close to 4,000 by now but hadn’t had time to check, just having come out of a mission to reinforce a Protovic army defending a mountain stronghold. They’d gotten there just in time to work their magic and the Protovic had held…barely, but the facility remained in their possession and opened up the surrounding region to future operations rather than forcing the natives to retreat further.

  That was the thing about Ven…it was all mountainous, with not a flat piece of land on the planet aside from the scattering of lakes that dotted the surface, one of which held a Star Force aquatics outpost that the Skarrons had no counter for. It was a strategic stronghold that Karen and Travis were operating out of north of the main inhabited band of cities literally hanging from and drilled into the mountainsides.

  It made a mess of conventional ground warfare, but the giant Skarron walkers were still able to maneuver around better than the Star Force mechs and Protovic tanks…that latter of which could only operate in the wide open ravines, for they had been built heavy enough to tackle the Skarron walkers and no longer had the speed or maneuverability that they needed for traditional engagements. They were literally flying turrets carrying cleansing beams with some smaller versions, none of which could do much to support the infantry in all the nooks and crannies of the mountains.

  Star Force was deploying an army of their smallest mechs, mostly ravens and neos, with the latter being used for their ability to work over the rough terrain with a skilled pilot, but there were so few on the planet compared to what was needed that, while they dominated wherever they were located, the Skarrons’ infantry hoard was winning most of the planet for them…with their walkers coming in only to hit the big defense targets, such as city shields and turrets.