Don't let anyone lie to you.
We knew.
By the second day, we knew what was being asked.
Like Azzy would say: It's our lives to throw away.
But in the end, we didn't throw them away.
Sure, our fights were not as exciting as the space battle. No, it wasn't as amazing as the tanks fighting the Mar-gite hordes, or the robot jocks.
But we fought.
We bled.
We died.
But we did not yield.
And in the end, we proved that we were not the Mar-gite. That we were different then they were.
Our lives were not thrown away. - Yethy Tearloss, Veteran of the Mar-gite Siege of Cygnus-Orion
"Roll ship thirty-five degrees! Up the bow twenty-degrees! Hard to starboard!" Admiral Kra'akenwulf shouted, holding onto the bar in front of him.
He swore he could hear the superstructure groan as his helmsman put the grand ol' dame through the orders.
Like everyone else, he held his breath.
The Mar-gite spears had been drifting silently for who knew how long and his ship had almost missed them. Only an active scan on a shadow that one of the sensor techs spotted had revealed them.
Less than 10K from The Iron Fist of the Voter and rapidly incoming.
Something snapped deep in the hull and the The Iron Fist of the Voter shuddered slightly.
Kra'akenwulf held fast to his faith in the ship's engineers.
After all, the ship was still in the fight.
"KILL PORT BATTLESCREENS!" he shouted over the groan of stressed metal.
The Mar-gite spears slid by.
On the hull, one of the engineer crew welding patches and strut braces where the Mar-gite had gotten into the ship looked up.
One of the spears was close enough to touch. Made up entirely of calcified Mar-gite linked together and crushed down. The engineers could see how the Mar-gite were crushed down into little shapes no larger than their hands. The crackling of some kind of energy moved up and down the spear.
One of the Engineers got a scanner up in time for it to run the length of the spear. Not the normal kind of deep space scanner, but the kind used to identify energies coming off of a damaged piece of equipment.
It took nearly a full minute for the spear to slide by, the ship moving away from it slowly.
Then it was past, heading toward a looping course that would end with it plunging into the stellar mass several months later.
Kra'akenwulf coughed and used the suction device to get rid of the phlegm and saliva he'd coughed up.
In the hologram field of one of the holotanks was displaying HURDY HURDY HURR YOU ARE NOW STUPID HURRR in base white bold letters.
Kra'akenwulf had made a note in his personal log to buy shares in the Eyeli'ikmo'ny Industrial Concern.
There was another white flash that filled the world.
The lights clicked loudly twice before coming back on staying on.
The cybernetics held this time, the new software and firmware patches holding. Sure, it felt like the hide around the datalink panel was blistering.
But he wasn't bleeding from any of his eyes.
"Sir, High Mutator reports that preliminary trials are showing promise," his commo officer called out.
Kra'akenwulf turned to the commo tech. "And that means?"
"They're moving to stage two trials," he looked confused. "They're running mutations. I'm still trying to understand the lexicon, but it looks like they've got genetic and biological warfare trials going on."
"Tell them to keep me appraised," Kra'akenwulf said.
"Captain MacSato signals that initial landing are providing reinforcements when needed," another commo officer called out. A glance showed a small hologram of a cartoon human twirling and dancing with sparkles going off around her.
A far cry from the massive ship that was firing with all guns, hammering the Mar-gite clusters.
"NEW CONTACT! TEN! TWENTY! MANY MANY POINT SOURCES!" was called out.
The ships appeared at the edge of the system with a flare of jumpspace energy, including the odd 'thrum' improperly tuned or primitive jumpspace drives were known for.
"New ships are near commo buoys. Initiating contact!"
This tale has been pilfered from NovelBin. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Kra'akenwulf just nodded.
The fleets guns were already firing at the Mar-gite, not bothering with formalities.
"Incoming signal!"
Holotank twenty-nine flickered.
What looked like a particularly large brown rat appeared, standing upright and wearing a severe uniform.
"The Emperor has blessed you with the might of the Nineteenth Fleet!" the female rodent called out. "The Dra.Falten are here to ensure that you do not pass on!"
Six days. We've been fighting for six days and more and more keep showing up.
Why?
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
If they bust past those four worlds in the Kra'at Systems, then there are literally tens of thousands of stars they will have quick access too. We've got an idea how long even the Tetra and Petra classes can last without a stellar mass to pull energy from or a world, comet, or Oort cloud to siphon off of.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
But there has to be a better strategy than just 'throw everything and everyone at them' that you're doing!
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
In any other military conflict, yes.
But these are the Mar-gite, kid.
And they've brought friends and new tricks.
The only way to beat the Mar-gite is to have enough guns to kill all of them.
Besides, the Kra'at Systems are doing something aside from 'throw everything' at them.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
What?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
HAT WEARING AUNTIE
It isn't for you to worry about.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
I'm a full member. What is going on out there.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
HAT WEARING AUNTIE
The Kra'at Tyrant doesn't like you. He shared the knowledge with the expressed condition that you not be told.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Doesn't like me? Why not?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
He says you're a little snitch and a back stabber.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
I'm a full member. What are they doing they don't want me to know about?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
"...in position," the bridge officer said.
High Lord Tyrant Tharmurk stared at the planets in the holographic display.
Four beautiful xenoformed planets. Paradise planets.
She looked at the star.
A stellar mass in the high yellow grade. A beauty all it's own.
She had grown up on that third planet. The planet had born witness to her childhood victories, defeats, and struggles.
A trick of placement of the satellites showed a small area of woodland near the western coast of a northern continent.
I had my first kiss there, she thought to herself. It was a spring night. The fireflies were out. I'd snuck away from summer camp to meet him.
His name was Karmaki. Terrance Karmaki. He's a systems analyst now, with a wife and four children.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
My mother and father still live in the house I grew up in. They're still there, right now. Maybe watching the Tri-Vee.
On another tank another six of the massive Tetra Clusters appeared, heading for the planets.
Forgive me.
"Initiate," she whispered.
It was loud, almost thunderous in the silence of the bridge.
A single command was given.
The stellar mass suddenly compressed as the artificial singularity appeared inside of it. Mass was crushed down, gravity increased.
The light of the star went out.
The charges went off.
All of them.
The four supermassive gas giants. The three gas giants. The six planetary bodies.
All of them were torn apart as the gravity inside the cores increased.
They were no longer visible, light no longer able to escape and be reflected to show the image of the planets.
The charges went off in the Oort Cloud.
The entire Oort Cloud exploded in flame.
For a second High Lord Tyrant Tharmurk's ship, the Neverending Duty, was inside an empty area inside an inferno.
"We have detonation," she heard.
"Go to lightspeed," she ordered.
Part of her wanted to stay. Wanted to see the stellar mass go hypernova, see the planetary masses explode when the singularity cohesion failed.
But she had her orders.
Just like the other twelve ships at twelve other stars had their orders.
She set her jaw as the ship streaked into Q-Space, that strange superluminal space that only existed in the Kra'at Systems.
Not one more inch.
0-0-0-0-0
Volunteer Az'zkykrmo'o kicked once, twice, three times, each kick exploding Mar-gite into rags of tissue. Only one of his graviton boots was working, the other having blown out nearly three minutes before.
Long, eternal minutes.
He whirled, hipchecked a Mar-gite against a dumpster and stabbed it deep with the bayonet of his magac, pulling the trigger twice to prevent hydrostatic clinging from keeping the bayonet in the wound via suction.
He ducked under a Mar-gite dart that slammed into the wall and blew through eight inches of ceramacrete to explode in the room beyond. He turned and fired as the Mar-gite flexed to throw more explosive darts.
Yee was clubbing Mar-gite down with her rocket launcher, swinging with both hands, her helmet sliding around her head.
Breaker was standing on a dumpster, firing his weapon at the Mar-gite.
The four Solarians were fighting with fists wreathed in purple and red arcs of electricity. They stomped, punched, grabbed, and tore apart the Mar-gite with bare hands. They were covered in sharp spikes that rebuffed the Mar-gite's attempts to grab onto them.
The squad was pinned down, Mar-gite swarming from every direction.
"...transmit till final..." Breaker was saying, still shooting. "We are being overrun with overwhelming..."
The roar consumed the worlds as the wall of the short warehouse across the street exploded outward.
A massive tank roared into the parkinglot, crushing what Mar-gite didn't explode into gobs of tissue on contact with the battlescreen. The massive tanks point defense, infinite repeaters, and APERS weapons were firing at full speed, shredding everything they targeted.
Azzy saw the rounded point down egg shape with a Lanaktallan head and a black stripe, with 112 - D- 3/67 underneath it.
"TANK! TANK!" Yee yelled, jumping up and down, waving her rocket launcher even as she adjusted her helmet.
The tank kept moving forward, the guns hammering.
The Mar-gite were forced back.
Well, the tank's wealth of guns turned everything into chunky salsa further and further back.
The APERS strips went off again with a yellow and red flash that had a bluish-white core and every Mar-gite in two hundred feet vaporized.
Azzy smashed down one of the last Mar-gite, nimbly darting out of the way, and raking it across the back of the center mass.
The tank moved up and stopped.
Azzy saw "Bird Fart" written on the barrel of the main gun and a cartoon image of a pale female human with a strange red and blue outfit on the side. Above her head was a cartoon speech bubble that went "And then the bird farted really loudly" with "Best Girl" underneath.
For a long moment there was almost silence.
Azzy had never actually seen a tank before.
Nothing had prepared him for the sheer presence of 1,000 metric long tonnes of war machine.
A hatch opened up and someone half popped out.
"You guys OK?" the guy yelled through the tank's speakers.
"We need refit. Your creation engine working?" Breaker asked.
The guy nodded. "Sure does."
"Is there anywhere to get some rest? My guys have been running steady for nearly thirty hours," Breaker said.
"Yeah. We can give you a lift to Firebase Angel," the tanker said.
The forward battlescreen turned pink.
"Climb up on the back deck," he said.
"All right, everyone, let's go," Breaker said. "We're all gonna get us some free Bubble Up and some Rainbow Stew," the SNCO said.
Azzy gave a sigh, closing his eyes for a moment.
There was a faint white flash through the dust followed by rumbling.
"Come on, squad, get moving," Breaker said.
"Huh, I'll be damned," Azzy said, following Breaker.
"What?" Vee Vee asked.
"We're alive."