Free Star Force: Revulsion (SF70) by Aer-ki Jyr

capable of fully treating the wounded,
including the regeneration of severed limbs. That would take days, if not weeks
to fully accomplish, but those Protovic that they got back to the jumpships
still alive would all make full recoveries going forward. Those that had missed
their window of opportunity had been mere minutes shy of making an eventual
full recovery.
    That was why rescue
operations couldn’t be delayed and why Mike had ordered them immediately.
Fortunately the lizards didn’t try any shenanigans in planetary orbit while the
operations were going on, but he learned they were doing quite a bit of
relocating throughout the rest of the system now that they knew there was a
Star Force fleet in play. They needed far more ship concentration than they’d
had here to deal with his drones, and by pulling ships in from multiple other
locations they were assembling a big enough armada that Mike’s troops might not
be sufficient to deal with them.
    That meant there was a
lot of strategy needed going forward and the lizards weren’t going to make it
easy on them and keep themselves spread out enough to get picked off in smaller
engagements such as the one they’d just fought and won. Mike didn’t have the
ships he needed to quickly cleanse this system of the invaders, but he could
still do it if he took the patient approach. In lieu of reinforcements that he
didn’t have coming that was how he was going to have to play it, but for the
moment establishing communication with these Protovic was his top priority
after ensuring they got all the survivors recovered.
    By the time Mike got
back to the Archer 7 there was still
no reply from the Protovic in response to any of the languages they attempted,
which was understandable given that these Protovic were obviously not the same
as those they were allied with…unless the red coloration was some secret that Star
Force had never been told about. If these Protovic had split off from the
others a very long time ago then they might not share a similar language now,
but it had been their best bet other than lizard, to which they had not
responded either.
    So Mike took his
Protovic emissary with him to a room on the jumpship that had database access
and pulled up the visual information about the other Protovic and tried to
translate as much nonverbal information as he could to him. He could clearly
sense his shock at seeing the photos, as well as the satisfied conclusion that
if Star Force was allied with the other Protovic then that made them allies of
theirs as well, which was why they’d come to their aid.
    That wasn’t true, for
he’d had no idea this system contained Protovic, but given the lack of
translation he wasn’t going to bother trying to explain that bit of detail,
especially when it seemed that this one was slipping into the role of ally
almost automatically. That was a big step, especially if his kin would reciprocate,
but without a reliable means to communicate with the natives any combat
coordination was going to be limited going forward and Mike knew he couldn’t
just let the lizards have oodles of time to reposition and prepare for the
beatdown that was coming their way. If he made a misstep they’d make him pay
for it, and their victory here was not a sure thing…though he knew if he
handled it correctly the lizards wouldn’t be able to stop them.
    How many Protovic they
killed before then was another matter, for there were still ground campaigns
ongoing. Mike didn’t like the idea of setting down troops without the ability
to talk to the Protovic, for the chances of misunderstandings or paranoia were
high and he wouldn’t stand for a single soldier of his to be killed because of
it.
    He also wasn’t going to
let the lizards have time to kill Protovic while he twiddled his thumbs in
space either, so he had to come up with something.
    After several hours of
tedious telepathic chats with his new friend whom he’d dubbed ‘Candy Cane’ he
let the man