Free Star Force: Internecine (SF55) by Aer-ki Jyr Page B

Scionate
their asses where the reserve should have been true, both out thinking and out
maneuvering the dominate military power and putting them on the defensive, but
with no planning for the long term or how it would affect the ADZ as a whole.
    If the front fell the Skarrons would come in and wipe
out the Lacvamat, which would make this war all but pointless.
    Then again blood feuds rarely made sense outside their
fanatical context, which was why the Admiral wasn’t entirely sure the Lacvamat
would avoid the Star Force world. It was small and isolated, and if they truly
wanted to control the system they’d have to take it out…which would put them at
war with an opponent far more powerful than the Scionate but so overwhelmed
with the Skarrons that they couldn’t do much at the moment.
    At the Sentinel incident they hadn’t fired on any Star
Force craft or facility, they merely braved the weaponsfire to get at the
Scionate, showing that they weren’t going to listen to Star Force’s edicts, but
then again they weren’t, Victor hoped, stupid enough to cross the line into
actually fighting them.
    As the updated reports made their way across the
system and to the command center the Admiral watched with keen interest how the
combined Lacvamat/Gnar fleet systematically drove the Scionate out of orbit,
with many of the ships fleeing to elsewhere in the system but the attackers
didn’t follow them. Instead they held onto low orbit and began landing a large
number of troop ships, some of which were Nammet but
none Gnar . They opened up three different ground
invasion sites and went about the process of what looked like a legitimate grab
for the world.
    Victor couldn’t do anything about it, given that his
orders were not to waste ships on their blood feud, but he hated watching a
fight going on nearby and sitting it out. The Scionate also sent out a plea for
help the second day, which he had to grudgingly refuse. This war never should
have been happening, but given that it was the Scionate were the defenders. He
didn’t know about the legitimacy of the bioweapon attack, but the Lacvamat were
the ones to start the actual fighting and he really didn’t like having to leave
their insystem neighbors vulnerable when they were being assaulted.
    He had to keep reminding himself of the Skarron threat
and that his ships would eventually end up fighting there, as would he once the
reinforcements arrived. He’d be transitioning out with a new commander coming
in, for his stay here was just a temporary one.
    But none of that mattered to his gut. Combat was going
down and he wasn’t involved…and that just felt wrong.
    8 days later the situation changed when a relief fleet
arrived from the Hammids and Victor took keen interest in seeing how they were
going to fight. To date they hadn’t taken part in
combat on either front, but for some reason they’d sided with the Scionate and,
so far as he’d been updated, this was the first time their troops were being
thrown into battle.
    Their fleet wasn’t large, but it was strong enough to
defend itself and the massive number of transports it was escorting down to the
surface. Victor wished he had some surface surveillance posts or even some
stealth drones in play, but he didn’t. All he could see was from high orbit and
where the ships went, with only a very tiny glimpse at what was happening down
on the planet.

 
    Nammti was riding in one of
the first transports to go down, her wings tucked in closely as she and her broodmates were packed together in a rack so cramped it was
hard to breathe as they waited to be released into open air. Her feathery wings
were stiff and cramping from the long wait that had her cooped up with the rest
of them prior to arrival in the system so they could be deployed tactically
once they arrived no matter what the circumstances were.
    She didn’t know any more now than she did before
loading, but when the signal came the floor beneath her feet opened