Free Star Force: Resurrection (SF84) (Star Force Origin Series) by Aer-ki Jyr Page B

and still living was a stroke of
crazy luck…so much so that Greg had the mastermind thoroughly scanned for
booby-traps of any known kind just in case this was a Trojan horse to get at
the Archons.
    Greg suspected it wasn’t, but he didn’t want to take
chances. The lizards here were beat, but they were making Star Force fight
tooth and nail for every last bit of ground. This invasion could have been over
years ago if only Greg and the other trailblazers had authorized total
bombardment from orbit, obliterating every last thing on the surface and most
of the subsurface. There would have been pockets of survivors underground that
could have been hunted down and killed or left to starve to death afterwards,
but Star Force was not going to fight like that.
    He knew they were making this harder on themselves,
but they were not going to become barbaric. The lizards were going to have a
chance to surrender, each of them as they came into their areas, and Greg would
be damned if they ever got in the habit of just shooting them on sight before
they had a choice. Star Force was not going to become the lizards in order to
defeat them. If they had to be killed, then so be it…but it would be done Star
Force’s way on honorable terms, no matter if the conquest of this system took a
century to complete.
    The same was true of the assaults happening in other
star systems, for Star Force wasn’t just fighting here. This was the most
heavily fortified lizard system by far, and while there were other nasty core
worlds to tackle there were probably not going to be any like this again. This
was going to be the worst of it, and even if the lizards were building a new
capitol in the coreward region it would take an insanely long time to develop
it to the extent that even one of these six planets had risen to.
    All of them were essentially one big city split up
into shielded segments, and all of them stretched far underground where orbital
rounds could not follow. Every building, every subsurface level, had to be
fought into and cleared, looking out for explosives and other booby-traps, and
sealed off so the lizards couldn’t flank the invading troops and get into areas
already cleared. It was an insanely difficult task that Star Force now achieved
almost casually…unless you were on the ground, where you realized the enormity
of the endeavor and just how damn good the troops being deployed actually were.
    And now the Star Force type of war was giving them an
added benefit of a mastermind prisoner. With the templars and sovereigns all
assumed to have been evacuated there was no chance of catching one of them
here, but needle in the hay stack was an overly generous comparison to this
situation where you had trillions of lizards and planets full of infrastructure
to hide in. Greg was overly pleased that their methodical assaults had paid off
in this lucky stroke, and neither he nor the other trailblazers were going to
waste the opportunity it gave them.
    None of them were here yet, busy with other things in
the system, so Greg was going to have first crack at him. When he arrived back
on his flagship he headed straight to the holding cell, entering in his pink
ViLord armor that had a few scratches on it from recent battle. It stood out
brightly compared to the already gleaming white armor of the Knights standing
guard, who nodded down at him as he walked past them.
    Greg retracted his helmet and looked at the nearby
medtechs. “Learn anything yet?”
    “Cognitive density is far larger than the librarians. I’m
guessing this variant is by far the smartest the lizards have…though without
being able to examine a templar I can’t say that for certain. It’s no wonder
these guys are used as their battlefield commanders.”
    “Much more than that, I’d guess. Find any bioweapons
in him?”
    “No. All indications are he was really caught unawares
and his imprisonment was an accident.”
    “Good. Wake him,” Greg said as he took a step