Free Omega Force 5: Return of the Archon by Joshua Dalzelle

begin his education and training after his first year of life.
    Jason leaned back, absorbing the condensed history lesson he’d just read through. There were some parallels that could be found between the Galvetic warriors and some of Earth’s ancient warrior cultures, but the geltens had taken the idea to extremes. The most obvious of these would be the Spartan army in the fifth century B.C., soldiers trained from infancy to stand head and shoulders above their contemporary peers.
    “Now this is interesting,” Jason murmured to himself, scrolling up through a different file.
    “What’s interesting?” Kage asked as he walked onto the bridge, chewing loudly on what looked like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Jason had programmed the childhood staple into the Phoenix’s food processing unit, and the rest of the crew quickly became borderline addicts.
    “What have I told you about eating on the flight deck?” Jason asked pointedly, ignoring his friend’s question. Kage stuffed the entire remaining half of the sandwich into his mouth and began slowly chewing it, his cheeks puffed out and synthesized grape jelly dribbling out of one corner. He wiped all four hands on his shirt and held them up for inspection. Jason shuddered, mildly disgusted. “That’s a technicality,” he said. “Just sit down and wipe your mouth off.”
    “So what was interesting?” Kage said after he’d managed to choke the sticky sandwich down. Having nothing to rinse it down with, however, he was struggling to work his mouth to get the words out.
    “I was wondering how the Galvetic Legions were such an effective fighting force given that they remain isolated with almost no real-world experience,” Jason said, doing his best to ignore the sounds coming from the copilot’s seat. “You can’t train in a bubble, no matter how capable your soldiers are. It looks like they knew this as well. I’m reading a whole dissertation on tactical experts and elite military units that have been invited to Restaria, sometimes under the pretense of training exercises, other times to participate in games. But in all these cases, the Galvetic warriors were able to use what they learned and adapt their tactics. This is incredible … without fighting a single major engagement, they’ve somehow made themselves into the preeminent infantry unit in the galaxy.”
    “But how useful is that in modern warfare?” Kage asked, pulling up the same documents at his own station. “I mean, even a thousand Crushers isn’t a whole lot of good when you’re getting bombarded from orbit by starships.”
    “Sheer firepower doesn’t always win wars,” Jason said. “From my own experience, I can tell you that there’s never a substitute for well-trained, disciplined, and motivated soldiers.”
    “So you’re saying that a ConFed battle wagon makes orbit, turns the surface of a planet into molten slag, and somehow a group of ground pounders will make a difference?” Kage asked scornfully.
    “You’re talking about something else,” Jason argued. “The point of war is to achieve a political objective or capture territory. You’re talking about annihilating an entire planet.”
    “For some species that is war,” Kage said.
    “Not in this area of space,” Jason retorted. “At least not that I’ve seen.”
    “Whatever,” Kage said, losing interest. “Let’s just agree to disagree.”
    *****
    “Here are the pass codes for the first watch station,” Connimon said, passing a data pad to Kage. He accepted and began configuring one of the Phoenix’s com transponders to transmit the provided codes.
    They’d popped back into real-space outside of Galvetor Prime’s heliopause. Since their ultimate target was Restaria, Connimon said their best bet would be to sneak into the system and not bother with any attempted subterfuge that would be required if they were to enter the normal traffic of the system. To that end, she had promised to provide the bypass