Star Force: Retribution (SF60) by Aer-ki Jyr Read Free Book Online

Neither faction saw it as anything but positive,
though there was a subnote that indicated that
hitting another ring in the near future wasn’t an option for lack of available
ships.
    Roger obviously had a problem with that, as did Paul
and Star Force in general, but the Nexus was completely oblivious to the horror
they’d just committed, trading away people’s lives as they had. Each one of
those deaths was a defeat, a loss, but like the lizards they just saw those
crews as replaceable assets rather than prizes to be safeguarded. They’d just
handed them to the enemy in what arguably was the biggest tower dive Paul had
ever read about. Even the V’kit’no’sat were never this sloppy, despite the
drastic lengths they sometimes went to achieve objectives.
    The Nexus had sent those troops in without any
intention of them surviving. They simply wanted the shipyard dead and knew
their superior technology would allow the ships to survive long enough to
accomplish their objective if they went full bore against it and didn’t get
distracted with anything so trivial as defending
themselves.
    Paul pounded the armrest of his chair again, this time
standing up and walking around to the back of it and gripping the top of the
cushion with both hands in a stranglehold.
    “What’s wrong?” the Captain asked, spinning around in
his own chair to face him.
    “The Nexus has taken out a lizard ring in one of their
core worlds.”
    The Captain’s eyes widened in surprise, then just as
quickly narrowed again in suspicion. “What’s the bad news?”
    “They sacrificed almost all of a combined H’kar and
Gfatt fleet in order to do it…including several of the commanders we’ve been
training to avoid that kind of stupidity!” Paul finished with a half yell.
    The Captain was silent for a moment, as was the bridge
crew, and he let the Archon have a moment before he spoke again, seeing that he
was clearly fuming. “How many?”
    “18 million H’kar, and around 12 million Gfatt,” Paul
said, squeezing his eyes shut at the horrific numbers. Those were all soldiers
who had trained long and hard to develop their skills, serving their races for
years upon years…and now they were gone, not because the enemy had surprised
them or overwhelmed them, but because their leaders had decided to trade their
lives away in exchange for a damn shipyard.
    “No matter how powerful the Nexus is, they can’t
afford to lose that many ships.”
    “No they can’t,” Paul agreed, “but it’s their typical
bluff. Hit the enemy hard and in place that really hurts them and hope they
back down or submit. We know that won’t happen with the lizards. The H’kar
should know that won’t happen with the lizards, they’ve been fighting them
longer than we have.”
    “How vulnerable do you think this makes the H’kar?”
    Paul shook his head. “I don’t know. If they expected
to lose the fleet then they should have more than enough to hold their
territory without them, but it’s going to seriously inhibit their ability to
push back on the creep advance. This was stupid no matter how you slice it, but
all they can see is the big prize they bagged.”
    Another moment of silence followed before the Captain
spoke.
    “Do you need to go somewhere else?”
    Paul sighed. “I want to beat the brains out of the
H’kar, but that’s already being handled by others. No, go ahead and get us
moving. We’ve got a mission list to complete.”
    “Do you have all the data you need?”
    “Yeah. I’m going to go through it more closely before
I send any messages, so there’s no need to wait. I’ll be in the sanctum hitting
something,” Paul said, spinning around and walking off the bridge.
    “Get us to the Jaxvot jumppoint,” the Captain told the helmsman after he’d left. “And be glad you
were born Human and not H’kar.”
    “Very glad,” the helmsman muttered, plotting the
course and goosing the gravity drives enough to get them moving around