They Answered The Call

CWS Ancestor's Glory-Flagship of the Commonwealth Liberation Navy

Therax finished reading the updated intelligence file that was sent by his spy, who was embedded in the Commonwealth Capitol on the Ominian home world. After Grand Admiral Sarix launched his rebellion, it spread like wildfire through the ranks of the navy and the army of the nearby systems.

Crews turned on each other as rebels and loyalists tried to seize the vessels they were serving on, and dozens of vessels fired on each other as the rebellion devolved into a full-blown civil war across dozens of systems.

The Nekuli had an advantage as they constituted a large percentage of the military, and the actions of the despotic Commonwealth government had alienated other member species on the ships who happily joined the ranks of the rebels.

When Grand Admiral Sarix sent a fleet to the Jaleeni system to reinforce the remnants of the survivors who fought to protect the evacuation, he collected evidence of the Commonwealth abandonment of the Jaleeni and the sacrifice of the entire Republic fleet, sending almost a hundred drones to the remaining member systems and broadcasting the truth.

The Jaleeni Chief Minister made a speech that was disseminated by the drones. The Chief Minister spoke of the arrival of the Insectoid fleet and the doom that they knew was about to befall them until the Republic and rebel fleets arrived and destroyed the first invasion at great cost.

The Chief Minister told of how, when the second Insectoid fleet arrived, far further in the system than they had ever managed before, he expected the few remaining Republic ships to flee. They did not flee. They fought the second fleet and wiped it out too, sacrificing themselves for the Jaleeni.

He showed evidence of how the inadequate Commonwealth fleet in the system disobeyed their orders to abandon the Jaleeni when the Insectoids arrived. He showed evidence of the distress call from his government going unanswered.

He played the recording of his conversation with Vice-Admiral Zhou and showed the recording of the final acts of the Republic ships ramming the new battlehives in a desperate ploy to save his people.

Sarix also included the evidence of the orbital bombardment of Filat Prime and the brutal subjugation of the Filatin people, as well as the efforts of the Commonwealth government to suppress news of their actions by illegally interning the crews of the ships on a border outpost and telling their families that they were missing in action.

The drones were sent all over Commonwealth space, and despite the efforts of the government to suppress the truth, it rapidly spread throughout the member worlds, turning the spark of rebellion into a full-scale conflagration that engulfed all the members of the Commonwealth.

Within six months, the Commonwealth government was forced to retreat to the four remaining loyalist systems that still supported them. The loyalist systems were isolated from each other, further straining the capabilities of the dwindling loyalist forces and preventing them from being able to support each other.

The rebel fleets laid siege to the systems, and by the eighth month of the rebellion, two loyalist systems surrendered unconditionally after collapsing economically from the lack of vital trade goods and resources. The remaining two systems were among the oldest and most developed core worlds and were better able to withstand the effects of the blockades.

The two remaining holdouts were the home worlds of the Ominians and the Grimiisa, and they fortified their systems with massive minefields, booby traps, and hundreds of AI-controlled ships that were armed with outlawed fusion missiles.

Now, a year after the start of the rebellion, Therax was leading the blockade of the Ominians, while his clutch sister and father were doing the same to the Grimiisa. The intelligence file he had just finished reading gave him a headache, and he pulled a sub-dermal injector out of his desk drawer. He pressed it to his wrist, hoping that the analgesic was strong enough to eliminate the knife that was stabbing him behind his eyeballs.

The Ominians had been busy, and they used the two shipyards that were in their system to create thousands of small, unmanned ships that were intended to be used to ram the rebel ships and overload their cores. The spy indicated that the Ominians got the idea from the Republic ships in the Jaleeni system.

The spy, a Grimiisan admiral that Therax had known since they were in the academy together, was adamant that the Ominians sole purpose was to ensure that any invasion attempt would turn into a bloodbath and either cripple or destroy the rebel fleet.

He also forwarded secret plans by the Ominian government to take the remaining two hundred Commonwealth warships they controlled, along with five million of the most prominent citizens, and flee towards the galactic core and rebuild the Commonwealth with them as the supreme rulers.

They would abandon the remaining five billion Ominians to the fury of the rebel fleet, along with their last loyal allies, the Grimiisa, to suffer the consequences. The sheer selfishness and cowardice of their intentions made Therax sick to his stomach, and he vowed to make them pay.

He could not blockade the Ominians forever; they had a tremendous number of resources in the system and could continue to build more forts, ships, and other defensive measures throughout their system. They would continue turning themselves into an impenetrable fortress that would fester like a sore in the very heart of Commonwealth space.

He had only one option, and he would require the help of the Republic. He activated his communications relay and sent a coded message to Admiral Thompson’s flagship, requesting to speak with him. He leaned back in his chair and ate from the plate of raw shikal meat that his aide had brought for him over an hour ago while he waited for the connection to be made.

Ten minutes later, the connection was made. He sat upright on his chair, wiping his mouth with a napkin to remove any traces of blood that may have been there from the shikal meat before opening the channel.

Admiral Thompson appeared, and Therax bowed his head slowly, the admiral returning the gesture. Therax was extremely uncomfortable with having to do this, still burdened by the guilt he felt for the death of Mei Zhou. He felt like there was a change in their relationship, despite the many attempts by Admiral Thompson to assure him that he bore Therax no ill will.

Therax spoke first, pressing an icon on his desk panel and sending the intelligence file to the admiral. “This is the latest report on the Ominian system. Any attempt to invade will result in the loss of hundreds of ships and tens of thousands of rebels.”

Admiral Thompson looked over to his right and read the report, his eyes moving swiftly, before turning back to look at Therax. “Those bastards are playing for keeps, huh? An invasion would be a bloody affair, Commodore. What are you thinking?" He asked, leaning back in his chair.

Therax looked down at his desk and played with his writing stylus as he replied. “I would like to officially request that your government ask the Ma’lit Domain to intervene on our behalf. The Ominians are in violation of the Treaty of Sirius, and I want the Republic to invoke Article 3, Subsection 1A.”

Therax looked back up at the admiral as the admiral whistled slowly at what Therax had just asked him to do. “Commodore, I find it highly unlikely that the Ma’lit will get involved, even with evidence that the Ominians have deployed and threatened to use fusion missiles. The very fact that the Commonwealth has fallen into civil war almost guarantees that they will view this as an internal matter and not subject to the Treaty of Sirius.”

“I need you to try, Admiral. There has already been too much death and suffering. I cannot preside over the wholesale slaughter of my fleet with a slim chance of victory. I saw that happen in the Jaleeni system.” Therax winced as soon as his words left his mouth. Why did you say that? You are a fool! He screamed at himself in his head, seeing his words change the admiral’s facial expression.

Admiral Thomspon’s eyes took on a haunted look, and he grimaced as he replied stiffly to Therax. “I am well aware of that, Therax. I will pass on your request to my superiors. Good day, Commodore.” And he leaned forward and stabbed a finger at his desk, abruptly closing the channel.

Therax put his head in his hands, cursing himself for his blunder. He remained in that position for a few moments before he wearily lifted his head and fumbled for the sub-dermal injector in the draw, his headache back with a vengeance.

He signaled for his senior staff to come to his office and started pulling up all the plans they had been working on for the last few days. He had to decide and act on it soon, before the Ominians continued to fortify their system beyond his ability to invade. He glanced at a holo photo on the desk, a gift from the parents of Mei Zhou.

It showed Mei on a beach smiling happily, her arms wrapped around her canine pet that had its long tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth, baring all its fangs in true happiness. After the memorial service, her elderly parents shuffled up to him, where he was lingering on the outskirts, feeling as if he did not belong there.

They introduced themselves to him, and he had felt an overwhelming desire to flee from them, sure that they were going to accuse him of killing their daughter. Instead, the father and mother both shook hands and politely asked for a moment of his time, gesturing to a nearby bench.

They walked over to it, and he waited for them to be seated first before kneeling on the grass in front of them. Her mother spoke first, thanking him for delivering the last words of their daughter before the fateful battle that ended her life. She pulled out a small data chip, and a hologram of the vice-admiral popped up.

She was in uniform, and she had recorded the message before going into battle, surrounded by a privacy screen that blocked out the rest of the bridge. She told them that she loved them, that she was sorry for not coming home, and asked them to understand why. The last part of her message was a request for them to speak to Therax and to let him know that it was okay.

He saw the small package her father was holding, and he handed it to Therax before bending over and embracing him. Her mother got off the bench and did the same, and then they left him, shuffling away as they grasped each other by the hands. He remained there for a long time, staring at the wrapped package, before he worked up the courage to remove the outer wrapping.

It was the photo that he now had on his desk, and he stayed there for hours afterwards, staring at the photo before members of his bridge crew approached him and took their grieving commodore back to his ship.

“I miss you, Mei; I wish you were here to tell me what to do.” He whispered to himself. His aide entered his office a moment later, followed by the rest of his staff. He finally looked away from the photo of his clan leader and friend, the void of her absence still as large today as it was when he watched her die.

After many hours of planning and wargaming, they finally agreed on a plan that offered the best chance of successfully invading with the lowest projected casualties of at least 50% of his eleven hundred strong fleet. He ordered the fleet to prepare to launch the invasion thirty hours later, and he dismissed his staff.

The next day was filled with frantic preparations as he readied his fleet for the coming battle and had all his task force commanders come to the flagship to finalize the invasion plans. The fleet was topped off with fuel and munitions, and he had a final meeting with all the commanders before they ate together in the dining hall.

Therax opened a small cask of human mead that was gifted to him by the clan leader when he had the first dinner with her on her ship, and he went around filling the glasses before they toasted the fallen of the Jaleeni system. Afterwards, he went to his quarters and slept for four hours, anxious about the coming battle.

The following morning, Therax was on his bridge as his fleet assumed their final formations before flashing into null space. They emerged in the outer system outside the range of the Ominian defenses, and he issued his final orders before the fleet flashed back into null space and emerged as separate task forces scattered throughout the system.

The invasion had begun.

His task force was responsible for taking on a section of defensive forts that ringed the system along the boundary between the outer and the inner systems. They were massive constructs that had the largest particle beam weapons ever constructed by the Commonwealth. They were powered by multiple reactors, granting them twice the hitting power and allowing them to outrange his weapons by almost 15,000 kilometers.

His ships would be forced to advance through their deadly fire for thousands of kilometers before his own weapons came into range. He wished that the Republic had been able to join him in the fight or at least send some of their shielded nullships.

They were currently occupied with multiple clearing operations, and most of their expeditionary forces were in the dead zone, patrolling the original borders of the Insectoid Empire that the Insectoids withdrew to for unknown reasons.

The Republic government supported the rebellion immensely with intelligence, supplies, munitions, and automated repair ships. They felt that the overt involvement of Republic ships in the rebellion would do more harm than good, and his father concurred, saying that some of the members that joined the rebellion would see it as an unwelcome interference in an internal matter.

He ordered the taskforce engineers to push the reactors to 115%, ignoring their warnings about overloads and failures. He had no choice in the matter; he needed to get into weapons range as quickly as possible, and every second he lingered in the mismatched particle range was a death sentence to his ships.

The engines accelerated beyond their rated output, pressing him against his chair and making it difficult to breathe as the gravity dampeners struggled to compensate for forces beyond their operating threshold. He grimaced as several bright lights flared on the viewscreen, the unlucky ships being turned back into their constituent atoms as the powerful particle beams found them.

After 45 painful seconds of acceleration and the loss of sixteen ships despite the evasion protocols, Therax issued a command to cut thrust by ¾ and felt blessed relief as the hundreds of pounds of pressure lifted off him. They had finally entered weapons range, and the battle AI instituted preprogrammed evasive maneuvers as his ship targeted one of the massive particle beam ports.

A volley of plasma torpedoes and particle beams erupted from the bow of his ship, and he watched as the beams weakened the armored cover that slid down to the particle beam port before the plasma torpedoes struck in rapid succession, destroying it.

All around him, his task force ships were doing the same as the fort’s secondary batteries targeted them, damaging and crippling dozens of vessels as the fort fought back against the invaders. He was losing too many ships already, and he still had four more forts to attack after they rendered this one inoperative.

He sent a coded command into null space, and a few seconds later, a squadron of four Xenxin dreadnoughts flashed out a thousand kilometers from the fort. These new heavy units were the result of a collaboration between Xenxin and Republic ship designers, and Xenxin shipyards armed the ship with the newest version of the Republic railguns, the Mark-36.

The Mark-36 fired a 14-inch-diameter slug, and the dreadnoughts fielded two 120-meter-long spinal-mounted batteries along the dorsal and ventral axes, for a total of four railguns. The squadron of dreadnoughts opened fire, and sixteen slugs hit the main hub of the fort 11 seconds later, tearing it apart as kilotons of energy were released by the impacts.

The dreadnoughts pivoted, bringing their port and broadside batteries of the smaller Mark-16 and Mark-24 railgun batteries into play, firing dozens of slugs towards the remains of the central hub as they ponderously engaged in evasive maneuvers.

The fort had eight arms that jutted out from the central hub, and four of them were still functional and firing as their independent backup reactors went to full power. The reactors fed the undamaged particle beam ports that remained as they drifted away from the destroyed central hub, firing their positioning thrusters to line up their shots.

The four drifting sections targeted a single dreadnought, and Therax watched as the port-side armor plating boiled under the onslaught of the kinetic energy of the sub-atomic particles impacting it. The arms fired again, and the invisible particle beams punched through the now-slagged armor and penetrated the hull, spearing through the ship and destroying power transmission lines and plasma conduits.

The dreadnought lost power and continued its trajectory, unable to change its course as it drifted. The arms targeted it again, hitting the aft section and rupturing the cores, causing them to overload and destroy the ship in a massive explosion that also took out two nearby destroyers.

The drifting segments targeted another dreadnought, severely damaging it as the three ships returned fire, finally destroying two of them as his task force took out the rest. Therax listened as the battle AI listed the number of ships destroyed and damaged, and he flicked his head in disbelief at the toll the fort exacted on them.

He had lost thirty-six ships, and dozens more had been moderately to severely damaged in the process of destroying the massive and heavily armed fort. Elsewhere in the system, other task forces were suffering the same loss and damage rate. Only four of the twelve forts had been destroyed thus far, at the cost of 136 ships destroyed and hundreds more damaged.

He needed to change his tactics, and it was a very bloody and expensive lesson to find out what kind of upgrades the Ominians made to the century-old forts in preparation for the invasion. There were now only eleven dreadnoughts remaining, and he ordered the three squadrons to flash into null space.

As his battered task force reorganized for the assault on the next fort, he had the dreadnought squadrons flash out at the next fort outside of its weapons range and launch their Mark-36 railgun slugs from 75,000 kilometers, saturating the area around the targeted fort.

The long range allowed for the fort to activate its thrusters and central hub engines, and the massive fort slowly moved and tilted itself, taking advantage of the thirteen-and-a-half-minute travel time of the slugs to dodge some of the strikes towards the central hub, though a few of them managed to hit and cause tremendous damage.

The dreadnoughts, to preserve their dwindling Mark-36 stocks for the other remaining forts, pivoted again, bringing their smaller and more numerous Mark-24 and Mark-16 turrets to bear. After lining up their shots and sending a volley of the smaller rounds towards the fort, they flashed into null space and headed to another fort to repeat the process.

Despite the efforts of the fort to engage in evasive action, the size of the structure and the sheer number of rounds that saturated the targeted fort smashed into the central hub and some of the arms, severely damaging it. Therax had his taskforce flash in and finish off the fort, losing another sixteen ships in the process.

When the fort finally stopped firing and its detectable power levels dropped to near zero, Therax ordered the task force to head to the next target, dreading having to assault another one. It was already heavily damaged by the dreadnought squadrons that had launched a long-range assault before proceeding to the next target.

It fired as soon as his task force flashed out of null space, still a dangerous foe with functional weapons that continued to claim victims as it targeted heavily damaged ships unable to withstand its onslaught. The battle AI activated the dreaded alert he had been waiting for, and he turned his attention to the sensor station.

The sensor technician cried out in alarm as he confirmed the readings and looked at Therax with fear in his eyes. “Fusion missiles inbound, twenty seconds out!” Therax cursed and activated the emergency flash-out protocol.

Most of the ships of the task force were able to flash out, but some had damage to their power systems, and their capacitors couldn’t charge fast enough to make the jump so soon after exiting null space. His ship flashed back into null space, and he forced himself to watch the video feed from a spy drone that was in normal space and transmitting.

Fourteen of his ships were not able to make the initial jump, and he saw dozens of tiny points of light heading towards the stricken vessels as the fusion missile engines burned towards them. The fourteen ships fired their point defense systems, and they were able to destroy many of them, but others made it through the defensive fire and ignited their warheads when they reached the optimal range.

The bridge crew watched in silence as the missiles activated their salted fusion warheads, and the viewscreen overlayed the sensor readings to bring life to the invisible waves that bathed the ships with multiple types of deadly radiation. The battle AI approximation of the readings showed the large waves overlapping and hitting the fourteen ships from all sides as they were bracketed by the fatal rays.

There was no need to imagine what was happening. The radiation penetrated the ships, destroying all the sensitive electronics and control systems that kept the biological lifeforms alive inside of them. When the radiation hit the crew, those closest to the hulls were the lucky ones, as their skin sloughed off and their brains were fried, suffering for only a few moments before expiring.

The unfortunate souls deeper in the ship were the ones who truly suffered as radiation passed through them, reduced enough to merely poison them and guarantee that the next twenty to thirty minutes of life left to them would be filled with an almost incomprehensible agony as their organs slowly liquified and they disintegrated at the cellular level.

Their pain receptors and nerves would remain functional, transmitting every sensation as they endured the most horrible manner of death before finally collapsing into a puddle of flesh as their bones became brittle and shattered. They will be acutely aware of what is happening and feel everything before finally dying.

Over a hundred other ships throughout the system suffered the same fate, and they didn’t even get through the first line of defense yet. Four forts were still fully operational, and another wave of over two hundred fusion missiles was on the way. Therax raged at the cowardice of the Ominians for using such weapons, and he was gripped with indecision about how to proceed.

He didn’t think that they would actually deploy the fusion missiles, believing that the horror of such weapons of last resort would cause them to hesitate to use them. The fact that they used them so early in the battle changed the calculus, and he was no longer content with achieving victory. They must be punished for what they did to his crew.

He ordered all the surviving ships throughout the system to cease combat operations and flash into null space, and he activated the command channel override for the ships, taking control of all communications.

“Warriors of the Commonwealth Liberation Fleet, this is Clan Leader Therax. I have ordered all ships to withdraw to null space for a fleet-wide moot. As you can see, the cowardly Ominians have launched the outlawed fusion missiles and killed your fellow warriors of a hundred and eight ships, subjecting them to the worst deaths possible.”

Therax clenched his fists and inhaled deeply, terrified of what he was about to ask of his ships.

“I am proposing that we bombard them to teach them and anyone else who dares to use such weapons a lesson they will never forget. We will unleash our righteous fury upon them, and we will turn their planet into a graveyard. This is now a referendum on committing Shal'Rickta."

There were loud gasps of shock from the crew all around him as he said the word. He ignored them and continued speaking.

"You will all vote on this matter and forward the results to your leader, who will then notify me. You have fifteen solar minutes.”

Therax pressed the toggle, closing the channel, and looked around his bridge, seeing the concerned expressions of the crew. He drew a deep breath and addressed them. “I know that what I am proposing goes against everything we believe in and is contrary to the fundamental concepts of honorable conduct that we adhere to.”

Therax continued looking into the eyes of individual crew members as he looked around the bridge before resuming.

“Fighting with honor means nothing when our skin is sloughing off as our organs become liquified. They have shown us that they are willing to do whatever is necessary to defeat our invasion, and they are not worthy of such considerations from us. I will gladly bear the dishonor of this action if it means that I am able to save your lives and put an end to this conflict.”

Therax stood up from his chair and walked to his bridge office to allow his crew to discuss and decide on the referendum in private. The door slid shut behind him, and he sat down in the chair and stared at the photo of Mei Zhou as he waited for the results.

Shal'Rickta had not been decided in generations, as it was considered too barbaric to enact for thousands of years.

The ancient custom was reserved for extreme cases, and would burden those who undertake it with the dishonor of exterminating an entire tribe to remove their bloodline from the species. This was not a tribe of hundreds or thousands. This was an entire world filled with billions of Ominians.

Twelve minutes later, Sub-Commander Favix entered the office with a datapad and a carefully guarded expression. He reached the desk and stood at attention before saluting, and Therax stood up to return the salute before extending his hand to take the datapad and flicking his head at the door.

Sub-Commander Favix turned smartly and left, the door sliding shut behind him as he exited back onto the bridge.

Therax tried to calm his shaking hands as he read the results of the referendum, and he slowly let out the breath he was holding as he saw the final tally. 78.2% voted yes, 12.8% abstained, and the rest voted no. He had the necessary votes to commit genocide, and he left the office, resuming his seat on the silent bridge as the crew watched him.

He connected the datapad to the command channel and sent the final results to the fleet, looking at his bridge crew as they saw the result of the referendum being displayed on the main viewscreen. There were no cheers or physical signs of approval or disapproval of the vote, just expressions of grim determination.

He pressed the toggle again, opening the channel to address the rest of the fleet.

“The moot is over, and Shal'Rickta has been decided. Those of you who voted no will be allowed to leave your ships if you wish to do so. All leaders will arrange to have a shuttle ready to carry those who wish to depart over to the medical ships."

He paused, feeling the weight of what they were about to do weighing heavily on his soul. He forced himself to sound confident as he continued.

"All engineers will extract antimatter, bottle it, and reconfigure the plasma torpedoes for atmospheric entry. You have twelve solar hours.”

Therax closed the channel and stood up. He looked at his bridge crew one last time before heading to the bridge exit and pressing the icon for the lift to take him to deck three. He will go to the ancestral shrine and pray to the ancestors for guidance. And forgiveness.