“Same with the rest of us. Even Kirritimin.”
Esna put her head back into her hands and stared at her toes. “So why aren’t you still an Admiral?”
“I gave it up. I was good at it, but it was too isolated and my physical skills didn’t matter short of a boarding party…which almost never happens. Our fleets are far too dominant, and if we are ever at a disadvantage our enemies take the opportunity to destroy us. They’re not bold enough to try and capture one of our ships.”
“So was the Dir…was Davis wrong about you?”
“No. He showed me an aptitude that I never would have developed because I didn’t know it existed. But naval combat is about technology and knowing how to use it. Commando is about being the weapon, and I have always wanted to be a weapon, not wield one.”
“In that we are alike, but unless you can punch a lot harder than I think, you’re not taking down a Warden on your own.”
“Do we need to?”
Esna’s head came up again, this time with a stupid look on her face. “Obviously.”
“No…I don’t mean the Empire. I mean do you and I need to? It’s not the Wardens that threaten the Founders, it’s their swarm of minions. Why can’t we fight them the normal way? No more tricks or special technology. Star Force has always fought the swarms with superior units that can last indefinitely while the enemy has to keep replacing its lost forces because it chooses to build them fast rather than strong.”
“It doesn’t matter how many we kill in the field when a Warden can come crashing down on your head and erase all your gains. Naval is where we have to find a way to win this.”
“Sometimes, but are the Hadarak gaining all their territory by Wardens?” Bren asked, leaving the question hang in the air until Esna was forced to answer.
“The hard battles are, but not all.”
“They’re picking up planets with no Wardens. They’re sending carrier ships with minions, and minions alone are conquering more than half of their gains. Far more, actually. The Wardens are there, like the Lurkers, to do what the minions cannot. But it’s the minions that Founders fear. It’s the minions that conquer. The big ones that cannot be touched without Essence or Ysalamir are really to support the swarm, the swarm doesn’t support them.”
“Go on.”
“If there’s a way we can fight the swarm, and let the Elcee or others handle the big ones, can we beat the Hadarak the other way around?”
“By depriving them of the swarm? I don’t have any idea how we can do that if we can’t hold territory to deny them from using it to produce more. And if we can’t protect our most heavily defended worlds from a pair of Wardens, one going kamikaze to break through and the other to land and conquer, then how do we defend worlds without even a shield generator?”
“Are they growing Wardens faster than we can kill them?”
“I don’t know,” Esna said, never having thought about that. “What’s in the Core is unknown, plus what they can bring in from other galaxies. Might as well assume they’re unlimited.”
Bren snapped his fingers and a Fornax jolt hit Esna, shaking her concentration and causing her mind to reset as she glared at the Golden Knight.
“Unlimited?” he said as though he was spitting ice with every syllable.
“We can’t know, so we might as well assume they are,” she growled, resisting the urge to throw a bigger Fornax blast back at him.
“And what does a warrior say to unlimited enemies?”
Esna blinked, suddenly understanding his reprimand. “Bring them on.”
Bren nodded, and put his fingers down. “So why are we not facing them as warriors? We are looking for tricks, cheats, and whatever we can to avoid the head-on fight. Why have we given up on it?”
“Because they’re too many and they reproduce too fast.”
“So did the lizards, though that was before your time and mine, but I have studied those wars closely. We defended as we are now, until we grew to the point we could start pushing back, system by system. We didn’t run from the direct fight.”
“I’ve studied them too, and that war was based off taking systems, stacking them with defenses, and holding them. We can’t hold anything against the Hadarak if they want it badly enough.”
“None of the Fortresses have fallen, and they’re trying hard to take them.”
“Those aren’t planets. And they’re built to be modular so that when the Hadarak do damage them the outer layers can be expendable. Our people are not expendable, and we will not fight that way, even if it will win the war.”
“The Viceroy is willing.”
“They all are. They’ve been programmed for it.”
“Doesn’t a part of you want to see them unleashed on the enemy?”
“Yes,” Esna admitted. “I crave a way to hurt them, and having to pull punches frustrates me. It’s why I chose to fight in the Rim rather than the Core. I want targets I can crush, or at least attack directly. With the Hadarak we’re always retreating and I’m stuck in a seda giving orders.”
“Then let’s stop trying to run from them, evade them, or cheat them. Let’s find a way to fight them head on, as warriors should. The Archons can pull the sneaky stuff, but to cleanse the galaxy of these vermin we’re going to have to do this the conventional way, so help me figure out how to do that.”
“Why me?”
“Because you have seen from the outside. You were weak once, afraid, confused. Tell me from the outside, how can Star Force fight these monsters?”
Esna punched the bed next to
