“Better to die a warrior than live a coward,” Bren echoed another lesson taught in Canderous to its younglings.
“This is our time, and I need your help.”
“Name it.”
“Help me convince Davis to allow Canderous to develop Knights. Full Knights, with psionics and whatever Essence help we can get. And not to assist the Knight races. But to become minion mashers…because we’re going to need a lot of them.”
“I still don’t understand your plan, but if you can bring this fight to the surface you will have my eternal backing.”
Esna smiled, slapping him on the face playfully. “Let’s go, big guy. I’ve got some explaining to do, and might as well do it to everyone at once.”
Bren turned and went out her door so fast it almost didn’t open in time, then he began running down the hallway with Esna sprinting to keep up. She finally knew how to beat them, and Bren could sense it in her.
No point in walking now, the sooner they found Davis the better, for rebuilding Canderous wasn’t going to happen overnight, and time was already against them.
But this would work. She knew it in her bones. Now she just had to convince the man who had built the Empire to let her break a lot of his rules…
8
The doors to the briefing room where Davis’s special team had been working opened with a nearly inaudible ‘swoosh,’ then closed again as Lord Daegan entered, the last of the team to arrive as Esna waited near the holo pedestal with the others as Davis looked across at all of them from the far side of the room.
“Alright, we’re all here now,” he said calmly. “What have you two come up with?”
“Esna,” Bren said, waving a large hand towards the Director.
“Sean,” she said, for once not having to force his first name past her lips, “give me the full technological and genetic power of Star Force, and I will destroy the Hadarak for you.”
Everyone’s eyes widened, except Bren’s, and Davis noted that fact with a quick glance towards him…along with a brief telepathic exchange that no one else suspected.
“How?” he said simply after a moment of awkward silence.
“By fighting them as warriors, face to face, hand to hand, world to world. No more tricks. No more running. No more fearing these bastards. You beat the swarm tactics of the lizards long ago when everyone thought it was impossible, so why is everyone convinced it can’t be done now?”
“Star Force was able to hold territory then,” Kirritimin interjected, for he had the unique position of having been the mastermind behind the lizards’ war against Star Force, and despite his forced genius helping them, Star Force had still won the war. “If you cannot deny the enemy the world you take, you face a never-ending carnage. We must have a mechanism to protect worlds in order to stop the Wardens from ramming them, or no world is safe. Let alone empty ones we take with nothing but rubble and corpses left behind.”
Esna leaned on the deactivated holo pedestal with both hands, then twisted her head to look down at the smart bug.
“That’s what I thought too, until Bren reminded me what it is to be a warrior. We want to win, but more than winning we want to fight rather than run. We want to stand our ground because the fight is worth it, but we’ve been bullied into defensive thinking because our civilian population is vulnerable. No world is safe…that’s what you said,” Esna all but accused as she switched her gaze back to Davis. “And because of that we’re building expendable worlds along the Core border, hoping the Hadarak can’t jump the defenses and get behind them to our people.”
“There are going to be V’kit’no’sat on those ‘expendable’ worlds,” Davis lightly growled.
“But you’re expecting them to get hit, and putting them there because, as you said, there is no safe world against the Wardens’ mass ramming. And the V’kit’no’sat are volunteering to go, because their empire’s former existence was based on fighting the Hadarak. It’s in their blood, and they want to fight…and so do I. But not defense. That won’t win the war. We have to go on offense.”
“How do we hold worlds that we take?” Kirritimin reiterated.
Esna slammed her fist down on the pedestal, inadvertently breaking it when the casing cracked as she applied more force than expected.
“That’s still defense. We’re all so bullied into submission that we forget how weak the Hadarak are. Most of their worlds are easy pickings, but because they have the swarm moving forward nobody can take advantage of it because everyone is on defense. It’s half a bluff that nobody is calling.”
“How do we call it?” Lord Daegan asked.
Esna turned to look at him, then made eye contact with the other 8 people in the room before turning back to the Protovic. “As a team. I don’t know what to do about the Founders, and I’m leaving the Lurkers, Trons, and anything else that’s Essence to the Archons or some other faction. But give me what I need and I can turn Canderous into an offensive weapon specialized for killing Hadarak. Star Force is so large we don’t all have to be multi-taskers. You have so many other true factions for that, but the aquatics requirement you made us take on to become a full faction,” Esna said, looking now to Davis, “is going to come in damn useful now.”
“Assume I give you everything you want, what will you do with it that hasn’t already been done?”
“You all made a mistake,” she said bluntly. “You said no Star Force world is safe from the Wardens ramming it. But you forgot that not all Star Force worlds are planets.”
“You are suggesting
