Never in the history of the independent V’kit’no’sat had there existed such a weapons platform or warship that could stand against a Warden on its own, but now they were common across this system and throughout the Grand Border. The current killcount for Star Force in this seemingly never-ending war was 2,928,217 Wardens to date, though that number would be slightly higher due to the lag effect of all the Grand Border systems communicating with each other, for all had interstellar transmitters. Big ones. Redundant ones. So information flowed rapidly around the rough ring that was the Grand Border while branching out through the Star Force Core region through Star Force systems.
But every single system in the Grand Border territory was owned by the V’kit’no’sat. Even the ones without planets. There was no exception. There could be no exception. So C’fad had killcounts updated regularly as the information flowed around the galaxy, but the Warden deaths that were occurring in Hadarak territory itself would not be reported until a ship came back, and there were both V’kit’no’sat fleets out there in nearby systems hunting down Hadarak fleets as they tried to assemble large numbers to launch against individual systems, as well as High Guard fleets roaming further out.
Those fleets rarely lost ships, for they were not supposed to fight hard battles. They were supposed to poach moments of opportunity while preserving their numbers. Numbers that were growing to the point where Star Force could finally launch an invasion of Hadarak territory itself…but they couldn’t do that until they had the High Guard numbers so large they could take the fight to the Hadarak without the V’kit’no’sat…who had to stand guard on the Grand Border with most of their fleets.
That’s why the High Guard was only assisting and thinning the enemy numbers before they slammed into the Grand Border. It was the V’kit’no’sat’s job to take the hits and stop any breakthroughs from occurring, no matter what the cost.
Retreat was not an option…but neither was needless deaths. That’s why every city was mobile, and the planetary defenses were configured to do their job with little to no maintenance crews. This planet had been designed to fight and, if necessary, die to stop the Hadarak. In 12,793 years that C’fad had been stationed here, there had been three Hadarak incursions into this system that had gotten beyond the system defense fleet. None had breached the planetary shields, and a piece of the corpse of one of the dead Wardens from those assaults still orbited the planet waiting for Clan Kai’sa to come and strip it of the remaining Yeg’gor for use in their Zedas.
They had been here and left before using it all, and as disgusting as it was tearing apart a corpse, it was necessary. Yeg’gor was so valuable it couldn’t be wasted, though C’fad found the continuing carnage in the way the Hadarak fought distasteful. There was no honor, no professionality, no skill. It was all visceral lashing out at the enemy with a little strategy thrown in. Their ‘ships’ were living, and expected to die. The Oso’lon often wondered what their mission was, beyond these units here. What were the Spice Lords that controlled them trying for? Purge the galaxy of all life for what reason? They didn’t value their own lives, not the way they fought, so what was their purpose in all this?
It could be a basic self-preservation directive, killing everyone else before they had a chance to kill you. He’d seen that in many primitive races, and not because they were necessarily bad people, but because it had been encoded into their genetic blueprints as default instructions that they had never ascended beyond. But for a race as powerful as the Hadarak, he couldn’t see them being that mentally primitive.
C’fad had wracked his brain many times trying to figure out a possible mindset for them, but he hadn’t come up with anything that matched the way they fought. It was almost mindless violence for violence sake, with no respect for the sovereignty of the individual. He’d been told the V’kit’no’sat had been like that once, at least in part, but that was before he’d been hatched. He’d been born into the Star Force V’kit’no’sat, developed in one of their maturias, then had taken the call of duty upon himself and transferred to the Grand Border, putting himself into danger as he continued his training here, on this very planet, and eventually rose to become planetary defense commander while many of his peers transferred to other systems.
But this was his home, and right now there were not one, but four Wardens coming his way, and he doubted he had the ability to stop them all…but his forces weren’t helpless.
The tract of the Hadarak on approach put them a few minutes apart from one another, and before the first one arrived minions came through, decelerating as best they could, but they smashed into the planetary shields and killed themselves instantly…save for those that were clinging to the sides of the mainline units that had the engine power to fully decelerate into the overlapping firepower of C’fad’s planetary defense fleet, which was backed up by 34 of his 93 Sentinels that were now in firing range of the jumpline.
He’d ordered no Essence weaponry to be used until the Wardens arrived, but other than that he let his people do their job without micromanaging. They knew the stakes and how to combat this assault, so he watched and waited for some alteration that he needed to order,
