They could defend themselves, so C’fad wasn’t worried about that. He’d just massively screwed up and he needed to know why.
It wasn’t readily apparent, but some 28 minutes later someone found the reason and updated the battlemap.
It was the minions that had preceded the 4 Wardens. They’d essentially been a waste of resources, or so he’d mistakenly thought. Those minions had somehow destabilized the energy shield, for he’d ordered them to be let through the sails and dampening fields, for he didn’t want to waste any energy on them.
Analysis was coming in fast as others picked up on the discovery and added to it. Apparently those minions were not standard varieties, or at least not all of them. Mixed into the group were goo-carriers, and when they splattered against the shield they released some sort of compound that interfered with the shield…and they’d done so in the exact spot the 3rd one had hit.
There was nothing left to analyze, other than the third Hadarak itself, which was still alive and half buried in the planet. The Sentinels were working on it, using only conventional weapons to save as much Essence as they could. The last Warden was probably dead, but there was no way to tell. It was deep inside the planet now, beyond where sensors could see it, and telepathically the V’kit’no’sat were not picking anything up. Either that was because it was dead, too deep, or masked in some way.
C’fad knew he had to prepare for it showing up again, but these minions had to be addressed. There was no proof of their goo still remaining, just the limited sensor records that were not helpful other than to identify that the stuff had remained on the shields in a cloying manner rather than deflecting back up off it after collision.
But the shields hadn’t registered any problems with the goo on them. It was the collision that landed with more force than expected, despite speed and mass numbers, which was impossible unless those numbers were inaccurate.
It had to be the goo. Or did it? Was there something else going on here?
Whatever the case was, Kli’merack was devastated. A third of the planet’s surface was gone, reduced to rocky soup, and the rest was crumpled and bulging up into new mountain ranges while forcing the small pair of oceans into new locations, sweeping across the surface and taking the trees and wildlife with it in a water tsunami that looked pathetically small compared to the now subsided land one, but it was deadly enough on its own.
The Oso’lon dropped a cascade of tears from his lofty head, with them falling and splattering on the floor with tiny audible impacts as the entire command deck was deathly quiet. Whatever work was going on was being done mentally, while those that had nothing to do at the moment just stared at the orbital visuals of the devastation.
This had happened on other worlds in the Grand Border, though not often. And each time it happened the V’kit’no’sat worked to find countermeasures, and for the past 821 years no Warden had reached the surface of a planet in the Grand Border.
Two had just done so, with the second being the killshot to the planet.
The V’kit’no’sat had to take the hits for the rest of the galaxy, but until today C’fad had never truly understood what that meant.
He did now.
And he was still not leaving.
This was his home, wrecked as it was, but most of his people were still alive in the floating cities and they would rebuild. Meanwhile the system defense fleet was still fighting more Hadarak, including Wardens, in near the star. And more could be coming this way if they broke through.
So C’fad did what was needed, organizing the intact cities and making sure they had a workable defense shield over that part of the planet. He moved the Sentinels in position to cover it, deployed his warships into seek and destroy patrols for the remaining minions while the rescue crews pulled out a few survivors…but most of those unaccounted for were dead, though their bodies would not be recovered in the mess as the surface was still moving and swallowing up parts of the downed city, not to mention the permanent infrastructure that was in pieces everywhere in the land wave zone, assuming it hadn’t sunken down into the magma oceans forming on the surface.
It was a hellish world now, transformed in a matter of hours, but it was still his home. And the V’kit’no’sat were not leaving. Their duty was to hold the line, and this system could not become a foothold for the Hadarak.
So as long as one city remained intact on the surface, they would stay and defend it…while slowly rebuilding what was lost.
But it hurt. Far more than he expected. And rather than succumb to despair, he let it fuel his anger.
The Hadarak had to be stopped. This insanity could not be allowed to continue.
And the sooner the High Guard built up their forces to the number they needed the better, but it was too late for Kli’merack. This was a loss, but not a total loss as long as the rest of the system held.
And C’fad had to live with that loss. He would not allow himself to be reassigned now, even if they wanted him to. This was his mess, this was his home, and he
