Star Force: Empire (SF58) by Jyr Aer-ki

Author:Jyr, Aer-ki [Jyr, Aer-ki]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2014-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

6

June 19, 2652

Unnamed System (Beyond the ADZ)

Point 6

The seda decelerated against the gas giant’s gravity well, with the massive jump cradle surrounding it like a spider grasping its prey as it slowed the medium-sized station down using its considerable engine power. Already in orbit, having arrived a few minutes ahead, was the Canderous fleet some 18 ships strong with another 34 on the way, trailing slightly behind the seda in loose escort formation.

None of them were jumpships, or in the case of Canderous, jump ‘rods’ for the spacefaring civilization had forgone the traditional Star Force model and rebuilt their fleet based on the Skarron navy, in which each individual ship was capable of making slow jumps between star systems. Now every Canderous ship from cargo hauler to warship was interstellar jump capable, with only their sedas requiring a lift. Those were meant to be stationary, but their fleet wasn’t, and the idea of a number of ships getting stranded in a system because their jumpship malfunctioned or was destroyed was something the Canderians weren’t too keen on.

They lived in space, operated in space, and only went planetside to gather resources or to fight…with this current mission being right up their alley, for there wasn’t a habitable planet within the unclaimed system that was situated beyond the Alpha and Epsilon Regions. The gas giant the seda was being placed into orbit around had a slew of moons and there were six other sizeable rocky, yet barren worlds without atmosphere for Canderous to harvest resources from, but there was nothing here even remotely capable of housing a standard civilization.

Star Force could have built colonies on the worlds, contained within sealed cities like they had in many other locations, but this system was to be Canderous only with no ADZ resources devoted to it. The seda had within it all the necessary crews and factories required to build another just like it…and many more. Right now it was isolated and alone, with only a handful of warships to guard it against threats in the region, but those threats were minor as far as Star Force’s scouting reports indicated. No, Canderous was here for another reason beyond colonization.

While others built up the defenses within and around the ADZ Canderous had been tasked to go beyond it, into the expected expansion path of the lizards and build up outposts that they could monitor the local areas from and hopefully pick off small scale invasions before they grew to the point where the mainline fleet would be required. So many systems were falling to the lizards simply due to the fact that no one was around to fight them, with them picking up valuable planets with almost no resistance at all.

Sure, there were major battles being fought elsewhere, but the lizards were assaulting so many systems that neither Star Force nor anyone else could counter them all, let alone detect them. Even with their relay grid and progressively faster communication between star systems there was always

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