The Colossus by Jay Allan

Author:Jay Allan [Allan, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: System 7 Publishing
Published: 2019-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

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“Commander, we might be able to engage the enemy battle line before it is able to transit out of the system.” The kiloron’s voice was stern, professional, but Ilius could hear the venom in it, too. The Kriegeri were professionals, trained from childhood to keep their emotions firmly under control, but six years of bloodletting had placed enormous strain on them all. They were beginning to hate their enemies, and in the process, they were becoming more like them, bloodthirsty, often driven by emotion instead of reason. The enemy had killed millions of their comrades, and for many of them, the war had become not a crusade to absorb and protect the Rimdwellers, but one to avenge their own dead.

That was not good, Ilius knew, even though, when his own guard slipped, he sometimes felt the same way. The whole point of the conflict was to unite the Rimdwellers with the rest of humanity, to forge them all into one. But he couldn’t ignore the rage he’d felt himself, and he’d even seen Chronos’s disciplined mind struggling to keep out the resentment and fury the war had kindled. They had all lost, suffered, shed blood at the hands of the enemy. The reactions were natural enough, but they were also toxic. Such things had helped lead to the Great Death, and brought mankind to the brink of extinction. Humanity would not survive another such disaster. In his more philosophical moments, Ilius wondered if it was too early yet to declare that they had survived the first nightmare. In many ways, it seemed still to be going on.

“Negative, Kiloron.” There was a heaviness to his response. He wasn’t enough of a hypocrite to condemn the officer for his feelings, but he couldn’t encourage such things either. “Continue recovery operations for the fighter squadrons. We will face the enemy line another day.” It took considerable effort for Ilius not to second his subordinate’s desire and order Colossus forward against the disordered Rim fleet. But the great ship’s purpose wasn’t to destroy the remaining forces of the Rim, nor to blast their defenses and their industry to dust. It was to break them emotionally, to crush their morale, to convince them of the utter pointlessness of further bloody resistance. To achieve that, he had to let them go, to give them a moment of solace, enough time to recover from their shock and to coldly evaluate what they now faced.

Then they would accept the terms Chronos would offer. They would have to, surely. Any other course of action would be tantamount to suicide. The Rimdwellers were brave and tenacious, certainly, but they weren’t fools. They wouldn’t fight on when they realized there was no chance to win. No chance whatsoever.

Would they?

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