The Evon Experience
by Alex Poff

Chapter 10 Squish All The Bugs

As promised, Lebak advised the High Council to accept the temporary Cease Fire with the Nommo. Lebak and the High Council were both well aware that this treaty would never hold, but as Hektar had indicated, we might as well make it as easy as possible for new colonists to get where they needed to go. There was no use trying to fly Colony ships through a war zone if we didn’t have to.

Zatish, another new hotshot, was given command of the defense fleet assigned to this particular Guardian system. As was standard practice, his fleet contained ten armadas split evenly between Titan IF and Titan CF battle groups. His orders from Hektar were three-fold. Destroy the Guardian. Protect and ensure the safe colonization of any worlds found in the system. Once these two parts were completed, he was to take an attack force and return to the Noctua system, the system between Exis and the Guardian now held by the Nommo, and wait until the expiration of the Cease Fire agreement. If the Nommo even blinked, he was to take the system immediately. We couldn’t afford to have alien infestation within our borders.

Meanwhile, Hektar proceeded with the re-design of all our Titan class mission ships, configuring in the improved shields, engines and longer-ranged weapon systems. As he had discussed with Lebak, it was an arduous task but the resulting production shift also gave the added benefit of maximizing production inefficiencies that had crept into the system over the last decade. Because it was a major overhaul, Hektar was also able to re-allocate and increase production by ordering the construction of additional Industry DEA’s while eliminating an over-abundance of Mining and Bioharvest DEA’s that were now producing well in excess of even our massive economy’s needs. When the job was done, the High Council formally recognized his efforts with an exalted Citizenship Contribution Award, an honour rarely given out in the history of our Empire.

With this job completed, he once again turned his thoughts and plans towards our enemies. The Klackons had sealed their own fate and now would pay for their insolence with their own destruction. Star chart analysis showed a very interesting situation. Proceeding south from Grotius lay another Klackon system named Yhoa. This system connected, via a wormhole, to another bug system called Paradise that lay in the far center-east of the galaxy and just happened to be the border chokepoint system beside Beta Antares, now under our control and commanded by Jatan. This solved the riddle as to how the Klackons had managed to dominate two distinctly different geographic areas of the galaxy. A quick, two-pronged assault would net us both systems and effectively cut the bugs in two, leaving them approximately thirty-odd planets in two sectors of space each. Tovam would take command of the southern attack fleet while Jatan would assign a new system defense commander and then proceed to assume command of the eastern at tack fleet. Once split, our forces could then systematically eliminate the Klackons from existence on two fronts, while providing the additional bonus of bringing us ever closer to the final system held by the Psilons in the extreme southernmost portion of the galaxy.

The Klackon situation addressed, Hektar then turned his mighty military machines’ attention to the Silicoids. As indicated earlier, this second group of rocks had broken our Non-Aggression Pact and was now sending thousands of ships to the Eta Serpentis system, currently under Keetals’ control. Retal, currently commanding the defense force in Juta, would be called up to replace Keetal in Eta Serpentis, while Keetal would lead an invasion force north through the wormhole to Kaht, the first of approximately ten systems held by the Silicoids. Once there, his mission was to smash the rocks into submission and conquer all their worlds, expanding our Empire even further. Lebak had also indicated that the High Council was extremely interested in this maneuver, as there had been word of new species and races of beings that lived in the northern quadrant of the galaxy, as yet unknown. It was hoped that by eliminating another enemy we might encounter potential new friends and allies.

Word had come from Zatish. The Nommo had blinked. At the very hour that our formal Cease Fire agreement ended, the Nommo had once again declared war on our civilization. Zatish more than lived up to the high standards already set by Evon military commanders throughout our history. In little more than a week he had conquered the entire system and, as Hektar had wanted, no alien infestation existed within our borders once again. Noctua now secure, Hektar ordered Zatish back to the Altair system (re-named once the Guardian had been dispatched) to organize an attack force to assault the Trilarians in Pyro, their first system beyond Altair in the center of the galaxy. For the time being, we would once again ignore the Nommo.

We were now waging war on four fronts, two with the Klackons, one each with the Silicoids and the Trilarians. Normally, one would think that we might have bitten off a little bit more than we could chew, so to speak, but our military had not suffered any significant loss in more than a decade, perhaps more. Also, in addition to our new, updated Titan class capital ships which were now rolling off our production lines, word from our scientists had come that they were now researching a larger class ship type, one they affectionately called a Behemoth, twice the size of a Superdreadnought. Also, Admantium armor and Energy Pulsar warheads were being researched, both giving significant increases in deflection capability and destructive yield, respectively. Our scientists assured both Hektar and Lebak that all research would be complete and implementation would be possible within a year. Hektar was ecstatic. With these new advances, surely no one would dare to oppose us. Indeed, it might be the time to pay a vis it to the Orion system. “After all, their harassment of our systems has never ended. Tit for tat. It would be only fair,” smirked Hektar.