Star Force: Retribution (SF60) (3 page)

But there were many cities on the planet, some with
more Hobbits than Skarrons, and Morgan begin looking at those as first choices
for invasion points all the while the Voku began making preparations for mech
drops to deal with the walkers the lizards hadn’t gotten around to destroying
yet…and there were still many. Morgan was in a conversation with the Voku about
coordinating cleansing beam fire on some of those walker targets when she got
an interrupting prompt from her captain.

It was flagged urgent, so she politely asked the Voku
commander to hold for a moment and opened the
comm
line to the man sitting in the room only a few dozen meters away on the other
side of the wall.

“What is it?”

“I issued the standard offer for surrender as usual,
and we just got the Skarron reply. They’ve accepted.”

“What?!” Morgan asked, shocked. Star Force always
offered a surrender to their enemies, but only on some very rare or bizarre
occasions had the Skarrons ever accepted…and to this day the lizards never had.

“I just double checked with them, and they’re
surrendering. The entire planet is surrendering to us.”

3

October 28, 2674

Quixva
System
(Skarron territory)

Quixstan

Morgan rode a dropship down to the landing zone her
ground troops had just set up, still not believing that this was a legit
surrender. Her mind kept expecting an ambush or some form of deceit, but in the
couple of weeks it took for her troop ships to arrive the Skarrons had complied
with every edict she’d sent down. They’d sent their walkers out away from their
bases and abandoned them there, and their elites had removed their armor and
likewise piled it and all their handheld weapons up in large piles out in the
open.

They’d even begun relocating as specified, but it
didn’t feel right to Morgan. The Hobbits she could understand, and the
Engineers with them…but not the Skarrons. Never the less the surrender offer
was legit and she was going to keep them alive so long as they didn’t try
anything, but something deep down inside said that they would, though what it
would gain them at this point she didn’t know. She’d parted them from their
weapons and the few ships they had, including their fighters and even their
ground transports, so if they were going to do some sort of mischief how they
were going to accomplish it was beyond her.

When she finally landed on planet she brought with her
several Star Force Aronsic who’d previously switched sides, and through them
she began to get some answers. They knew the Skarron empire better than she did
and quickly put pressure to the points where needed, without rubbing it in the
Skarrons’ faces…on Morgan’s orders.

It turned out that after the recent lizard invasion
and overall buttwhipping that Star Force and the Voku had just interrupted, the
Skarrons didn’t have the stomach for any further fighting. The recent invasion
had been the last gasp of their defiance, for it turned out that they knew
they’d been abandoned by the empire along with a lot of other systems in the
local region. With
Skillion
gone, the regional
capitol that directly fed and controlled this region, there was no longer any
oversight. This world and the others were categorized as losses, with any fleets
coming in from other regions going straight towards vengeance rather than
reinforcement.

If the abandoned systems were going to survive they
were going to have to do it on their own merits, and if they could, then some
day they might reunite with the rest of the empire, but the writing on the wall
said otherwise and the Skarrons here had already known their time was near even
before the lizards arrived. With Star Force and the Voku showing up to kill
their mutual enemy then offer a surrender option that would keep them alive
rather than being wiped out by the new arrivals, they’d decided to take it…given
that they didn’t have any warships left to fight with and the number of walkers
remaining on the planet would be insufficient to stop the orbit bombardment
that they knew would be forthcoming.

Already abandoned by their empire, the Skarrons made
the choice to officially cut ties and not fight to the death. It wasn’t a
matter of them being disloyal, but in not having any options left. Star Force
had offered them one and they took it, simple as that.

Morgan still wasn’t totally convinced and kept her
troops operating on a tight lockdown and constant patrols, with her doing her
own little snoop recon on occasions…but there was no misbehavior to be found.
There were many Skarrons who didn’t like being taken prisoner, but just as many
who were mentally subdued, clearly having given up any resistance. Both
complied with orders, and Morgan made sure her people paid them a certain
amount of respect and didn’t needle them. If she wanted to try and provoke a
reaction she’d do it herself.

Slowly the transports came down from orbit, having
disconnected from their carrier jumpships, and landed their massive hulks on
the surface. It took some reworking of the interior to accommodate the
Skarrons, for she’d been expecting Hobbits and maybe some Engineers, not the
larger race. This wasn’t their first
evac
though, so
the ships had been built with considerable flexibility and adjustments were eventually
made. The Skarrons were put into separate ships than their slave races, and
Morgan made sure that split was maintained from here on out so that the Hobbits
and Engineers would never have to see them again.

She kept expecting an individual or two to lose it and
go rogue, but none of them did. Once they saw that they were being treated well
there was no resistance at all and the now prison ships were loaded to the
brim, given that there were far more people being picked up than expected.
Morgan made sure they could fit them all in, despite the discomfort of the
close quarters, and confiscated a lot of the Skarron foodstuffs from their
cities to bolster their own supplies long enough to get the prisoners back to
the ADZ. She’d expected to hit several systems on this tour, but now that
wasn’t going to be an option.

Nor was keeping the planet, which the Skarrons had
expected them to do. According to the Star Force Aronsic, to whom the other
Hobbits had taken to immediately, when the surrender offer had come down they’d
expected this world to be annexed by either Star Force or the Voku, as had been
rumored to have happened on a few other worlds the Skarrons previously owned.
When word was spread around that they were leaving the planet uninhabited there
had been confusion as to why Star Force had even come in the first place.

The Star Force Aronsic had explained that it was to
rescue their kin. That didn’t get accepted at first, but as Morgan’s little
emissaries continued to talk and explain their own lives and how they’d come to
be in Star Force there was a shift in attitude and more than a bit of awe that
anyone would care enough to come get them, let alone fight to free them.

The Engineers were indifferent, content to serve
whoever was in charge. Such had been their role since before they could remember,
and they simply switched from taking Skarron and Aronsic orders to taking Star
Force ones. They expected to be put to work when they returned to Star Force
space, trading one master for another, and no matter how many discussions the
Star Force Aronsic had with them they couldn’t shake them from this
self-assigned fate.

The Skarrons refused to believe that Star Force had
come for the Aronsic, and Morgan didn’t spend much time worrying about what
they thought. They were being taken back as straight up prisoners, while the
Hobbits and Engineers were being treated a bit differently. They wouldn’t be
free upon arrival, but would have to earn their freedom and place within Star
Force, with a well-established procedure already in place for the Aronsic.

It took a while for the fleet to get back to the ADZ,
with the Voku peeling off at Achkor and not returning with them, but eventually
Morgan brought them to an airless world in Beta Region known as Tartarus. It
was one of six planets in the system that Star Force inhabited, all of which
contained overseeing colonies for a number of wards that made up the bulk of
the system’s population.

Tartarus was not a ward planet, but a prison one.
Rather than keeping the individuals in isolation as typical prisons were, when
Star Force offered a surrender and enemy troops accepted they were treated with
a different status than ‘criminals.’ What they were was involuntary guests,
with Star Force building small cities for them to inhabit. Foodstuffs and other
materials were provided to maintain the population, with them making nothing
for themselves and being left more or less alone so long as they didn’t start
misbehaving with regards to the other prisoners.

This was by far the largest haul of Skarron prisoners
ever taken, with most of those already in possession having been captured
against their will at the very end of engagements where strays were being
hunted down. More often than not Skarrons and Hobbits would be stunned and
captured, though that no longer happened for the lizards, knowing how much of a
pain they were to keep prisoner, with most of them killing themselves as soon
as they saw there was nothing they could do to hurt Star Force.

The Skarrons were a bit different, and not just
because of their elephant-like size. While they weren’t agreeable prisoners, to
say the least, typically they didn’t offer up much trouble moving them around
and they didn’t try to commit suicide…nor did they have the claws to do so.
Previous prisoners held considerable animosity towards their captors but it was
more in the form of spite. They didn’t think they were still in the fight, and
acted more like prisoners than the active combatants that the lizards always
were.

This lot was even more subdued, given the fact that
they saw this as a way to stay alive rather than being captured against their
will. They had to be kept onboard their transports for several weeks after
arrival in order for appropriate accommodations to be made, for there weren’t
enough Skarron facilities to hold them all. The Hobbit facilities were much
more massive, given that they expected to bring a lot of them into the fold.
Those were located on a different planet and used as a holding/testing
facility. If they didn’t take to Star Force they’d eventually be relocated over
to Tartarus, while the ones who did would be added to the Aronsic ward that had
a colony in this system and several others.

The Engineers were sent to Tartarus as well and held
as war prisoners along with the Skarrons, though in separate facilities. Those
also had to be enlarged, or rather other standby facilities had to be
reconfigured to hold them all. Each race had different requirements, and while
some were universal amongst similar body types there were usually little tweaks
that had to be made to get it right. Star Force didn’t ascribe to making
prisoners suffer in any way, they were simply denied their freedom and nothing
else, with no punitive philosophy involved. They’d been taken out of the
enemy’s arsenal, and that was what mattered most.

It was true that Star Force was devoting a
considerable amount of resources to keep them fed and housed, but that was just
one of the responsibilities of a proper civilization. Others would execute
prisoners rather than spend resources on them, or put them to work as slave
labor…along with other nastiness that even involved eating them for some races.
Star Force was going to have none of that and dealt with races that did
harshly, so it was no wonder the Skarrons and their slave races entered Star Force
territory with some trepidation.

What they found was none of that. They were treated as
guests…strictly confined guests, but no shackles, subdermal tracking chips,
restrain or punishment collars, or surgical subduement.
 
The food wasn’t to their liking, for it was
Star Force produced, but they’d get used to it in time. The guards were
virtually never seen, leaving the Skarrons to live quietly alone with each
other and unaware of what was transpiring in the outside world. They were
completely cut off from their former empire, but then again they’d already been
when the lizard invasion had robbed them of their supply lines, so mentally it
wasn’t such a huge transition, though it did take some time to fully adjust to.

The Engineers adapted instantaneously, though they
quickly became bored and soon began asking for tasks to do when they weren’t
being used as slave labor as they’d expected. They really didn’t want to be
left with nothing to do, and that at least was something Star Force could
sympathize with. It wasn’t long before a training/work program was established
to allow them to both keep busy while helping to contribute to Star Force…and
in the process begin a long path to earning their freedom.

Freedom, however, wasn’t something that they desired.
They simply wanted to work, and given that their treatment by Star Force as
prisoners was better than their treatment by the Skarron
empire
as ‘forced’ members, they didn’t want to leave. They kept to themselves and
their assignments, with an Archon and an Administrator being assigned to begin
developing a place for them in their empire as a ward, soon to begin filling
with those that earned their way out of prisoner status…with a discrete mental
check to make sure they were on the level and not just playing nice so they
could get in a position to sabotage something else later.

The Skarrons’ mentality was completely different. They
were the masters of their own empire and weren’t interested in being anything
but that. These wanted to live, but identity wise they had no interest in
changing, let alone sides. Star Force was content with that, merely keeping
them contained and alive, but they weren’t going to subject all of them to that
fate and kept a route of ‘escape’ possible for those wanting more than to just
exist in captivity.

There were a fair number who fell into the escapist
category, which began with physical training missions. Once they learned to
train and follow orders they were moved into a third nearby facility, already
having been taken away from the areas when they first declared their intentions
to ‘rebel’ a bit further. The move was both for their own safety and to
mentally disconnect them from the others, into which they went from a group
system into the seclusion similar to a normal Star Force prison.

The difference with the third stage was that this was
a work assignment and when they made the second transition they were given
provisional status and a bit of access to the data grids, allowing them to
learn about Star Force and outside events. It was during this period that they
were discretely visited by an Archon or other psionic-capable Human that did a
check of their intentions, with about 2/3rds of those claiming to be working
towards a place in Star Force having no intention of helping their captors.
They were playing ‘friendly’ in order to get out, gather intelligence, or find
a way to sabotage something.