Pax Galactica - A Space Opera

Chapter 34 - War Room

After a long circuitous journey the Angel Baby was finally ferried back to The Ship With The Unnecessarily Long Name That All Kinds Of People Are Going To Be Inconvenienced By. The four rangers disembarked and Helios led them directly to an empty holo-room.

Decker would have liked to stop and get food, but he knew better than to voice this opinion. Hopefully they could grab something afterwards. He was getting sick of ship's rations.

All four implants immediately synced up with the room as soon as they walked in. Whatever information was presented would be automatically downloaded.

"This is the situation as it stands," Helios began.

A holographic representation of Home/Click-*-Click-*-Click-Click swirled into existence in the center of the room. The vaguely green-yellow tinted sphere had two visible continents: a large crescent shaped one that encompassed more than 80% of the total landmass, and a smaller more splatter shaped one to the north. The rest was greenish ocean.

As soon as it resolved a number of notes began to light up around the planet. They indicated that it was 1.2 gravities, had a local day of 32.5 hours, a 267 local-day year. It also listed all the gases that made up the atmosphere, with those toxic to humans lit up in red.

"As you can see it's not too bad as far as human habitability goes. The temperature is fine; the planet is easily within the star's Goldilocks zone. You'll need plugs but you could walk around unsuited if you really wanted to. I don't recommend it, however."

She continued.

"The gug-gug-gugs have occupied the smaller continent to the north."

It lit up in gug-gug-gug orange, and this orange spilled over onto a decent-sized section of the larger continent.

"They've used this as a staging ground for their invasion. They now hold a non-trivial portion of the main continent as well. The gug-gug-gugs dug in there hard back when they had orbital supremacy. Luckily that's not the case anymore. We nudged some of the native scientists in the right direction and now their surface-to-orbit defences are quite formidable. They'd be no use against an equivtech ship but against the gug-gug-gug lighthuggers they're more than adequate. The gug-gug-gugs don't exactly have any ships to spare so they're forced to stay out of range. The net result is no one controls orbit. Effectively this means what we have down on Home is a good old fashioned ground war."

The globe shrank away and a new hologram resolved in that space. It was an image of an alien with a plump worm-like body. Its face was a mass of tentacle-like sensory organs that constantly writhed and probed the air. It had no visible eyes. It had six short arms with eight long, five-jointed fingers arrayed out in a circle equidistant from one another. The hologram unfurled these fingers and then rolled them back up into tight fists over and over again.

"This is a bit of a problem for us due to the factionalization of the native species. There are actually two intelligent species native to Home/Click-*-Click-*-Click-Click, although to hear them tell it there are almost a hundred. For some reason the ground-dwelling species, which unhelpfully does not have a name for its entire species, considers each individual polity or tribe to be a separate species. They will not acknowledge any kinship with their fellows, science be damned. They hate each other as much if not more than they hate the gug-gug-gugs, so they have no coordination whatsoever."

The hologram changed into the image of another alien. This one resembled a small furry hand cloth suspended in cloudy liquid inside a transparent sphere. The sphere appeared to be hovering above the ground.

"The water dwellers, who do have a name they're called the Click-Click-*-Click-Click, at the least are more unified. But they're pathologically isolationist. They resist the gug-gug-gugs when they're attacked in their underwater cities but they will neither accept or give aid to anyone else. We're still attempting to establish relations but it has not been fruitful."

The alien shrank away and the image of the globe returned.

"This means our primary focus is on the land dwellers. what we're trying to do is influence all their individual disparate wars into a coherent overall strategy in spite of them. They have a serious numbers advantage and much more knowledge of the terrain. If they could just leverage their advantages..."

Helios made a disgusted noise.

"Now keep in mind both sides are jamming communications down there on all spectrums, so we're down to talking and sending messengers. Even when we can trick these sprellheads into working together without realizing it often we're not able to coordinate things in time. The fog of war here is thick. At least the gug-gug-gugs are in the same position."

"So how do we fit into all of this?" asked Aranarth, his arms crossed.

"Squire Annesdaughter and I have been active in the occupied lands, helping especially one land-dweller tribe that calls itself 'the Kinship'. They all have really unhelpfully vague names like that. In any event we're helping them resist the gug-gug-gugs and make sure they have to spend as many resources holding the territory they already hold as they do invading new territory."

"Allegedly," added Ophelia. "It's more like we spend all our time scouting around the occupied lands."

"We do what's necessary," said Helios. "Hopefully Dane and his squire will be able to advise the Kinship and free us up to do what we do best. That's why our lodges work so well together."

"So really you want me to do your job for you while you play space ranger cowgirl," said Aranarth.

"No," Helios corrected him. "I want you to do your job that you should have been doing in the first place while I play space ranger cowgirl. You've been off doing your own thing for how long? At least as long as you've had your squire. It's time to be a team player Dane."

Aranarth put his hands up in surrender.

"Tellus, I was just teasing you. I think it's a good plan. I assume you'll be able to make the proper introductions for us with the Kinship?"

"You assume right," replied Helios.

"Let's not waste any more time. I'd like to get planet-side as soon as possible."

And just like that, Decker's dreams of a decent meal died in fire.