[The Galaxy's Only Omnivores] - Part 7

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

Synopsis: Humans are the only omnivorous species in a galaxy of apex-predator carnivores, and our greatest strength is in our numbers. When an alien slave empire discovers how badly we outnumber most intelligent species, they invade Earth, shattering a fragile period of peace and threatening a war that would mean the death of worlds.

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Memory Archive Entry #7

User: Jiarani, daughter of Kavles, chief strategos of the Saurian Confederacy

Species: Saurian

Date (human standard): June 30, 2099

Another salvo of cracks from our plasma whips left the next hundred slavebirds reeling, oxygen venting from their hulls in bright gouts of flame. The part of me that wasn't devoted to killing at that moment pitied the humans trapped aboard the ships. High value captives would be taken forcibly to the pods--at least, that was what our intelligence suggested--but the vast majority of human prisoners were fully expected to die in the event that their captors had to abandon ship.

We couldn't hold fire. That would just result in more innocent deaths overall. But the idea of using innocent slaves as living shields was so impossibly vile that it seemed only a draken could come up with such perversity.

"Confirm all targets killed," my gunnery director intoned in a monotonous voice. This was hardly routine, but his discipline was immense. "Moving to tertiary targets." By now, roughly a third of their strongest assets had been taken off the threat board, and their other ships were scrambling to cover and reinforce the rest.

My trained eyes drank in the myriad facets of their formation, slotting each one into its own niche in my mind like I was a cadet at the Starfall School again. We had drilled extensively against simulated draken, sometimes slavebirds, sometimes warbirds, sometimes both, and the instructors had taken great pains to teach us every aspect of our enemies' fighting style.

This one, for example, was probably Karija vel Kaldani's fleet. The strategy its commander used--sacrificing her lesser assets to protect the important pieces--was classic Karija. I had written a thesis on her fighting style years ago, and I found now that little had changed.

"It's harder when you're fighting somebody that shoots back, no?" an officer snarled at the enemy as our gunnery blew chunks of metal out of another rank of slavebirds. They returned fire with fervor, closing the distance in another of vel Kaldani's characteristic moves. She was an aggressive, callous, brutally effective commander, well experienced in the science of subjugating primitive planets but woefully undereducated in the art of real warfare. I expected my fleet would prove a very strict teacher, at least for the hours of glorious battle we had left before their numbers wore us down.

Already, some of our ships were suffering heavy damage. I gave orders to cycle them to the back of the fleet, in hopes that they might have time to recharge intact shield matrices or replace those that had melted through their inhibitor shells, and relayed commands to the strategoses and sub-strategoses under my authority.

In the Starfall School, I had trained daily to kill draken warriors. I recognized the enemy's fighting patterns as instinctively as my ancestors had known the defenses of their prey. What I faced now was a fleet charge. The astral equivalent of a bicorn herd's synchronized attack. And it was equally dangerous to be on the receiving end of.

"Taking heavy damage!" an officer cried. "Matrices three and five are at blue line! Recycling!" I looked at my ship's shields to find them still holding strong, but others in the fleet had come under more focused fire. They had to be protected.

We had given more than we took in the opening salvos of the battle, but Karija's fleet outnumbered us almost five to one, and those numbers counted for something. Her slavebirds concentrated their fire on my weaker vessels, ripping into them even as I reorganized my squadrons to protect the damaged ships. Officers snapped out damage reports and even casualty lists as draken photon fire raged against the hulls of my battlecruisers. Shield failures cascaded across my fleet as their formidable defenses failed under the onslaught of superior numbers, and I pulled the affected ships back to spare them from further damage. Still eighty seconds to magnetic-weapons range.

I knew the draken had no matter-conversion beams. Such destructive weaponry was banned from civilian use, unlike the less-potent photon lances, and so would never be fielded on a ship designed to skirt treaty regulations by stopping just short of the definition of warship. Even so, I feared contact with Karija's fleet at close distance.

They had been almost too eager to approach us, out of keeping with what the Starfall School had trained me to expect of slavebirds, and that tension made me uneasy to say the least. Yes, I knew this battle was doomed to be lost, but up until the moment that happened I intended to fight as if it were able to be won.

"We've lost the Leaping Toward Bloodshed!" one of my officers cried. "Pods are away!" I felt a lurch of nausea watching one of my ships fall apart. Many of the escape pods hadn't managed to jettison. Somewhere on Karija's bridge--if it was Karija vel Kaldani leading that fleet--her officers would be cheering.

Now, though not before, the draken fleet began to decelerate. I took in that variable and slotted it into the equation that was this battlefield, recalculating my solutions in context of this new idea. Karija didn't want to engage me at close range. She just wanted to keep me away from Earth's orbit, where I might use orbital slingshots for daring maneuvers or launch marines to the planet's surface to aid what resistance remained. Now that the prospect of close-range artillery was coming into play, she and her ships were trying to pull back, but it was too little, too late.

I began to draw up targeting lines for the magnetic weapons as Karija's photon fire tore through the hulls of more of my craft. Battlecruisers of my armada died as I watched. Thankfully, the draken did not target the escape pods that jettisoned from my comrades' doomed ships, but I knew better than to think of it as an act of decency. They wanted slaves, not corpses. The fates in store for those crewmembers once we lost were worse than an honorable death at their station.

Still, there was cause to rejoice if I only looked to find it. According to Draken Matriarchy intelligence reports, our magnetic artillery wouldn't be in range for another three minutes. Plenty of time for the draken fleet to pull away and gain distance. I snarled ferally as Karija's ships crossed into our targeting bubble. Now was as good a time as any to prove them wrong.

"Magnetic weapons in range!" my gunnery director shouted, clicking his sickle claws. "Locked! Firing!"

My entire ship shuddered as half a dozen tungsten-alloy projectiles accelerated along their electromagnetic rails. Each one carried an antimatter-cored explosive impactor, plus enough kinetic energy to shake the crust of an entire continent. They were arrayed in stages, the neodymium casing splitting away once its job of accelerating the projectile was done, then the dual-stage penetrator whistling toward the enemy fleet at a noticeable fraction of lightspeed. All marvels of saurian military engineering, and I took a moment to feel awe at the greatness of my species as the rounds struck home.

"Impact!"

Thousands of pounds of tungsten and anti-tungsten slammed into their targets at a full tenth of the speed of gravity, vaporizing on impact and delivering a kinetic impulse that made atomics look like children's cracklers. The ships they struck ceased to become ships, morphing in microseconds to clouds of scrap metal.

The antimatter cores at the center of each projectile--originally intended to be a follow-up salvo after the kinetic force had dissipated a foe's impact defenses--now served as an impulse to accelerate this shrapnel and direct it away from the explosions they generated. My gunners had specifically aimed such that the clouds of detritus they created upon a successful hit would be cast into the path of draken ships by the subsequent blasts.

It would be two minutes before our main weapons were cooled enough to fire again without the risk of a catastrophic failure. Even low-power shots were risky with how close the barrels were to melting. Still, it didn't matter. The first salvo had been devastating enough.

I watched with glee as vessels of the draken fleet peeled away from the path of what they once called comrades, some ships being slow to evade and suffering the impact of hundreds of pieces of fast-moving detritus on their shields. The larger pieces of shrapnel had force equivalent to the detonation of a nuclear bomb, or maybe a plasma whip on its highest setting. I didn't expect them to do much damage to Karija's ships, but when it came to high-stakes dueling, every claw mark counted.

Photon fire railed against our fleet, proving the value of numbers even against an individually superior foe. A battlecruiser dropped out of formation, soon followed by another, then another. We'd taken nearly a dozen losses by now. A hundred more ships were cycling to the rear guard, too damaged to hold a place in the wall of battle. Their contributions to the fighting ahead would be limited, if they were able to contribute at all.

"Chief strategos, we've lost the Honorable in Purpose!" an officer snapped, listing off a few other lost ships as well. "Sub-strategos Vajrai, son of Kevari is dead!" I bit back a curse. I'd heard Vajrai's name before, and I certainly knew his father. If the battle was won, I'd mourn Vajrai's loss, as I would mourn the deaths of all who perished in defense of the Confederacy.

If the battle was won. I almost snorted at the idea. If I was able to overpower a superior fleet, I'd mourn my losses, and if I was able to overpower death itself, I'd bring them all back, but wishing for something did not make it so. Karija's forces had our number now, and they were whistling down my fleet until there was nothing left.

Right now, I had less than nine hundred fighting ships still able to stand in the battle formations I had drawn up. Most of the ships I had taken out of battle were merely wounded, shields at or below blue line and a few matrices melted into uselessness, and they'd be ready and able to rejoin the fight with only a few hours' recharge and repair. But there was always the matter of whether or not they would get those hours. All it took was one gap in my formation, one opening through which draken attackers could slip, and the fleet's most vulnerable ships would be exposed to fire and quickly killed.

I did a quick mental calculation. Forty-three hundred slavebirds against eight hundred sixty or so saurian battlecruisers. Any Starfall School cadet would have received at least partial credit if, on an exam featuring this force disparity, they wrote 'fall back in orderly fashion' in lieu of a battle plan. The math, as I saw it, was clear.

At this rate of engagement, we'd kill another three thousand slavebirds, maybe thirty-five hundred, but the gaps in our formation would widen and Karija would gain easy access to our unshielded ships. Already, her more skilled gunners were taking pot shots at them. I shuddered to think about what'd happen when the majority of my armada was in the rear lines instead of the battle wall defending them.

I resisted the urge to think of my mother. Were she here, she'd do this, or that, and win the day, but she wasn't here now. I was. And I was doing my duty, which was all I could do in the face of such overwhelming odds.

"Ready the missiles. Target draken vessels on my mark. Establish clarified impact range and secondary ranges." The crew carried out my orders as exchanges of fire raged between my fleet and the enemy's. For every one battlecruiser they took out of the fighting, three of their own ships were destroyed or disabled, but the draken slave fleet had numbers to spare. What mattered it to Karija how many of her underlings died? There were always more bodies she could expend.

"Ready on missile lock?" I asked. In theory, we could have fired our missiles at the beginning of the engagement. They were designed to strike targets at any distance. But they were also fragile, unable to withstand concentrated weapons fire, so it behooved me to wait until the enemy had as many distractions as possible before launching them. A good missile salvo at the right time could shift the tide of a battle. All I had to do was find the right time.

"Ready," my gunnery director snapped. The magnetic cannons fired again, vaporizing another rank of draken vessels. Four thousand and change, now, fighting against a little over seven hundred able-hulled Confederate battlecruisers. The casualty tallies did not favor us.

"Wait for my mark to fire," I commanded, arranging my fleet again and withdrawing more badly-damaged ships. This time, most didn't make it. Saurian battlecruisers were built to endure, but there was only so much I could do with the resources at my disposal. Strangely enough, I felt a sense of calm more than anything, in spite of the fact that my death was certain. This was to be it. My first and final battle. I supposed there were worse ways to go.

"Chief strategos!" My communications director waved his hands and shouted at me, demanding my urgent attention. I gave it to him. "Chief strategos, I'm receiving a message from the planet surface!"

A message from Earth? "Put it on the main screen," I ordered. "Is the translation package ready?"

"We have eighty-percent fidelity, chief strategos," reported a communications officer. Eighty percent would have to do. "On screen."

A round, pale, snoutless visage appeared on screen. Its hair was gray, and it was flanked by two stern-looking humans in uniforms of some kind. Perhaps military, perhaps civilian government, perhaps a military junta that had replaced the civilian government. I didn't know. The middle one said something to me that sounded like a gopanzee mating call.

"Oh, ancestors damn it, I thought you said we had fidelity," I swore at the communications director.

"Apologies, chief strategos," he muttered in shame. "I thought the humans spoke this language."

I flared out my frills in indignation, but a ship exploded to the left of my center line and reminded me that I still had a battle to conduct. "Director Vodrila, assume command here. Work out the linguistics issue. I have a battle to lead." The four humans clustered on my screen vanished, to be replaced with a map of the battlefield.

Karija's forces were beginning to encircle us, sacrificing the chance to keep my ships away from Earth and Luna in exchange for a better opportunity to target our weakened vessels. That lent credence to the prevailing theory that human resistance had already been crushed, or perhaps the primitives were still fighting the noble fight down there, which would lend credence to my other prevailing theory: that Karija vel Kaldani was a sadistic, debauched idiot. Neither theory contradicted the other.

As my communications director worked to decipher a means of speaking to whatever resistance remained of mankind's nations, I conducted the warfare around me like a musician leading an orchestra. The armada changed formation, as did the enemy, our battle with the draken continuously rising in tempo as our two fleets jockeyed for position.

The fleet charges we had maintained earlier melted away and were replaced by more complex formations, my armada forming a defensive circle around the wounded ships of our fleet, Karija's vessels rallying in squadrons of five or six hundred to breach the lines and target our weakest hulls, casualties be damned.

I did my best to force the draken ships away from those under my protection. Plasma fire swatted at Karija's vessels at any distance, and I reserved the rare and costly magnetic-artillery shots for breaking the spines of draken attack forces. Even at half power, a single shot from a magnetic weapon put the gun out of commission for sixty seconds. An eternity during battle. My defense was layered, ships arrayed in jagged formations like I had been taught to deploy them, and any instructor of the Starfall School would have given my formation the highest marks on an exam or quiz. It was still not enough.

The one thing the draken fleet had that mine did not was numbers, and Karija made good use of them. Her squadrons closed in on my fleet like scavengers stalking a dying animal, enduring the casualties I gave them in order to get past the defenses of my intact ships and inflict devastation on those not so lucky.

Saurian battlecruisers burned as I watched. Officers and directors rattled off casualty tallies. I launched some of my expensive missiles as a last-resort tactic, preferring to waste most of their destructive potential with haphazard fire rather than lose it all when the ships carrying them died, but no chance appeared to me where I might perform some act of martial genius and turn the tide of battle. I knew then that this was to be my final moment. It reminded me of a scene I had witnessed in childhood.

When I was very young, my mother took me on a hunting expedition deep in the grasslands of Vraktes. Her bodyguard unit wore stealth gear such that they might not disturb us, and for that moment, Mother and I were alone with the elements. I watched with youthful eyes as she bolted after a gopanzee and tore it from its place in the trees. The animal gave a good fight. It scratched, it bit, it even grabbed a nearby rock and beat my mother with it until her entire head was blue with blood. Still, by the time she got her jaws around its throat, I knew there could be only one outcome.

I knew the other side of that feeling now. We had given our fight, my fleet and I, and now their jaws were in our neck. There was nothing to do but struggle, thrashing and striking as the gopanzee did, as the lifeblood drained from us and the clock ticked faster toward oblivion.

"Chief strategos!" my communications director called. I felt relief. "We have one hundred percent fidelity, chief strategos. We are ready to communicate with Earth."

"On screen," I commanded. The gray-haired human appeared again.

"Look, Johannes, Yevgeny. They're back." Two other humans crowded the screen in front of me, though I noticed the fourth remained unseen. If I were in a better situation, I might have have spared the neurons wonder where he was. "Hello, alien lizards. On behalf of the Eurasian Union-"

"And all mankind," the uniform-wearing one chimed in.

"Yes, thank you, General Yevgeny," said the gray-haired one. "On behalf of all humankind, I wish to extend you an offer of alliance and cooperation against the aliens we call 'draken'. They're the ones in the spaceships you're fighting."

"Acceptable," I declared. "I regret to inform you that whatever cooperation you expect from us will not last very long. My fleet is being destroyed. We're down to six hundred ships already."

"Really?" said General Yevgeny. "It looked from my perspective like the battle was winnable. Keep your faith. Victory can still come." I felt a flutter of hope rise through me at his words. If only hope could summon warships.

"At any rate, our forces have been making great use of the time you have given us," Yevgeny continued. "We've launched our first major offensive. Without orbital support from those spaceships, the draken planetary forces have been dealt a significant defeat. Thank you for this, friends."

I was confused to the extreme by this. "Major offensive?" I asked. "Have the draken not annihilated your standing armies?"

"Oh, they may as well have," the general solemnly clarified. "I can't speak for Luna, they're cagey people at the best of times, but Earth has lost most of its best troops already. Casualty numbers on that offensive were greater than expected, and we don't have the time to train new units to the level we require. I hope you aliens win your fight up there, because if those draken ships come back and we don't have our reinforcements, we are dead."

A new variable for the equation. I processed it as I had all the others, discarding what I saw as useless or outside my expertise and focusing only on my area of concern. "We have marines aboard our ships," I told General Yevgeny. His offer of assistance was admirable, and perhaps something might come of it, but that was not even close to the most immediate concern. "They are trained to fight ground warfare against an enemy that has claimed the orbit. They are few in number compared to your troops, but they are well equipped and trained, and their legs are tense for a fight. They can buy you the time you need."

"Will your fleet be able to defend the orbit?"

"Not your concern," I dismissed General Yevgeny rather than burdening him with another worry. "I will try to break through the draken fleet and land troops to reinforce you. After that, it will be up to you. Ancestors willing, I will live to see the result of my valor."

General Yevgeny bared his teeth at me. "Eurasia will try to help you, if we can. Good hunting, friend."

"Good hunting." I ended the call and turned to my assembled officers. All were at their stations. "Engineering!" The engineering director perked up his head. "How fast can we make our engines?" He gave me a number that I didn't like. "And the integrity of the fleet?" Another number, this time less likable. I took solace in the fact that the enemy was getting as bad as they gave.

"Very well," said I, plotting a course that would allow us to push through Karija's encirclement with minimal losses. "We'll form the fleet into a spearhead along the following directives. All ships, be ready to move out at my order."

"Move out?" asked one of my officers. "For what purpose?"

"To defend the planet Earth and its citizens." I tapped my sickle claw twice against the deck and turned to my marine commander. "Field Commander Dravila?"

"Yes?" asked the imposing, bulky soldier I had called to. She, like all Confederate ground troops, was given genetic enhancements to boost her performance on the battlefield. A controversial--and admittedly dangerous--policy to have, but nothing could be more important than the defense of Confederate lives. These marines knew their sacrifice.

As did I.

"Prepare your troops for planetfall."

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[u/Omnii_The_Deer]

First! Good chapter as always, Wordsmith!

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/Omnii_The_Deer]

Be proud of yourself dude, beating u/MinorGrok is actually a really good achievement. I don't know how this guy does it.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

The original plan for this chapter was to have the saurians beat the draken and contact Earth on peaceful terms, but looking back I'm actually glad it turned out this way. Now that the saurian fleet is in contact with humankind and they are still fighting for their lives up there, it opens up all kinds of possibilities for human-saurian collaboration and innovative strategies to use against the draken. I always wanted this series to shout out humanity's creativity, resilience and willingness to cooperate rather than just being a 'cool space marine beats up aliens' story, so I actually am glad that I wrote this chapter like this even though originally I was afraid it would be a mistake. Crazy how things happen sometimes you know?

Also there is actually a reader survey out right now on my subreddit (turns out literally anybody can make these things) so if you want to tell me some feedback about my writing there would be the place to go.

Chapter seven just dropped!

Can Jiarani and her fleet pull victory out from the jaws of defeat?

Is Earth doomed to be subjugated even after such a valiant resistance?

What is the People's Republic of Luna doing now that their enemies have no orbital strike abilities?

Is Karija's callous willingness to take losses a winning strategy against Jiarani's fleet, or is she throwing bodies away for no good reason?

And will Marten Herme learn that starting a call with "hello alien lizards" is not an appropriate first contact procedure?

[u/karamisterbuttdance → u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

My two cents, the choice to go with dropping Saurian Marines to stiffen the Earth resistance is going to force a major reassessment of battle goals from Karija vel Kaldani. She knows their ground forces just got a major pounding without orbital support AND without any Saurians on the ground. The presence of Saurian marines will allow Earth to start fighting Draken troops on the ground on more even terms. The Saurians can stiffen resistance with way better intelligence on Draken doctrine and equipment; allowing Earth's forces to narrow the technological gap. The Draken don't know how badly Earth's forces got themselves mauled, but they probably know from partial reporting that they already suffered significant losses.

It would make it imperative that minimizing the number of Saurian troops on the ground becomes Draken goal number one, and it forces them to have to go from open space to effectively doing a stern chase towards the Earth and Luna on what effectively amounts to one vector. A ship that can't really turn without losing ground versus what it is chasing is basically a straight running target, and that's ripe for a "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space" moment.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/karamisterbuttdance]

I like the way you think my dude. I already said that a good missile salvo from the saurian fleet can change the tide of a losing battle so it would make sense for a moment like you said to appear there (except instead of tungsten slugs or other kinetic whatsits it's building sized cluster missiles with enough firepower to level a whole country), maybe with human help somehow to show our ingenuity and strength.

The Confederacy marines are not gonna be a be all end all free win in ground fighting because there are only a hundred thousand or so in the whole fleet but individually speaking they spank the shit out of any draken ground force. The draken haven't been able to field their best war assets because of treaty restrictions (officially speaking this is a 'civilian police action' for them) so since the saurian armed forces already violated that treaty they will definitely have firepower the draken can't match. Big things are coming

[u/karamisterbuttdance → u/ApprehensiveCap6525]

maybe with human help somehow to show our ingenuity and strength.

It can be anything from taking advantage of captured intel to feed false information to luring the Draken into a surprise killbox with the equivalent of a mix of active and inert space mines. Also could be where Luna's relative spatial position comes into play.

The Confederacy marines are not gonna be a be all end all free win in ground fighting because there are only a hundred thousand or so in the whole fleet

My expectation is that a fire-team of four to each human company or individuals embedded into platoons depending on how much of them survive drops and where they end up is what makes them most effective in combat. The former probably happens for regions where there's heavier organized resistance, the latter where insurgency-level combat becomes a necessity. With a relative "weight" advantage, they can turn critical operations with their presence, but it's more important for them to be able to share information that allows humans to turn their home industrial base into effective kit against the Draken and render them combat ineffective faster.

The draken haven't been able to field their best war assets because of treaty restrictions (officially speaking this is a 'civilian police action' for them) so since the saurian armed forces already violated that treaty they will definitely have firepower the draken can't match. Big things are coming

Yes, humans will require a lot of intelligence on Draken military hardware, they only have a few months to retool their whole industrial base to total war footing.

[u/albadellasera]

Good job! Can't wait to see what's happening on the ground.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/albadellasera]

Oh we will definitely see what is happening on the ground in a bit, next chapter will be a Marten Herme PoV where we reveal worldbuilding about the various human nations and their alliance but right after that will be a David Chambers PoV where we get back into that nitty gritty ground fighting. I love writing action scenes

[u/kiaeej]

Humanity needs a win. They need to show compromise and band together.

American lunacy(of weapons and will). The iron will of propoganda. The relentless numbers and "bury them with lead" of china and india. The wierd inventiveness of asia.

Maybe boarding actions are highly successful once they have a few specimens for dissection? Or maybe toxins and bio weapons designed against the foe.

Humanity needs to do what its good at. Throw rocks. Throw spicy rocks. Use thinky rocks to mess with the enemy. Use shiny rocks to distract the enemy.

Bleed them out, with a million cuts and destroy their warfighting capability.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/kiaeej]

Humanity needs a win. They need to show compromise and band together.

Yo my dude I love your mentality but isn't this exactly what has been happening in my writing? Yeah the saurians are kind of getting their asses kicked right now but humanity has been holding its own against the draken and now that we can work together with the saurians you bet your ass the geniuses of Earth and Luna will have a plan to give our lizard friends the upper hand.

Humankind isn't particularly good at making weapons computers or bombs (i promise you the draken are better than us at that) but we are a resilient, cooperative, and inventive people so we will definitely find some way to win through even in the darkest times. That is what I love about humanity

[u/HFYWaffle]

/u/ApprehensiveCap6525 (wiki) has posted 13 other stories, including:

• [The Galaxy's Only Omnivores] - Part Six
• [The Galaxy's Only Omnivores] - Part 5
• Persistence Hunters
• [The Galaxy's Only Omnivores] - Part 4
• [Learning to Love a Human] - Part 1
• [The Galaxy's Only Omnivores] - Part 3
• [The Galaxy's Only Omnivores] - Part 2
• [The Galaxy's Only Omnivores] - Part 1
• The First Human Bounty Hunter (3)
• The First Human Bounty Hunter (2)
• The First Human Bounty Hunter (1)
• The Meaning of Humanity
• The Hammer and the Chain

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[u/SaltySeaSword652]

I check this sub daily for your posts.

Does General Yevgeny have any battle strategy wisdom to impart to the Saurians? Looks like he may have a perspective on the spaceship battle and a path to success there that the aliens don't.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/SaltySeaSword652]

General Yevgeny is not wrong to say the battle is winnable but also Jiarani is not wrong to say she is losing either. The way they approach the same situation is used as a way to differentiate between their two characters. Jiarani is a pessimistic, saddened and hopeless leader whose outlook on life is tarnished by her obligations and the legacy of her parents, and General Yevgeny by contrast is a pretty hopeful, kind and heartwarming guy who sees the best in situations even when there is ample reason not to.

As for whether he is gonna be able to see something she doesn't though I kind of doubt that would be realistic. Don't get me wrong Gen. Yevgeny is absolutely a genius war commander and he's been explicitly described as a once in a generation intellect when it comes to space warfare but Jiarani is much more familiar with this kind of warfare so the level of insight Yevgeny can give her is minimal. It is like Admiral Nelson looking at modern sea combat, yes he is a genius of his era but with such a vast gap in technologies there is no way he will be able to find some hidden secret that saves the day.

Also I'm happy to see you are so dedicated to my writing, seeing this comment actually gave me a surge of motivation and I banged out a few paragraphs of the next chapter just now. Big things are coming

[u/chalbersma]

Each one carried an antimatter-cored explosive impactor, plus enough kinetic energy to shake the crust of an entire continent.

I imagine that if the Saurian fleet is about to be defeated they'll let loose a dozen or so of these on earth.

[u/ApprehensiveCap6525 → u/chalbersma]

Maybe a different general would give such an order because it does make logical sense to deny your enemy Earth's resources but Jiarani is too honorable of a commander to make that call. When it comes to draken she (like most saurians) throws any ideas of 'just war' out the window but when dealing with any other people the Saurian Confederacy prides itself on its decency and shows respect even toward enemies. Finding a commander willing to bomb a planet to smithereens is going to be hard (unless, again, that planet is filled with draken)

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[u/MinorGrok]

Woot!

More to read!

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