Fragment 1521

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 The Union Army Apache Gunship manufactured by Enroe was an excellent Orbital support craft. It had six SII Long Range Quon Plasma Cannons but was not really designed to be a space fighter.

 To adapt it to that role, it was upgraded with four Sparrow ship to ship missiles, long range engines and tanks; as well as ParaDim Shields. The new Super Apache was also equipped with a ten round Micro Unitl the last Y’All Invasion over 500 years ago, the United Stars Army had only been used as a planetary defense force. After that war, the general public was eager to beef up military wherever possible and a clever Army General used that sentiment to get the Assembly broaden the Army’s scope and mission. It got a bigger budget and was charged to provide security not only to planets but frontier regions. It was the dawn of Deep Space Forts and ‘Cavalery patrols’.

 By charter, the Army could not have Space ships as that would infringe on the fleet and no one could argue why “two” fleets were needed.

 So they got around that by designating their units boats and nothing the Army could have was bigger than a destroyer. Translocator cannons, Loki torpedoes and similar weapons were deemed to big and too powerful for Planet surface fighting and so the Army did have very limited faster than light weaponry.

 Their space forts did have TL batteries of course but Space forts were stationary and needed to be towed by Fleet tugs or barges to change location.



 Captain Lody always had been a proud Union Army officer and considered the Army the elite of all military, he had changed his mind. He prayed to the Blue Virgin to fix GalNet so he could call for back up and not from the Army but he would have made a call to Fleet Headquarters.

 This morning he had 40 Apache and 12 Valkyrie Battle Walker Space Frames. If the Shiss would have taken the fight to the planet surface, things would have been different, but Hazzzock came into the system with eight Kashir cruisers. The latest frigate sized Shiss warships. They bombarded the Army base and the colony from space and forced the surviving Army Gunships to take off and engage the Shiss in space.

 No one would have survived at all, if not for the six Nul fighter that showed up giving Lody and the three damaged Apaches a chance to disengage and retreat. There was no one left alive on the surface of Bumblebee. The glowing pieces of Army hardware floating now in their own orbit around were testimony to the savage, mercy less attack of the Shiss. They did not come to take prisoners or slaves. They came to destroy and kill.”

 He saw the last Nul fighter killed on his rear facing scanners. Their former enemies had fought like Banshees and destroyed four of the Kashir, giving hope there was a change, but then nine more dropped into the system.

 To retreat and leave the field where his troops had died hurt him more than anything, but there was nothing he could do. The cursed GalNet network was still down and he could only reach his men and he had the chance to learn the names of the six Nul that died defending their former enemies like their own.

 There was one consolidation however and it almost felt like treason as he clenched his fists and said to the Kashir Cruisers now in pursuit. “Yes you ugly lizard faces come and follow us, kill us if you can but you will not escape his wraith, the eternal Warrior will hear of this and then the Devi will come!”

 He hoped his engines would hold out and he would make it to Benton’s Colony.



<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt"> --

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt"> Bumblebee as the Union settlers had called the third planet in the Minkor System had been a pleasant garden world with five large continents and deep oceans. Seemingly endless grass Tundra covered most of the biggest continent and with some imagination it was shaped like a terran Insect called bumblebee. When the fall season turned the local hip high grass into a bright organge and herds of gigantic herbivores would slowly move almost like combines and devour the yellow buds, leaving swaths of black stalks.

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt"> Both the grass and the animals had some commercial value. Bumble the busy town and the dozen farms no longer existed. Much of the landscape had been turned in a cratered moon like surface. Only smoldering ruins remained.

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt"> On a shallow hill overlooking the destruction stood an especially tall and muscular Shiss, flanked by three similar looking specimen and