Alexander wasn’t about to accept any terms from Kynel, not after the Shican referred to humans as prey. Having any sort of discussion with a species that viewed you as lesser wasn’t going to be productive. It also allowed Alexander to see just how the aliens viewed the universe. Four and the others had told him as much, but it was much different hearing it directly from the source. That was the moment that he knew the Shican race needed a massive paradigm shift in how they thought before they could be allowed to interact with the wider universe once again. Not that this new knowledge changed his plans.
Thankfully, there wasn’t much to discuss. Alexander laid out what was going to happen, and Kynel agreed without complaint or comment, which was surprising. Not that he had much of a choice, considering the other option was death, but Alexander still expected some pushback from the Shican’s new Grand Commander. Even though the man had said as much, Alexander hadn’t expected Kynel to be so coldly pragmatic after dealing with the Shican’s aggression for so long.
Over the next few hours, Shican cyborgs departed the ship one at a time to receive the disabler devices. Most weren’t nearly as cooperative as Kynel, and that was with the man mentally controlling them to do as he ordered.
After dealing with the rather apathetic Kynel, Alexander was actually relieved by how normal the rest of the interactions went. He could deal with normal Shican behavior. Between him and Four, there was nothing a single cyborg could do to prevent the device from being attached.
Alexander glanced over at a pile of corpses. Well, almost nothing. A few of the most uncooperative Shican had immediately attempted to remove the device by smashing it against another cybernetic portion of their body as soon as Kynel released his hold on their implants. Those attempts always ended the same way. It was good to know the devices worked as described.
Kynel stood by impassively each time one of his people killed themselves. Eventually, enough bodies piled up that the message got through to the rest.
Once the devices were attached, small groups of the prisoners were loaded aboard a specially prepared shuttle and taken into orbit. The prisoners were heading for Judgement and other fleet ships for transport.
The fleet vessels weren’t really equipped to handle that many prisoners, but with Lucas and the other engineers’ help, they found an alternative method to hold the Shican without worry. Cargo holds were converted into holding spaces, equipped with dozens of crash pods. Nobody really trusted the disablers for the entire trip, so locking the cyborgs in molecular stasis was just an extra precaution. Nobody argued with the extra security measures.
“Is that all of them?” Alexander asked when no more Shican appeared from the ship for over a minute.
“No,” Kynel replied, “but the rest have managed to ignore my commands.”
“They will die,” Alexander reminded him flatly.
“They have chosen their fate,” the Grand Commander said without concern.
Alexander glanced at Four, but she just shrugged. Seeing as nobody present seemed concerned about what happened to the holdouts, he contacted Galloway.
“Trouble?” the man asked immediately.
“A bit,” Alexander admitted. “A few of the Shican prisoners are refusing to leave the ship. I want you to send in strike teams to clear them out.”
“I can do that, but why not just destroy the ship from orbit and be done with it?”
Alexander subvocalized the response, so Kynel wouldn’t overhear. “The vessel might not be Thesska’s battleship, but it does belong to the Grand Commander, which probably means it’s the most technologically advanced vessel left intact. I want to see what those advances consist of.” He mainly wanted an answer to how the Shican plasma cannons worked, but he was sure there were other advances in technology from the last Shican ship he had managed to study.
Galloway chuckled. “I should have guessed. Alright, I’ll have ten teams over there shortly. That should be more than enough to clear the vessel.”
Alexander thanked the man before ending the call and turning his attention back to Kynel. “Your turn,” he said.
The man held out his cybernetic arm, and Alexander placed the device on it. The only sign of discomfort was a slight flicker of the Grand Commander’s ears.
Kynel let his arm fall back to his side before speaking. “It’s done then.”
“It is,” Alexander confirmed.
“May I ask one request?”
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Kynel had been cooperative so far, so Alexander nodded.
The Shican commander produced a small tablet and handed it to him. “If your people could drop us off at this world, I would appreciate it.”
The data on the tablet had already been converted from Shican to human, showing that the Shican had a firm understanding of human culture and technology. Alexander cross-referenced the coordinates and mentally pulled up the location. The scouts had tagged the system as a Shican world, but it hadn’t been on the initial strike plan. It was located on the far side of Shican space from human territory and near the massive dust cloud, making it a strategically unimportant location. The fact that it only had a few orbital shipyards also made it a low-priority target for the EFEC swordfish, which continued their work of removing any Shican space assets.
Alexander hadn’t hidden his agenda from Kynel during their talk. He wanted to see how the alien would react to the fact that the Shican were going to be planet-bound for the foreseeable future. Kynel’s response held no anger in it, just a statement of fact. “If you were Shican, your softness would have seen your entire line disposed of. Now that the Shican clan line is broken, perhaps my people can move in another direction.”
A clan that had managed to stay hidden from the Shican empire for generations likely had plans within plans within plans and multiple contingencies in place for just about every situation, but Alexander would be watching closely. He wasn’t convinced that the Shican could change, but he also valued Four and the others’ opinions. If they thought it was possible, he would give it a chance, but as soon as the Shican tried to leave their worldly prisons without proving they had evolved as a species, Alexander would be there to finish the job. He would not let them threaten the stars ever again.
“Very well, I can do that,” Alexander agreed.
Kynel nodded and headed off toward the waiting shuttle, while Alexander sent updated commands to the scouts still in Shican space. They would spare that world, along with a few other Shican planets, but he wanted to remove any easy access to space, any orbital structures or defenses, before the fleet arrived. One act of self-preservation didn’t make up for the atrocities that the Shican had committed since spreading from their home world.
Some were bound to survive. That had already happened with Thesska’s fleet during the battle at Unokane, and while most had been hunted down already, a few had slipped through the sensor net around the system and had yet to be located. He doubted those survivors would be a problem for long. Every available military asset in Union space was hunting for them. They would either get caught or their ships would fail in the vast reaches between stars, sealing their fate just the same.
Alexander was more concerned about the thousands of Shican civilian vessels that were active inside their territory. There had been too many to keep track of, so some of them were bound to slip away. The EFEC Swordfish could only do so much, but he was confident that with time and patrols in and around Shican space, enough of those ships would be located, finally putting an end to the Shican’s aggression once and for all.
Four must have seen the conflicted expression on his face. “You did the right thing. They need time to change.”
She was wrong about why he was conflicted, but he didn’t want to argue with the AI woman, so he grunted in response.
Once Kynel was safely aboard the last shuttle, he turned around and headed back into the facility.
***
The BSE fleet arrived above the Shican world a few days later. Clouds of debris orbited the planet, remnants from the scouts’ preliminary work to make the planet safe for their arrival, and to ensure the Shican couldn’t rebuild their fleets.
“Admiral, we’re being targeted from the surface,” the sensor operator declared.
“If they fire upon us, destroy every single ground emplacement,” Vitor replied coldly. Alexander had told him about the strikes, but there was always the possibility that some defensive installations had been missed.
Vitor would leave them if they were. His job wasn’t to strip the Shican of defenses; it was to drop off the prisoners and ensure any ships or installations that could help rebuild their fleet or reach orbit were destroyed, but he wouldn’t hesitate to destroy more facilities if they threatened his fleet.
Katalynn’s people were performing a similar role at the other designated sanctuary worlds. He suspected they weren’t being as understanding as he was, however. He couldn’t blame them. The Union suffered the most during the two Shican wars. Hell, even his heart had grown colder as the war dragged on and he was forced to watch as the Shican systematically destroyed world after world without a hint of remorse.
In a surprising turn of common sense, the Shican didn’t fire on the fleet. Before he started indiscriminately bombing locations, the hangar door opened up, and the drop pods containing the Shican were ejected.
There was no way in hell Vitor was risking any of his people or a shuttle to return the bastards to the surface.
It took a few hours for the pods to descend to the planet, but it was nearly a full day before Kynel finally contacted them. The Shican looked slightly different, and Vitor realized it was because he had changed his cybernetic arm for a new one, removing the disabler device without killing himself.
Vitor wasn’t all that surprised; he would have done something similar if given the chance.
“I have explained to my clan what must be done. You may begin.” That was all the Grand Commander had to say before he ended the call.
Vitor chewed his lip for a moment before giving the order. Focused beams of destruction ripped through the planet’s atmosphere, targeting spaceports and shuttles. A few standard missiles raced out as well, targeting large production hubs on the surface.
The defenses that had been targeting them since they arrived finally stopped during Kynel’s call, so Vitor didn’t need to worry about return fire.
The selective orbital bombardment took a full week and was one of the worst things Vitor had been asked to carry out. He could see it bothered others in the crew as well, but nobody complained because everyone knew it was necessary.
By the time they were done, a full fifth of the Shican’s planetary infrastructure was left in ruins. Many Shican would likely die because of his actions, but he found it hard to care. He could keep the fleet there longer to ensure nobody was hiding shuttles or smaller ships, but he had had enough. He gave the fleet the order to withdraw. The rest could be left to the EFEC Swordfish to handle. They were the new sentinels tasked with watching over the Shican.
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