Memory transcription subject: Slanek, Venlil Space Corps
Date [standardized aurigan time]: Heather 23, 1 AA
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The aurigan attacks on the Gojid outposts forced them to withdraw all their forces back to their core worlds, which made trespassing through their space that much easier.
Now I was on my way to Gojid homeworld, ferrying a bunch of aurigans of all shapes and sizes. The mezari were being oddly rambunctious and jovial, which one of the gaurans informed me was a coping mechanism.
The gaurans were prey like us, but didn't seen to fear predators one bit. At first we assumed they were defective, but Tal put it best 'Gaurans are big, few things can hurt us. Why should we be afraid.'. That stuck with me. Prey didn't need to fear predators if they could defend themselves. I wondered why we didn't think like that. Were the gaurans just built different?
And speak of the devil, Tal himself suddenly popped into the cockpit, sitting down behind me. "Hello, little Slanek." He greeted me in a friendly tone. Despite being prey, gauran voices were very deep, so it was always odd to hear them speak.
"Hey, big guy. We're only an hour out. Are the others ready?" I responded, putting the ship in automatic course keeping and turning around with the swivel chair.
Tal nodded, before procuring a glass jar of fruit preserves from his satchel. "Yes. Everyone is ready. I brought some apple rations. Want any?" I was glad the translation database was updated for gauran grammar, and it stopped painting their speech as child-like. When speaking the mezari tongue they still used their own language's grammar in a sort of pidgin, since it was a second language to them, and the translator didn't really know what to do.
"You have them, you need more energy than me, and it's not like I'm going into battle." I replied, giving a dismissive tail motion.
"Well, you might end up in battle, you never know. Anything could happen."
"After the Sovlin incident I'm happy to stay away from fighting. Which is why I'm ferry troops rather than in one of the fighting vessels." I responded. Being kidnapped by Sovlin was a real eye opener about the dangers of being around aurigans. But it also taught me that they can handle themselves. I was sure that being a support pilot was my calling in this war, even with the battle meditations they were teaching venlil volunteers.
"If you say so." Tal chuckled, before opening the jar of jellified fruit, and devoured the whole thing with a single twist of his tongue. He then procured two more from his satchel and ate them as well. Watching him eat was amusing, since food looked tiny in his hands.
"If you want to keep me company until we get there, I don't mind." I then said, turning back to check the console and make sure nothing required my attention. "Just don't bump your head into anything like during training."
"That was one time! And I was distracted by Raudd."
I gave an amused twirl of my tail. "Yeah, sure buddy."
The rest of the trip was uneventful, and the hour quickly turned into minutes, and then into battle.
"Everyone get ready, we're coming out of fold space!" Captain Kata spoke into the comms, and I readied myself for evasive actions.
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Memory transcription subject: Rill Kata, Vaulter Guardian
Date [standardized aurigan time]: Heather 23, 1 AA
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"3... 2... 1..." My helmswoman counted down, and then reality folded out around us, and we returned to realspace.
Immediately we were greeted by Gojid ships forming a shield around the Cradle, with very few gaps between them, no doubt killing fields set up to trap us.
"Everyone, you know the drill. Ion torpedo their shields, then plasa beam through the gaps." I sent a fleet wide reminder. This was going to be tougher than the little skirmishes by the outposts, but I hoped that my people were ready.
"They're charging plasma railguns!" My sensors officer barked, and I gave the order for evasive action. Again the plasma skimmed off our shields, partially draining their power. "Retalliate!" I barked, and soon enough ion torpedoes were flying at the enemy vessel that shot us.
"Partial hit, they swirved." Came the reply from the weapons station.
"Aim slightly ahead of their actual position so they fly into it!"
"No good, they adjusted again. Ma'am, it's probably their computer adjusting course, rather than a person. Maybe we can trick it with a lose-lose scenario."
"Alright, launch four torpedoes, send each one on a different approach. Make sure they don't have anywhere to evade to but backwards, which they can't."
"Aye aye, ma'am!"
That stratedy seemed to work, and the ship just swiveled its nose around, trying to figure an angle. It then tried to turn around, but it was too late, and all torpedoes impacted the shield, totally draining it.
"Plasma lances, now!" I barked, and immediately bright beams of superheated gas shot from the mast and prow of our karve, cutting into the hull of the ship.
"Direct hit, ship disabled." My sensors officer confirmed what I was seeing.
"Alright, keep going, we have to keep them distracted so that our troops can sneak past."
"Ma'am, two ships on approach, they're both charging plasma railguns." Came another cry from the sensors officer.
"Pull the nose up, angle the ship so they both skim the shield!" I barked to the helmswoman, and she quickly complied. The ship was slow to turn, but those railguns were equally slow to charge.
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They both impacted the shield at the same time, but rather than just skim it, they cut right through, depleting it.
"Power to thrusters! Get us out of their line of fire! And use the starboard torpedo bays!"
Our ship then started accelerating 'upwards' relative to the plane of battle, and two torpedos launched from our starboard, one aimed at each of the offending ships. I commed over to our fleet to cover us, and to use multi-pronged attacks to keep the enemy computers confused.
The torpedoes we fired were evaded, but that made the two ships no longer target us. This gave our shields time to recover.
"Ok, readjust our vector." I ordered the helm, before opening a fleet wide channel. "Everyone pick a target, we need to open a corridor for the troop transports!"
The gojid systems were having a hard time dodging the four pronged attacks, but unloading all of our torpedoes in one go slowed down our rate of fire significantly. We had to use plasma beams to keep them on their toes while the bays reloaded, but so far so good.
Skirt, evade, salvo torpedoes, pierce into hulls. Skirt, evade, salvo torpedoes, pierce into hulls. It was like a dance at this point, ships were pirouetting around each other, looking for avenues to attack, and the massive space battle was turning into isolated skirmishes.
This was our chance to slip the transports through, so I opened a fleet wide channel one more time. "Alright, transports, get ready to push towards the cradle. Escorts, keep close to your transports. Everyone else, keep the enemy busy."
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Memory transcription subject: Slanek, Venlil Space Corps
Date [standardized aurigan time]: Heather 23, 1 AA
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This was it, time to fly a metal tin can full of soldiers past enemy fire. I prayed that we wouldn't get hit, and Tal headed back to the others, ready to drop into the atmosphere. I thought they were kidding when they first said they'd jump ou of the ships when we got there, but it wasn't a joke. Here I was ferrying them to that very goal.
The onboard computer helped me keep clear of the fighting, but a stray plasma shot nearly hit us, and I had to evade hard. The aurigan escorts were doing their best to cover us, but it was still stressful to fly in these conditions.
I had to remind myself that at least I wasn't flying through arxur. This was a cake walk compared to that.
"T minus 1 mintue." I commed in as we entered the atmosphere, pulling the shuttle towards my designated target. We were too small to hit by the planetary defenses, which thankfully meant we got little resistance. Some smaller AA batteries tried to shoot us down, but our escorts shot down the missiles before they could even get close.
"T minues 10 seconds." I gave the last call, and slowing down to a glide over our target, I could see the feed of the aurigans leaping out of the shuttle, most of them with parachutes, some of them with wings. The gaurans went last, and used some sort of Dust powered device to slow down their fall. It was wondrous to behold on the feed, but terrifying to think about.
Once everyone was out, I sealed the ship back up and began my ascent back to the main fleet, along with dozens of other transports, and hoped that my friends made it to the ground in one piece.
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Memory transcription subject: Raudd Klapatch, Vaulter Seeker
Date [standardized aurigan time]: Heather 23, 1 AA
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The air bellowed through my outfit as I plunged towards the ground, counting down in my head until I needed to pull the parachute cord. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
With a tug on the cord, the parachute yanked me upwards. I could see that most of the others managed to pull their cords in time, though a few had to be rescued by flying Allayi. Too bad we didn't have enough slow falling belt for everyone, that would've avoided such incidents.
Touching boots to the ground, I detached from my chute, and made my way towards the others. We were already under fire from the gojid home guard, though about 50% of them seemed to be running away rather than shooting at us. Tal was the first of our number I managed to meet up with. "Tal, good to see you."
"Raudd. Friend. Look at the cowards run!" The minotaur boasted, pointing at the gojids.
"Yeah, I saw. I feel bad for them. They must be terrified."
"Hmm... Maybe you're right. Shouldn't mock children for being scared." He then conceded, yet somehow managed to insult the gojids at the same time.
"C'mon, let's get to the others." I readied my rifle, and we headed over to a larger group. As the battle went on around us, I could see the dawn officers charging on the enemy positions, using dust magics to achieve speeds comparable to that of a land vehicle, they leapt over defenses, blocking bullets with their shields, before cutting down the gojids with axes. This made the hedgehogs flee in pure terror, stepping on fallen comrades.
These were no warriors... what the hell were we even doing here?
"This is Raudd Klapatch. Am I the only one seeing the gojid piss themselves?" I radioed to our small group, the one in charge of dealing with this base.
"No sir, they're scared like kittens. I'm starting to feel bad for being here."
"Alright, change of tactics. These are clearly not warriors, switch to shock and awe. Better we just scare them off and take the trade center without killing anyone."
"Aye aye, sir." Came several responses, and I began to shoot at some of the more braver gojids, aiming over the top of their heads to scare them off.
The tactic was proving successful, as more and more gojid ran away from their positions and posts.
By the time we reached the gate everything was silent, all the gojids either dead or ran off. I ordered Tal and one of the Drakken to open the gate, and the were easily able to push it open. What lay on the other side was not what we expected.
Corpses lying in the streets, trampeled to death, most of them children, and the few survivors were crawling away from us in fear. An allayi in the back nearly fainted in horror, and Tal had to help him keep to his feet.
"What the actual fuck..." I mouthed, leaning down to pick up a broken toy from amongst the dead children. This was a massacre, and by the looks of it one we hadn't caused.
"Kith 1, this is Kith 6. We took the village, but everyone's dead, trampeled to death by their own kind." I spoke into a comm, and waited for a reply.
It came about a dozen seconds later, while we were making our way through the streets, searching for suvivors. Those we found were terrified, but thankfully we had Sisters amongst us who could use Dust for healing. The rest of us started to gather the corpses for burial.
"Understood, Kith 6. We will ask the Venlil."
Shaking my head at the cold response, I had to remind myself that our captain was still fighting in space, so didn't have time to be emotional.
The allayi amongst us were already giving the deceased their last rights, and the survivors we managed to rescue were screaming, begging not to be eaten. Thankfully the gaurans were able to calm them down some.
"Mommy! Where are you? Mommy!" The cry of a child caught my attention. I quickly motioned for Tal to come by my side.
We then walked over to the child with slow, careful paces. "Hey, kiddo. Don't worry, you're safe now."
The child screamed and tried to crawl away, closing her eyes, and I winced uncomfortably.
"No! Don't eat me! Help! MOMMY!" She cried, and I motioned for Tal to help me here.
"Nobody's going to eat you, little one. Raudd here is my friend." The minotaur placed his massive mitt on my head and wiggled me left and right like a puppet, and I had to restrain myself from objecting to this indignation.
"B-But my mommy said they're going to eat everyone." The child cried, trying to look up at Tal.
"Well, your mommy was scared, and wrong. We don't eat people."
"You don't?" The little one peeked her eyes open, looking at my semi-helmeted face. She winced before Tal grabbed her attention by looking at her sideways.
"Like I said, nobody's going to eat you. Raudd's a friend. And I'm Tal. What's your name?"
Tal then extended his hand gently towards the child, and she cautiously grabbed onto his hand. He carefully scooped her up and held her as if she were his own.
"N-Nulia..." The little one whispered, burying her face into Tal's chestplate. "I want my mommy."
"Nulia. Alright, Nulia. We'll look for your mommy. Until then, you're safe with us, yeah?" Tal whispered softly, careful not to scare the child with his loud voice.
This pre-emtive strike was turning out worse than expected. If merely seeing us made the gojid trample over over each other out of fear, even killing their own children in panic, that meant we had killed countless civilians without even firing a shot. What was supposed to be a carefully aimed strike had turned into a massacre.
I was glad Serz wasn't here for this revelation.