Challenge #02454-F264: You're in Trouble Now
Newscast Breaking news!
Successful but peaceful Human colony world "Nirvana" a category 2.5 Deathworld, gifted to the humans for their contributions during the Acridith Incursion, has been attacked via Orbital Bombardment. Casualties are expected to be to be in the in the 10's of thousands, with the Injured numbering in the Millions.
The Vorax Empire has immediately distanced themselves from the atrocity and ,in a once unfathomable move, has offered aid, condemning the unknown aggressors for attempting to destabilise the most peaceful and prosperous period in galactic history. Humans are attending the colony world en mass, to render aid, medicine and shelter to survivors
All Heavenworlders are advised to avoid the region unless directly involved in the relief effort.
Humans as a species, while having a proclivity for war, have innate pursuit predatory abilities due to their Deathworlder evolution. Until now, Never had it been seen in the combined Allegiance, Vorax, or Human histories, a species wide predatory drive or hunt. Human scouting ships are are already tracking the distortion and slipstream wakes. -- Adam From Darwin
In retrospect, the Humans said, they really should have named the planet something like Asspit. Planetary colonies with optimistic names always have a bad end. This made absolutely zero sense to the Vorax, but that's Humans for you. The species with the widest reputation for battle, war, and sudden death of their enemies is also, by pure happenstance, the goofiest.
Nevertheless, Nirvana was burning. The Humans who settled there weren't stupid. They had prepared for cataclysm and most were warned in time of the bombardment. Those who weren't... well... there was still an unfathomable number of the injured, dead, and dying. There were still epic amounts of ruin. Nirvana's crops this year were craters, burning fields, and an atmosphere of despair. Whoever attacked couldn't have selected a better time than Cyclone Season, thus whipping all the atomised ejecta all through the atmosphere and threatening a Fallout Winter.
The Vorax, by now, knew which side of the bread the whipped lactate fats were on, and immediately offered help. So, too, did a large volume of Humanity's allies, and those who felt in their cores that they owed Humanity a favour or three. Help swarmed towards Nirvana. Large and small, those who had a duty, those who had an obligation, those who really shouldn't be there, all of them. Some who could do little more than carry things to where they were needed, or dole out rations, or roll bandages.
There was a definite sense that Someone had attacked Nirvana. The meteoric and cometary debris that pummeled Nirvana on all sides was not a natural phenomenon. Those who detected the attack knew from the vectors that the oort debris was aimed. The assembled forces of science were now working on finding any and all traces of those who had aimed it. Someone, somewhere, was playing Silly Buggers, seemingly unaware that Humanity were already virtuosos.
With the Vorax on their side, the other masters of mayhem, chaos, and destruction... well. All bets were on a near to total erasure of the responsible party. More moral sections of the Galactic Alliance pleaded for clemency or at least an effort at understanding why the attack had happened and maybe negotiations for reparations.
Revenge, after all, can only fill more graves.
Nobody knew what was going to happen when the Humans and the Vorax found the perpetrators together. Given their mutual history, there was going to be a bloodbath of epic proportions. While the Vorax preferred quick raids or absolute extermination before retreat, the Humans were pursuit predators and could track something for years. No matter where they originated, no matter where they hid, Humans would find them, even if it was literal generations later.
Fortunately for everyone's nervous tension, the Humans found them. An aggressively xenophobic planetary polity known only as the Nux. They only sought out new worlds with new civilisations in order to tell them to keep the flakk away. Therefore, when the Vorax and Human fleets turned up on their doorsteps, they were understandably upset. Followed shortly by being understandably panicked.
Their greeting message -if you could call it that- was, "What the flakk? You were supposed to be fighting each other Zhyakk-damnit!"
The Human response was similarly epic. "Yyyeaaah, how's that working out for you?"
The Vorax went with the classics. "You have only succeeded in angering us all. Surrender or die."
Reparations were successfully negotiated very, very quickly. Rather desperately, as the observers were wont to recount.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / AlgolOnline]
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