Star Force: Headstrong (SF72) Read Free

shower and eat, then on her way to bed for what would be a six
hour stint she sat down at her terminal and ran through the system status
reports. They detailed everything that was happening in Mastodon and included
some lizard ship movements elsewhere, but none had come in to reinforce this
planet, for she owned orbit and none could stay long enough to stake out a
foothold. They’d run troops down into drop position, or maybe send some cargo
down, but that was all they could do…and they’d been spamming that tactic ever
since they’d figured out they could get away with it.
    Had Morgan more drones that wouldn’t be possible, but
she could only build so fast. Her other captured worlds were doing well to
start snowballing their industry, but it would take a lot of time to build up
the necessary material and, while they were certainly winning here, the losses
of equipment that they were suffering in Mastodon were eating into whatever
reinforcements she was getting.
    Fully conquering this system was going to take several
more years at least, and the other ones she was eyeing going forward were
getting more heavily fortified as time went by. The lizards knew she was coming
for them eventually, and since they seemed to think it would only be the Ninja
Monkeys attacking they were putting more resources into beefing them up than
other systems…which was going to make this a very long, arduous campaign.
    Part of Morgan didn’t like that, seeing that the
lizards had found a way to use their coreward border against them, but another
part of her appreciated the challenge. It was her Clan against the lizards and
they weren’t going to play defense against her. They might be getting their
asses kicked elsewhere and trying to minimize the losses while they gained more
and more systems on other fronts, but here they were making a play at it and
calling Star Force out.
    Morgan would meet them head on and fight this, with
her Clan essentially engaged in an even fight while Star Force rolled over
systems towards the rim and the lizards were expanding quickly coreward. It was
an odd little microcosm in the war, but it seemed fitting none the less. She
wanted her Clan to be on the front lines getting battle experience, and it
seemed the lizards were going to oblige and give her all the fight she could
handle…and maybe more if these drops and new tactics were just the scouting
probe for a larger, more typical swarm rush to come.
    Only time would tell, but this was her fight and her
border to lock down…and with every day that went by she secured her holdings
tighter as well. No matter what happened, both sides were amping up their
defenses and setting up their strategy for the long term, with this looking
like a major brawl in its infancy.
    If Clan Ninja Monkey was going to survive this they’d
have to do it by becoming far stronger than they were now, and Morgan relished
that make or break necessity. As much as she liked training, she felt she
belonged on the battlefield where the outcome mattered to more than your stats.
Winning and losing here affected people’s lives and the balance of power in
this swath of space, and Morgan intended to stake out her little piece of the
border so those systems on the other side could develop in peace and contribute
to other fronts while Clan Ninja Monkey took the heat here.
    So far the rest of the coreward border was quiet, with
Morgan having succeeded in drawing the lizards’ attention to her little piece,
for that’s where the extra resources and troops were going. In that way she was
protecting a far larger border than just her handful of systems could cover. It
was a taunt that was getting more of a response than she’d imagined, as well as
having the bonus effect of being able to fight the lizards when they were
trying to win. She feared everyone else was getting soft in their expectations
on the fronts they were winning on, for the lizards didn’t truly expect to hold
those.
    Here it