Novel Full Chapter 948 - 948: Aftermath
The holographic display in Dreznor’s command center was a stark, brutal ledger of loss. The Little Protagonist’s voice, usually a cheerful, melodic counterpoint to the grim realities of war, was now a flat, dispassionate recitation of facts.
{Casualty count: thirty million. Ten million confirmed dead. The remaining twenty million are suffering from varying degrees of injury. We are currently prioritizing those near death, mobilizing hospital ships and medical personnel from other cities and from the military to treat as many as possible and reduce further loss of life.}
{The radioactive fallout is being contained to reduce its long-term effects, but we cannot begin the process of recovering the city. All of our forces are currently engaged in either rescue operations or maintaining a high-security alert in case of a follow-up attack.}
{We have halted the reinforcement operation, but the fleets remain in a mobilized state, ready to be dispatched to any star system that comes under attack.}
The report continued, a relentless stream of data that painted a picture of a civilization reeling from a devastating blow. But Dreznor did not raise his head. He heard the words, understood their implications, but his mind was a maelstrom of rage and grief. He had accepted the necessity of soldiers dying in battle, a grim but unavoidable cost of war. But this… this was different. This was an attack on civilians, on the very people he had sworn to protect, but also former Conclave civilians just a few years ago, and some even still consider them to still be but just under foreign occupation, hence their liberation attempts. They had sent a clear, brutal message that his citizens are not off-limits. They are collateral damage in a war he started.
The Conclave’s previous plans, their cautious, calculated maneuvers, had been based on the assumption that the planets themselves would be spared the worst of the fighting. They had sent dummy missiles, feints designed to expend Dreznor’s defensive resources. But this… this was a deliberate, targeted act of terror. They had infiltrated his star system, which should have been a very good opportunity for the infiltrators to find and strike or capture his leadership for information, but they went and chose to leave a scar, a radioactive reminder of their power.
{…Sir? Sir!}
“Yes,” Dreznor responded, the Little Protagonist’s voice pulling him back from the brink of a dark, spiraling rage. He had been on the verge of considering actions he would have once deemed unthinkable.
{Are you alright?} the Little Protagonist asked, her voice tinged with a rare, almost human concern. She was already running diagnostics, analyzing the surge of anger and grief that was flooding his system.
“What are our retaliatory options?” Dreznor asked, his voice a low, dangerous growl, ignoring her question.
One of the military officials at the round table, a former pirate captain who had been forged in the crucible of Dreznor’s “rehabilitation,” spoke first. “We can attack them back,” he said, his voice still tinged with the raw anger of a man who had just seen millions of his new compatriots slaughtered. “If we can do it the same way they did, we can force them into a defensive posture. Which should, in result, shift their focus from attacking us to protecting their own. We can attack their citizens like they did and show them that we are not the only ones who can bleed, or else they might take it as something they can do while we can’t.”
“Do that and become the very monsters we are fighting against?” another official, a former planetary administrator, countered. “Going and killing their civilians will not benefit our cause. It will only harm it. It will also give them the justification they need to brand us as savages, to unite their own people against us in a tide of righteous fury, as they redirect the previously divided on the topic of slavery will now be united, all angry at us. We cannot win a war of attrition against the entire Conclave. We must win the war of ideas.”
“Then we use this attack to our advantage,” a third official, a woman who had once been a slave, suggested. “We show the Conclave what their leaders are willing to do to their own former citizens. We use their brutality as a weapon against them, to increase the pressure they are already feeling from within.”
“What about their military outposts?” another official chimed in. “We could do to them what they did to us. Open a wormhole, strike fast and hard, and retreat before they can mount a response. Show them that we are capable of dishing out the same punishment they so casually inflict upon us, not on their citizens but upon their soldiers.”
“I suggest we attack the top fifty,” another voice added, a cold, calculating strategist. “The ones we have so far avoided. They look down on us, they do not take our demands seriously, because they believe we are only capable of targeting the weak. If we show them that we can strike at the heart of their power, that we can win against them, then they will be forced to reconsider their position.”
“A suicide attack,” another suggested, his voice a low, desperate whisper. “On one of their capital planets. A message they cannot ignore.”
One by one, the officials offered their suggestions, their voices a chorus of grief, rage, and strategic desperation. The Little Protagonist recorded each one, her AI counterparts immediately beginning to analyze their feasibility, their merits, their demerits, their potential consequences.
Dreznor remained silent, absorbing it all. He listened to their suggestions, their arguments, their pain. He used their ideas, their insights, the cold, hard data provided by the think tanks and the AIs, to forge a new plan, a grander strategy, one that would not only deliver a devastating response but would also serve as another, even more powerful blow to the Conclave’s crumbling authority. He would not just win this war; he would reshape the galaxy.