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targets
when and where they had an opportunity.
    Even this attack was designed to go after the ships in
orbit so they wouldn’t be available to reinforce other systems when they were
hit. Taking out the reinforcements before you began the assault was another
tactic that Liam, or more accurately Roger, had come up with long ago and
worked well against the lizards so long as you had good intel data, most of
which the Hycre were providing.
    Liam was glad the Gfatt had taken out that battle
station, for it was one more chess piece the lizards didn’t have to work with,
though this one was immobile and could only be used to defend this planet
unlike the fleets surrounding it that could go anywhere. Those, after all was
said and done, were reduced by 384 kills with an additional 392 damaged. A good
tally for this mission, with him having only lost 3 drones in the process.
    54 more were damaged, but all of those were able to
return to their jumpships and could be repaired later. He didn’t like losing
the 3 and would review the battle records later to determine why they’d been
lost, but overall they’d put yet another nick in the lizards’ empire. Liam
wanted to do more than that and watched the surveillance intel from the monitoring probes they’d dropped off before leaving, but as predicted
the lizards had restructured their fleets into larger groupings without leaving
any targets of opportunity for him to hit with a second attack…at least not without
losing a chunk of his own fleet.
    That wasn’t an option given how many more ships the
lizards had than the ADZ. Each drone they had was worth multiple lizard cruisers,
both in armor and armament, and as that fact continued to snowball with
subsequent upgrades it was imperative that they not get into a trading war, for
the enemy would always have more to throw at them given their production
capability that stretched across thousands of worlds by now.
    No, Star Force had to engage and retreat, engage and
retreat…preserving its own ships while taking out some of the lizards. That was
the only way to fight them, which he hoped the Gfatt were now realizing.
    After everyone had reached the rendezvous point and
Liam saw there were no more opportunities for easy strikes he took the time to
contact the Gfatt and ask them why they had hit the station. They responded by
stating that they saw an opportunity and decided to take it, which he thanked
them for, but then he inquired why they weren’t fighting with them the entire
time, to which they said they were merely here to observe.
    The two things didn’t jive and he wouldn’t get any
more of an answer from them before they left the system and headed back to the
ADZ, but after they returned to their staging base he pushed the issue with
their commander and learned that similar battle stations in the H’kar region
were never so exposed and that the Gfatt had been targeting them specifically.
Biggest chess pieces in the game, hence they drew the first attention, so far
as the Nexus thought.
    It seemed the lizards had been using that to their
advantage and using the battle stations and other large ships as bait, getting
them to drop the hammer on them and potentially losing them in the process, but
doing decent damage to the attacking fleet by having flanking units nearby.
With having to fight long and hard to take out similar stations the Gfatt were
not going to miss the opportunity for a clean kill, despite that fact that the
system in question was far from their borders and no threat to them.
    That gave Liam an inkling as to how the lizards were
countering the Nexus, or rather surviving it and learning from the engagements.
They had plenty of ships and resources, with the ability to grow additional
personnel at will, to throw at an enemy that seemed unwilling to take the fight
directly to them in a wide campaign. They’d hit a target and obliterate it, but
the lizards could always rebuild elsewhere or even in the same location