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forty-seven additional ships and eleven additional plasma cannons. We would not have lost as many ships at Polisia if they had not continued destroying us while we retreated." Thansar hung his head and muttered in disgust, "Colonel Marcos has no honor."
                  "Of course they continued destroying you, they knew you would be back and you had just destroyed three planets, killing millions of humans. I'm sure they were quite upset about that."
                  "Still, it is bad form to attack retreating ships," he protested, knowing Dobar was right.
                  "What worries me is the entire Coalition is probably now aware of Polisia's victory and will likely not take us as seriously now." Dobar was agitated as he spoke. "Bring your remaining ships and rejoin the bulk of the fleet. We need to come up with some new contingencies before we continue."
                  "As you wish," he began before recalling an important detail. "On the bright side, the Coalition seems to be at odds with Polisia, or at least the ships defending it."
                  "How would you know that?"
                  "We picked up transmissions, and there was much good news. The SSE shipyards at Polisia are nowhere near complete, and all of the SSE facilities in the core were destroyed when the Enclave stormed them. They must have set off some sort of self-destruct. The Coalition and the Enclave have now officially made the Marcos and Romanov families' enemies of the state, as well as any who aid them. It looks as though we will not have to worry about any more SSE ships being built any time soon."
                  "That is good news, Thansar." Dobar smiled. It seemed as though the Coalition's greatest defenders were at serious odds with their new allies. He would have to keep his eye on that situation to see if he could somehow use that against them in future battles.

    Chapter two
     
     
     
     
     
    ______
     
     
                  The next two weeks were a blur as Jesse made the rounds to the Polisian ruling council and the refugee camps. He also visited all of the ships in the fleet and met with the commanding officers. He always brought either Kimi or Lana, sometimes both. For the last week, they had been searching the destroyed worlds for survivors, as well as anything useful they could use in building new settlements on Polisia for the refugees. Another hundred shuttles were on their way back from Stamdall, fully loaded with people. Three large cargo haulers were on their way back with useful equipment and two luxury space liners had been dispatched for the rest of the thirty thousand survivors they had found so far. Teams would be working around the clock to search and rescue any people they could. At Geshern, things had played out a bit differently. After they had been there two full days and had found less than five thousand survivors, they were about to give up hope when on the third day, they came across another eight thousand that had survived in caves. They were told there were many such caves and they began to search all of them. By the time they were ready for a pick up, they had forty-one thousand people. Three space liners were dispatched to retrieve them. Rescue operations would continue on each world for at least another two weeks.
                  Jesse had personally led the rescue mission to Triton and he was encouraged to see a large group of survivors working together in the mountains. They were sharing supplies and tending the injured as best they could, they had even been able to set up some temporary power generation. They were, however, extremely grateful to enter the space liners to head to Polisia. In total, by the end of the first week, they had found almost one hundred fifty thousand survivors. They weren't holding out hope for much more, but they kept searching. The refugees were impressed that the leadership