It was during the First Koraxian War. At the time, it was just "the Koraxian War," since nobody knew there'd be a second. Well, the Koraxians probably did. They weren't the types to give up. But we didn't know that just yet.
This particular memoir is one of the lowest points of my life, even counting the ones that came later. I'll get into all the details another time, but to sum it up, the Koraxians had declared war on Earth. The Oolians were only willing to mount a partial defense as they had their own unspecified problems to contend with. The brass on Earth tugged their collars wondering if our calm benefactors were simply hanging us out to dry. It didn't matter either way. We were at war, and we had to fight.
I commanded the Protector, and as its name would suggest, it was a ship with considerable weaponry. Maybe nothing too impressive by Koraxian standards, but it could hold its own. So you can imagine that I was particularly confused--OK, pissed off--when my superiors told me we wouldn't be going to the front lines.
Instead, they wanted us to link up with a Koraxian rebel faction that they believed could infiltrate the Koraxian command and end this war without pure attrition, since we were likely to lose on those terms. We were supposed to earn their trust and materially assist them any way we could. After a handover of some token supplies, our first mission together was wrecking a Koraxian shipyard. They made good on that, even took some losses doing so. We had no reason to doubt them given how willing they were to trash a facility like that. Then they told us exactly what they wanted in return: an Oolian cruiser. Their purpose was twofold. One, they could absolutely use it to fight other Koraxians. We had no doubt of that. The secondary effect was to get Koraxians to open a second front against the Oolians themselves, which we hoped would get them to shore up Terran defenses if only for their own sake. The problem, of course, was that Koraxians had never managed to take an Oolian ship before. The technology surpassed their own, and no doubt they wanted it.
My superiors thought it was worth the risk. They weren't the ones gambling with their lives.
It's not hard to guess what happened next. OK, the specifics of our plan were pretty clever. I'll tell you about that later. Long and short, we got the ship and didn't even have to kill a bunch of Oolians to get it. There was a whole thing involving my parents--
Your parents?? Weren't they supposed to be dead?
Obviously. Look, the Koraxian rebels double-crossed us. I got blown out an airlock. Things get fuzzy after that. My ship was destroyed. I thought all of my crew was dead, though luckily they weren't. So, now we get to the story I actually wanted to tell here. I got picked up by this family of outlaws, the Conviers. The patriarch was Arcturus Convier, an orphan who named himself after a book he read once. His wife was Lana and his son's name was Jeremiah. He also had a daughter, Byron. Rounding out their crew was a Vansara they named Theo. I don't want to get too into the whole Vansara thing, just imagine they're aliens that the Koraxians genetically uplifted and brainwashed into servile beasts. Theo was from the Darrex species, not that that means much to you. He wasn't much of a talker but he was a great tactical officer. I could see why the Conviers kept him around.
So the thing about the Conviers is that they were human but not affiliated with Earth or the Terran Alliance in any real way. They hung out in so-called Non-Aligned Region. It's something of a buffer zone between the Koraxians, Cranions, Dor'Tel, and Terran space. Nothing established by treaty, mind you, just a region that everyone kind of left alone to stay out of each other's way. This made it a hotbed of piracy, black market activity, you name it. No respectable shipping lane went through the NAR since they were likely to get raided.
As pirates went, the Conviers were nice enough folks. They probably downplayed any overt criminality in my presence, to be fair. They knew I was military and were no doubt figuring up what kind of reward they'd get for returning me safely. I had other ideas, though.
My way in was through Jeremiah. He was all of 15 years old and had, apparently, read all about my storied career. Yeah, the Cranion War stuff and everything. Hopefully he didn't hear too much about the Vorchon Incident. He never did mention it. Anyway, the kid's eyes were full of hero worship. He would've done anything I said, or even anything I implied.
I wanted a direct strike on the Koraxian homeworld. It didn't take much to convince them of my motives: revenge, plain and simple. I wanted to take from them as they had taken from me. Arc thought the whole thing was suicide. I worked my angle while Jeremiah worked it from the other side. Arcturus was like most fathers: being shown up by another man was humiliating. How could he look cowardly in his son's eyes next to the great Robert Maxwell?
Things came together rather quickly after that. I convinced Arcturus to get as many Darrex on board as he could. He hadn't just saved Theo--some years ago, he'd managed to liberate a bunch of Darrex, enough that they set up their own planet and space station and started building out their own little fleet with stolen and salvaged parts. None of this stuff would survive a real fight, but it was enough to sneak past some Koraxian defenses, or so I hoped. The Darrex didn't exactly need much persuading. A chance to kill the bastards who'd enslaved them in the first place? Duh. They were only too happy to join. They had a ship they called a "destroyer" but it was basically tin can with a railgun on it. That was mostly for show. There were more conventional cannons all along the rest of it. It also carried a small complement of fighters and bombers, which would be crucial to our plan. We just needed to use it to punch through a single spot in Koraxian defenses, get to the homeworld, and decapitate their government. The boss was Korat, Korath, Gorat, something like that. Wasn't clear if he was named after the empire or it was named after him. We just knew that was the guy to kill.
Not to suck all the drama out of it, but the Darrex destroyer made it. We came in via a series of fold vectors that weren't fully mapped by the Koraxians, so they weren't expecting us. Now, the Koraxian homeworld had ample defenses, but they were geared toward fighting off whole fleets. They didn't pay much mind to a rust bucket that was on the verge of flying itself apart, and by the time they did light up some defenses against it, we'd already launched.
Five of us went down: Arcturus, Lana, Jeremiah, Theo, and myself. After launching from the destroyer, we simply coasted down toward the atmosphere on minimal power and relied on aerobraking maneuvers to slow our descent.
In all our rush to get here and take out an emperor, we hadn't thought much about what this planet would actually be like. The central, aqua-colored spindle that marked out the capital was easy enough to spot. We knew to look for that. And we'd obviously read the archives and knew the planet was mostly covered in an ammonia-based ocean which constituted the natural habitat of Koraxians for most of their lifecycle. Seeing it in person was quite different, though. The way the liquid flowed and glistened, not quite like water, just alien. The sky itself was a permanent orange, too. Human eyes resisted believing this was a real place. They wanted the familiarity of a deep blue ocean and azure sky. I had to shake off the thought and scope out an LZ.
There was a spot not far from the spindle that suited the purpose, and we all set down there. No SAM emplacements fired on us. Maybe that wasn't a concept familiar to the Koraxians, or maybe they were just cocky. Either way, I geared up with Lana and Arcturus, leaving Jeremiah and Theo behind to hold the LZ, and the three of us made our way to the spire in our environmental suits. The atmosphere itself was, unsurprisingly, corrosive. Our suits would last a couple hours before giving out. Exposed human beings would perish much faster.
The palace was a maze full of narrow tunnels and strange rooms. Koraxians didn't have a sense of interior design anything like humans. Everything was made of sparkling emerald crystal, the hardened secretions of their own bodies. Now, I'd seen Koraxians before, or at least images of them. Your typical specimen was about the third the size of a human, a green blob that rolled around and probed its surroundings with sensing organs. They didn't vocalize, just made various squishing noises that I guess counted as communication.
Korat was something else, though. After finding nothing but tiny rooms, it was a shock to come out into this vast atrium with a pyramidal platform in the center. On top of it was an absolutely enormous pulsating blob of jelly. We started heading up with our weapons and it was then that was realized Koraxians had another way of communicating.
It spoke right into our heads: What does it want?
For my part, I lied and "said" we were just leaving. It definitely knew that was a lie.
The thing flipped its shit and figured out what we were and why we were there. You wouldn't think this slowly oozing ball of goo could move quickly, but it started flinging tendrils at us before we knew what was happening. We got slapped all around, at which point I send the order up to the bombers as to where exactly they should strike, as long as they could get a fix on our position. As big as the spire was, we had to be sure they would be able to hit our target.
It was all a fucking mess. We got separated, got back together, tried not to hit by tendrils, got tossed down the stairs, and then the bombers started blasting the roof off the throneroom. Shit was going to collapse right on top of us and we had to go.
In a rage, Korat grabbed me and, no shit, flung me up into the air and right out of the spire altogether. I still had one more trick up my sleeve, though. I used my cybernetics to reach out to my fighter, power it up, and have it fly out to catch me. It's a minor miracle that worked, but I still had to get everyone else--or at least anyone who survived.
I picked Lana up hanging on the side of the spire. Arc had been thrown somewhere toward the LZ, but we searched around the area and couldn't find him. And then things got worse. This wall of rolling, green devastation came toward us, like Korat had turned himself into a roving, rectangular behemoth. It slammed on top of the LZ, tossed our fighters everywhere, and the next thing I knew I was trying to dig Jeremiah out from under his while Lana sobbed next to me. I was pulling at him even though I somehow knew if I did manage to wrest him free, nothing below the waist would be coming along. He asked me if he'd done a good job. What else was I going to say?
Lana, Theo, and I got our ships upright enough to head out. Lana wanted to stay behind with her son, but I wouldn't let her. We never did find Arcturus. We had to crash land into the destroyer's bay since our fighters were in a bad way. We took on the remaining bombers and were facing down fully activated Koraxian defenses. The ship beelined away from the planet and, as Koraxian ships gave chase, we tried to reach the fold vector we'd used to get here. On the way, though, Byron told us the FV detection system had picked up something else, one we didn't expect to be there.
We weren't going to make it. I told her to hit the damn button. So, we jumped.