Using every relevant System Skill that they had, and listening in to the planetary communications for the next few hours revealed the extent of the situation to them.
The Tapani had dropped an entire Heavy Carrier worth of Mecha here before they left the system, and that made all the difference in the battle. With their sensors jammed, the locals had no idea that the enemy even had reinforcements on the planet, so they called for help to clear the Klem and save themselves.
Then the allied forces moved, wiping them out to the very last, and continuing radio silence until Terminus had dealt with almost all of the problem for them, knowing that the Reavers wouldn’t do it for free, and likely wouldn’t do it for a Tapani force at all, not a single day after the Tapani had worked with the Rebels to annihilate most of the Reaver fleet.
They still didn’t know just how badly that plan had gone and had thought that Terminus was one of the ships that didn’t make it to the system before the Reaver presence was wiped out, so they were currently celebrating two victories in a row as they fought off the scattered group of Klem that had landed on the planet.
General Ming looked grimly at the other Commanders in the briefing room. “You know, Major Nico is starting to sound more and more right as the day goes on.”
“It’s still too far though. What do we have that might teach them a lesson, and not risk our soldiers?” He continued.
“I have a suggestion,” Nico nearly shouted, raising her hand in the air. Normally she wasn’t present for the Command meetings, but since she had such an extensive knowledge of Planet Ending methods, and nobody else wanted to ask how she learned them, she had been called in today.
“This had better be good and not a War Crime.” General Yaakov warned her.
“We’re on a colony ship, right? What if we accidentally sent the wrong sort of probe down to the surface to see what was going on?” She suggested, then continued quickly as she saw that they had the wrong idea.
“Not a virus bomb or anything of the sort. I have recovered the plans for the initial Terraforming probes that would have prepared the very first colonization areas for the arrival of Terminus and its civilians. If we accidentally terraform a few regions and wipe a couple or twenty thousand rebel Mecha that should be well within what is allowed, right?” She asked.
General Ming tapped away at the data tablet that he was carrying and frowned.
“No, it’s prohibited separately to terraform an inhabited region. We would still be a pariah if we did it.” The Inquisitor sighed.
“Then I have one more, not-so-pleasant idea. What if we introduced a rapid growth probe to the currently Klem-controlled regions? They would rapidly evolve to contain behemoths, their numbers would skyrocket, and best of all, there would be no evidence left after the fact to show that we had boosted the growth of biomass in one single region because the Klem will devour it all.
The Rebels should still win and hold the planet, but it will cost them dearly.”
She was right, that was a much less pleasant idea. Plus, if she was wrong and the Klem actually won, the planet would be lost to humanity, giving the species a foothold within the Kepler Empire to expand from.
“Too risky. What can we do for localized extermination? We have all the evidence we need to prove that the major cities turned traitor, and most of the Rebel forces that aren’t near a Klem landing zone are still holed up in them.
It is a bit unfortunate that we don’t have an orbital lance, or we could send them a very abrupt and direct message.” The Inquisitor sighed.
“But we do have the equivalent of an orbital lance, Inquisitor. Terminus has a wonderfully powerful gravitational lock system, intended to pull along asteroids for mining and resource replenishment.
There is a convenient asteroid belt in the outer reaches of this system.” Max let the end of his explanation trail off.
“Better yet, we could use the drone fighters to push the asteroids off course and guide them to the planet. They have nothing left that could defend them against an asteroid hitting the planet, they barely managed to hold off the Drone Fighters.” General Yaakov nodded happily.
Using an orbital bombardment had guidelines, but unlike Virus Bombing or Terraforming the planet under your enemy’s feet, it wasn’t immediately a crime.
General Ming and General Yaakov shared an intrigued look.
“New plan, we send out the second wave of fighters in with thermonuclear bombs, blast away what we can before they are destroyed, and then we use the survivors of the first wave of drones to toss some asteroids at them as we leave.
They should never know that we were responsible for the asteroids, and it will be assumed by military scans that they were impacted by the Klem on the way through. I like it, it deals with the problem, and gets us a bit of payback for the compensation that we aren’t going to get for this mission.” General Yaakov decided.
“Work out the calculations. I want one headed for the planet every day for a week. I don’t care where it hits, just make them paranoid.” General Ming agreed, and Nico nodded, already working on the numbers.
Max was certain that this was going to be a huge mess, but there wasn’t much that they could do at the moment other than either leave impotently with their reputation in shambles or take some sort of pyrrhic action that didn’t risk their own lives.
“Colonel Max, you are our public leader, make a call down to the planet and demand payment for our services while we arrange the drones. We don’t have any nukes prepared, they have been obsolete in Kepler for a thousand years after all.” General Yaakov informed Max before dismissing the meeting.