Federation: Galactic Resource Wars

Year II: Act1: So they have feelings too

Tayler felt nostalgic after his talk with Triopal. As they lied together he started talking to her about his childhood.

"I grew up on one of Eris' moons, Polemos. Polemos was a lawless slum, a place full of violence, hatred, crime and anything else you dare to imagine. The imperial state the governed the planetary system did little less than nothing to fix all the problems on the moon. It was of no use to the emperor. Small moon, dry and colorless, of no mineral value. I wanted to do everything to get off that place, so one day, I killed a poacher, stole his spaceship and flew to Eris. There, I went to school, eager to learn, and I was good at biology. I graduated on top of my class and I was sent immediately to a space station chartered on Spiral. I was bright there. I prospered, moved on P0-6, and got recognition and awards. Then the first diplomatic disagreements with Synox began, and soon he began an intelligence and data war. That's when I joined Federation. I created the design for the Zeta-99 Command Units, so they could carry individual quarks of data, decentralized from the mainframes. After that, he began militarizing his mining equipment. And when his attention was shifted to Eris, not many years before today, I was ready.

On my first deployment with the Federation, I was nothing more than a grunt soldier. But I fought like hell.

My transporter was ambushed from the Synox growing fleet. Me and a small part of my dispatch squad managed to escape with our parachutes, before the enemy space jets destroyed the transporter, along with the ones not fast enough. We landed on the main Capital of Polemos, that was burning to ashes. Synox had deployed everything they had, many experimental killing machines as well. Things you can't even comprehend! Federation forces, back then heavily focused on infantry were getting slaughtered. Eris Imperial forces as well. It seemed like Synox was crushing us. But me and my squad didn't give up. We couldn't. We made our way through the burning city. Both federation's and Synox's forces slaughtering civilians. Knowing who's on your side was so difficult, since even soldiers that had been down there for too long, had long since lost their minds, and even though brocken, the adrenaline from the battle made them turn against each other, the enemy, and on innocent civilians as well. We were fighting down there for more than two weeks. We were fighting for our lives at this point, having long forgotten about any objectives we were tasked with. The turning tide came with the involvement of a small group that assisted us, Cyber Knights. Their name was pretty self explanatory. Few techie freaks, in shiny armor, with a weird religion and ancient retrofitted weapons. They helped us overwhelm the enemy infantry forces and break their heaviest tanks. After that, we were asked to evacuate the planet, only to watch it getting blown up...

I was the only one to come back to the base from my squad members. I was treated as a hero. So I climbed the ladder, upwards the ranks of Federation. I was liked in there. It felt like home. The Eris Imperial forces fought both Synox and us, off the system. The rest of the campaign lasted well over a year, with small scale skirmishes dominating the majority of the rest of my deployments. Most of the war was happening through spy missions and data infiltrations. And in the end of the fight against Eris empire, I was an Initiate.
We were forced to sign a truce, the immense influence of the emperor allowed him to remain autonomous, but we cut his entire system off of all trade routes. He didn't care, but that had really heavy consequences for what remained of Polemos and other rogue moons of the planet, as well as for other planets of the system. He became a Tyrant and his people revolted. That's the last thing I heard of my home planet and its system."

He lets out a heavy sigh while looking at his reflection on the shiny blade of his katana.

"I feel so detached from everything ever since." He finishes his sentence, dropping down his katana, nailing it on the metallic floor.

Triopal, even though she had a lot of questions, just listens to him with a faint smile on her face. Her mind flooded with pictures of a younger Tayler that was happy and successful. He gets up from the bed and walks towards his personal bar.