The Semtara'a system had been gentled and civilized for nearly 50 million years. The gas giants were mined at a slow stately pace to preserve the resources. The two asteroid belts were mined out, as were all seven planets. The planet in the Green Zone was the home of nearly 22 billion Lanaktallan and their servants as well as a half-billion of the Civilized Species that had managed to reach full Civilized status. It consisted of a single proto-continent with several mountain ranges and the landscape rolling plains. It had a single moon that was close enough to keep the magnetic field active enough to shield the planet from solar radiation, but not close enough to cause any negative tidal effects.

It was a gentled world and had been for tens of millions of years.

The fleet that arrived was two hundred ships, from small FTL capable fighters all the way to massive wedge shaped ships larger than any Unified Military Council ship ever built.

The armada cruised in system even as the Lanaktallan overseers stared in shock. Some Overseers, that possessed jumpspace capable ships, fled to the starport, boarded their ships, and vanished into jumpspace.

The massive shipyards that normally housed Executor vessels, the habitats where Executor Troops trained and lived, were all destroyed by missiles and torpedoes fired by the big wedge shaped ships.

The Most High was glad that the ships had all left for the first wave nearly six months ago.

The armada cruised in closer, stopping over the planet. The wedge shaped ships were large enough to see clearly from the ground with the naked eye.

It came across every communications device on the planet.

"Surrender. Now. In the name of the Harmony and Melody."

Defensive satellites fired heavy laser and particle beam weapons at the capital ships. Heavy duty ones capable of destroying a Unified Military Fleet heavy cruiser.

The massive wedge shaped ships didn't even appear to notice. Laser batteries on the ships targeted the satellites and fired, blowing the defensive satellites out of the sky.

There were no ground based defense systems.

On the moon the Defense Most High ordered his men to active the defensive systems.

Systems that had not even been tested in over 2 million years.

The systems came online long enough to attract torpedoes and missiles that blotted them away. Not that it helped them, most of them could barely handle having power applied to their systems, the warheads millions of years past their use date, the laser focusing systems covered in a thin layer of dust and now useless.

Nearly a hundred ships launched from the far side of the moon to defend the planet.

They were met by hundreds of small fighter craft. Little more than an ion engine, a pair of solar collectors to each side of the ion engine, and a pair of heavy ion cannons with a cockpit added. They were small, like a ball between hexagonal plates, but they were agile, fast, and they were accurate with their cannons.

Not a single system defense ship lasted longer than twenty minutes.

The small ships returned to the big wedge ships and docked.

The demand was repeated.

"Surrender. Now. In the name of Harmony and Melody."

The System Most High and his assistants decided the best course of action was just to ignore the massive ships. They had studied Terrans and discovered that Terrans sought to avoid civilian casualties in conflicts. Since there was only Corporate Security and LawSec on the planet, there was nothing for the Terrans to attack. By their own laws the Terran Confederacy could do nothing to the planet.

After an hour ships started dropping from the massive wedge-shaped ships. Dozens, scores, hundreds of ships dropped through the atmosphere, landing near the cities. Some ships disgorged four legged walking war machines, others two legged war machines came trotting out. From the rest line after line of white armored troops marched off the ships. Vehicles were unloaded, and the ships returned to the massive wedge shaped ships.

Within two hours over five million white armored troops had moved into the cities. Taking over corners and stopping traffic, ordering the Lanaktallan inside the vehicles out, loading them into transports, and either sending them home or taking them to a camp beings constructed outside the city in question. Power plants, sewage plants, communications hubs, anyplace of strategic importance the white armored troops quickly took over.

Several times Corporate Security tried to resist.

They were killed to the last being unless they surrendered. Those that surrendered were put in cuffs and taken to camps where they were quickly and efficiently processed, separated by species and rank, and put in bunk houses with order to follow all orders immediately or face summary execution.

The white armored troops had precise aim, high discipline, and moved like machines. They did not speak except to issue orders in quick terse commands.

In the capital the Most High was furious. He had ordered CorpSec and LawSec to engage the invaders and push them off the planet, instead the white armored troops had slaughtered any of them that did not surrender.

Now the white armored troops were going from estate to estate taking politicians and important people into custody and taking them to camps. Any being that resisted was shot. The workers were branded with a laser-ID right there and put on ground transports to take them home.

Now a shuttle craft was landing on his front lawn, the thrusters scorching the carefully manicured and curated lawn that had been chosen specifically to appeal to the Most High's tastes.

Men in white armor came out, their weapons ready. They spotted the Most High's guards immediately, and accurate and rapid laser fire killed the guards within seconds. The white armored men moved quickly, efficiently through the Most High's manor. They used an explosive charge to blow open the Most High's office door.

Through the smoke walked a figure that just made Most High Cra'almo'o stare.

Taller than even the other humans. Jet black armor polished to a high gloss. A black cloth cape. The armor had a panel on the front with blinking lights and indicators on it. The sound of the armored figure's breathing was loud in the silence.

Two of the white armored soldiers were carrying Tri-Vid cameras, which they used to focus on both the High Most and the black armored figure.

The figure stopped in the middle of the room. Two of the white armored figures grabbed Cra'almo'o and dragged him around the desk, kicking his hooves out from under him so he crashed to the floor in front of the black armored figure. One of the soldiers in white, with an orange pauldron on his shoulder, drove a fist into Cra'almo'o's upper stomach, making him lean forward and retch.

After a moment he was able to straighten up and look at the black figure. It dropped a cube that projected a hologram of lists of ship's names.

"You authorized the ships to leave this world, didn't you, Most High?" the figure wheezed, its voice mostly mechanical.

The Most High looked at the list. He recognized the ships as having been at the shipyards that had only been destroyed a few hours before.

"Yes," the Most High said. "So?"

The figure held out its hand like it was holding something and the Most High almost started sneering.

Tractor/Pressor beams, invisible, grabbed Cra'almo'o by the throat and lifted him up, making him scrabble and kick franctically to get his hooves under him. The beams lifted him until his front hooves were off the ground. He clawed frantically at his throat with all four hands, trying to figure out a way to block the tractor/pressor beams holding him by the throat in steely hands.

"My sister never did approve of my enjoyment of this game," the black armored figure said slowly. "She was content to live in the Talmonus Harmony raising, of all things, bees."

From one hand there was a strange sound, almost a crackling whooshing, and a red bar of magnetically contained plasma grew from the figure's hand.

"I should thank you, in some ways. I had been content to play Rebel Alliance for decades," the black armored figure said. "I had enough points to buy an army, buy an armada. At first I was going to just bring a Rebel strike force here, but then, then I saw what you did to my sister and everyone on her planet, everyone she cared about. What you did to her and my nieces and nephews.

"I needed a lesson in what this universe is truly like," the figure said.

"But you, my Lanaktallan inferior, have taught me that lesson and another," the figure stared for a moment. "You have shown me the true power of the Dark Side."

As the Lanaktallan watched their Tri-Vid with horror, the black armored figure swung the sword made of eye-watering light through the System Most High.

He fell into two pieces, the cauterized ends smoking.

The black armored figure turned and left, walking out of the room.

"This system is only the first world of The Empire," the figure wheezed. "We shall name it after my sister.

"Melody."

"Yes, Grand Moff Victor," the white armored soldier with the orange pauldron said.

"Do not call me that any longer. I am truly one of the Sith. Call me Darth Harmonus," the armored figure said.

The Tri-Vid went silent, the lenses on the smoking carcass of the System Most High.

------------------------

Calima'atri-3813 was a Lanaktallan Forge World just inside the border of the Near-Sapient Systems. It made jumpcores, warships, jumpdrives, combat robots, everything that the Executor, Military, and Corporate Security fleets would need to reach and then pacify a world. Millions of soldiers trained on the surface. No non-Lanaktallan was allowed in the system, not even those serving in the Unified Military Forces or the Corporate Security Forces.

The jumpships that dropped out of FTL just appeared halfway into the system at a point where gravity twisted slightly. A point of light suddenly stretching out to become a skeletal-spindly looking jumpship with two to six rings around it, each ring holding between four and twenty-four spheroid craft. Each of the fifty craft shed dozens of smaller craft that spread out in a protective shell.

The planetary commander responded by sending the two hundred system defense ships at the intruders.

The smaller craft swarmed them. Armed with missile launchers, particle projection cannons, autocannons, they did high speed attack runs, getting in close, their armor taking the hits from the planetary defense ships. Some were destroyed, vanishing in a bubble of fire and shrapnel.

More didn't.

Every time one of the system defense craft went down, the attackers would shift to the next, interlocking in the attack pattern, sweeping down on the ships.

Once the defense craft were dealt with the smaller ships accelerated to the planets, knocking out satellites, ducking in-atmosphere to do air strikes on military positions, seeking out radar arrays and other targeting systems as well as planetary defense systems and air defense systems.

The big ships went into orbit around the planet even as the Lanaktallan troops moved out and took up position, manned vehicles, or waited for their orbits.

The bigger craft, the round orbs, detached and dropped into atmosphere. Smaller ones, previously hidden, dropped from the big spindly jumpships, coming in fast and hard to slam down near military bases and encampments.

What came out of the pods and smaller craft made the Lanaktallan defenders stare in shock.

Mechs.

Some of the Lanaktallan commanders scoffed. They were half the weight of a heavy tank at most, some of them were lighter than the hovertanks in use by the scout corps. They ranged from 25 tons, a two legged spindly looking thing that bobbed as it walked, to the massive stomping bipedal 100 ton war machines.

Several of the commanders, most of them younger, were suspicious.

Within the first few skirmishes it was obvious that the Terran mechs weren't going to follow normal procedure. They didn't march up and stop to give themselves the best shots, they kept marching forward, sometimes even breaking into a run. Some jumped up high in the air on jump-jets to come crashing down on the tanks. They stomped on infantry or coated them with napalm rockets, shredded tanks with autocannon or PPC fire, and knocked down planes with missiles.

The aerospace fighters provided close air support. Infantry found themselves baked alive under napalm or shattered by cluster bombs. Tanks found themselves taking HEAP rounds to the back decks. Command centers were strafed and often blown up.

Teams of five soldiers in identical power armor attacked tanks and ripped them apart, invaded command centers to kill everyone inside.

It wasn't all one sided. Here and there a mech would get blown up.

But it was always surrounded by hundreds, thousands of dead Lanaktallan military forces.

For almost ninety days the mechs marched across the planet. Returning to the big round ships now and then for repair, refit, and ammunition reload and then marching back out to continue the combat.

The Lanaktallans were suffering combat fatigue by a week. By a month most of the Lanaktallan officers were on the edge of galloping around in circles and bleeting in terror. By sixty days they began begging to surrender.

The giant mechs ignored them and continued stomping forward, killing any who raised a weapon, who mounted a vehicle, who tried to resist in any way shape or form. In orbit the jumpships dropped shoals of satellites, armed satellites, in orbit.

Buildings were destroyed, any military structure was leveled. Dams, power plants, massive agri-domes, were all destroyed, left behind smoking wreckage by the giant mechs.

At seventy days no Lanaktallan tried to resist the massive mechs or their smaller power armor brethren. The mechs kept moving across the landscape, destroying buildings, roads, mag-lev trains, manufacturing plants, spaceports, airports, harbors. The satellites were long gone, as were the weather control stations.

By ninety days the planet was shrouded in thick ash and smoke.

The mechs marched back onto the dropships. The dropships lit their engines and lifted off, joining back up with the jumpships. The jumpships all moved in formation, angling away from the planets until they reached that small twisted area of space only a few hundred miles across.

They stretched into infinity and vanished.

On the surface the survivors breathed a sigh of relief.

Until they got hungry and the ruins no longer provided any food. Until it was pointed out that the massive farms were scorched ruins. That the food stocks and stores had been blown up. That there were no robots or slaves or servants to do any work.

Some Lanaktallan dared to go to the bases that had sprung up around the dropships. There they found things they weren't sure how to use. There was crude drawings in books how to they could be used to till the ground, cut lumber, quarry stone.

There were bags of seeds.

And a message:

"FIRST AND LAST WARNING - MECHWORLDS OF TERRA"

---------------------

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Oof, some of what I'm seeing is ugly.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

On which side? Because these Lanaktallans are capable of some ugly stuff. Hell, they've DONE some ugly stuff.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Some of the LARPers and Wargamers have started attacking systems.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

Tough shit.

//////////

MANTID FREE WORLDS

This should be a strictly official military venture. Call back the non-military forces. Please, don't do this, call back everyone but the professional military.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

Make me.

/////////

MANTID FREE WORLDS

Um... I'd rather not. I learned my lesson, thank you.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN GESTALT

THIS IS OUR WORLD! WE WILL NOT YIELD!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TERRASOL

See. Our youngest brethren agrees with me.

///////////

TREAENA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Hey, man, I'm down with this. These cow guys are some serious bad news. They're the type to surrender and then release bioweapons on all your worlds and act all blameless.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS

That's exactly what they do. It's one of their most common tactics.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

We're with you. We just...

...we just worry about your soul.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---