The Krizian empire’s troops spread from city to city like a plague, over and over again committing their cruelties upon each of the cities that they ripped control of from the Free Nation. They left little to chance, killing everything in their wake, but still some were able to escape from the Krizian menace, and eventually word made its way back to the capital, Free City, and its leader, Jason. He had known something was wrong, having had the Visual User Interface ARMS Civilization menu reported to him that it had fallen, and he was urgently organizing the Free Nation’s forces and sending out word to tighten defenses. However, when he heard what the Krizians were doing he redoubled his efforts to get the troops prepared. Several battalions were commissioned, geared out, and rushed onto the road to fend off the Krizian army that had conquered their comrades.

At the head each battalion were some of the best soldiers that the Free Nation had. proven many times in combat with Jason to different dungeons over the years. They had each earned the respect of the soldiers that now stood ready to follow their orders. In the past there may have been trouble unifying under one command, but over the course of time each of the species had learned to cooperate with each other and what each of their strengths and weaknesses were. Some of the old instincts still reared their ugly faces, but they’d all grown and learned to overcome them. For some species this caused trouble. The T’kata, for example, who weren’t very individualistic began to develop a broader range of characters and the need for knowing exactly who was giving orders and to whom caused numerous soldier ants to take on universal personal names which was a wholly novel thing within their society. One wouldn’t think it would, but much of their world was built on keeping individuals unindividuated, one worker or soldier being the same as the next, but in the Free Nation society, especially the one created by Human hands, that couldn’t work, so they learned and adapted, bringing trouble to their own colonies. To those who didn’t go out of the colony and interact with the other species nothing had changed. A drone was a drone and drone 1 would be treated the same as drone 3, but that’s not how those that had been influenced by the Humans had come to see things. For starters, they had experienced more just by leaving the colony, but more importantly the Humans tended to push everyone to the limits of their abilities. The T’Kata did no such thing and had never discovered that, unlike what they had always experienced before, there was a wide range of talent and skill levels among each of them which in turn meant that they were suited for different things from one to another.

When Humans and T’kata first started working together a Human would explain what they wanted done and exactly how to do it. They’d go away and be baffled by just how messed up things became, because precision would fluctuate to levels that were beyond tolerance and little bits of what was instructed to be done were slightly changed from the expected result. At first, they couldn’t figure out what was going on, but soon they figured it out. The T’kata would switch which one of them were doing the job and when they were talked to by the Humans they’d simply answer to whatever the last T’kata was being called who was working on the job. Because of that it took a while to sort out, but eventually the Humans figured out what was happening. They T’kate didn’t get it at first, but over time Humans got them to understand through showing the difference in work and comparing the results of the using only one person’s work who was highly skilled at what they were doing versus using the work of several.

Each of the species had to go through their own learning period, but they managed and came out stronger, more able to work with each other, for it. Every element of Free Nation’s society became better the more that each member contributed and worked together to adapt to the whole, from the common laborer to the politicians, to the warriors who were now being asked to potentially sacrifice their life to free the homes of others who they had never met nor had any real connection to other than that they too agreed to live and abide by the laws of the Free Nation.

The battalions had been training for a while now, but they were still untested and not quite ready for a battle of this magnitude. That didn’t matter though. They needed to be there and the call was sounded so they had to respond. They marched out of the capital and towards the harbor city. It took weeks to cross over, hundreds of soldiers crossing the sea three or four dozen at a time. Every day that passed they all knew that the further the Krizians would make it into their territory. At that time it was simply their duty that they’d grown to accept as a necessity to their new way of life. They’d seen what discord a few rebellious individuals could bring and the reasons why it was needed for them to protect everyone that agreed to abide by this new way. However, they were unprepared for what was to come, the horrors of war.

The Free Nation battalions formed up once all were across the sea. Reports were that the Krizians had split their forces and were taking over settlements starting from the wall and going forward. To counter them the battalions would have to follow suit and divide their forces up and sweep downwards splitting up further to keep from allowing the Krizians from sneaking behind them. This also mean that their first battle would be the hardest. The Krizians had split up at the beginning but then were able to unite as they moved in closer to the land’s coast. The battalions decided that they wanted to attack all at once to not allow the enemy forces time to prepare for their other forces attacking a different city. This meant that they would travel for several days out to where another target was and, then, along with other forces that were to target much closer to their starting points, wait till the order came to engage.

The signal to attack came 1 day after the last battalion was in place. They left their camps and charged towards the settlement. Their camps were set up some ways away from the target cities. They hadn’t seen what the cities had become. All they knew was that they were in desperate need of liberation. The leaders of the Free Nation made a mistake. In the reports were many of the acts that the Krizians were doing, but they’d failed to pass along the information believing that exposing them to what they would face would cause them to abandon their position in the army. The armies approached the cities not expecting to see the hundreds of boys impaled on stakes sticking several meters into the air. The moment each of them realized what they were looking at many of their wills broke and the just stopped. Ingrained in instincts of several of the species was to keep a close watch on their young and any that died was a great tragedy. The T’kata who seemed to be callous to each other would give anything to save their young. It was one of the few times that you’d see emotion poor out of them. All of the J`nkians similarly held closer to the mammalian protective instincts as did the Eaugr`n. The Apox too were a species that were highly protective of their young, but in their world once a hive was taken there was nothing more that could be done. If there was any chance to save the hive it would be by saving the queen, not the young. Being that there was no queen in these cities the Apox were unmoved, but others, their marching stopped as sadness and burning rage mixed together, overloading their reason. No one could blame them for freezing up, but the Thisin, Apox, and Humans pushed on towards the city, spreading out their forces and causing units behind those frozen in grief to stumble and lag behind due to having to now also work their way around their allies to keep moving forward.

By the time that the soldiers began to react again the Krizians had spotted them. For every Krizian there were four Free Nation soldiers, but the Krizians had the advantage, the same advantage that the inhabitants of these cities had when they took it from them but hadn’t the time to activate. The defense systems around the city that were designed to keep out beasts, but were generally left inactive so that wildlife could freely roam the nearby areas without risk of harm. They believed that if they ever needed them they could easily turn the defenses on long before any beast would pose a threat to the city or anything within their walls. The Krizians weren’t so kind or thoughtful. As soon as they took over the settlement the defenses were turned on, switched to manual, and manned so that they could target the Free Nation soldiers they knew were coming at some point.

The Krizians let them come closer in toward the city until the entire battalion was dead in the middle of the defensive perimeter. Metallic shutters all around them slid open. Gatling beam guns popped out of the ground and twisted, turning to find their targets. The battalion was surrounded, but not just so, the guns were inside their ranks as well. Before they could recover from the shock of the impaled children and then the error they had made of charging into a field of weapons designed to defend against things that they had trouble fighting off the guns opened fire into the army. Over the comm.s the order of retreat came.

The backlines were full of those still recovering from the initial shock of what was happening. They were slow to react, retreating too slowly to be of help. They were among the first to be shot dead, their armor doing little to protect them. Meanwhile the front lines could only turn and press back, but there was row after row of soldiers in between them and safety. Hundreds of Humans and Thisin died in an instant. The Apox, who were airborne, escaped the opening volley only to be sniped out of the sky. Few escaped but not enough to mount any sort of attack when all was said and done. Beneath the corpses a few soldiers took refuge, hiding their presence from the operators of the defense system. They had two options; stay there and starve to death, or attempt to sneak out of the defense perimeter and make a run for it. It wasn’t really an option. Many tried to make it to safety, but only a scant few made it far enough to risk it all to make a run for it. Of those, almost none were lucky, slick, or fast enough to make it beyond the Krizians’ reach. At the end of the day, thousands of Free Nation soldiers were killed. Not one Free Nation citizen was rescued and worse, the enemy numbers had not been reduced, not even incidentally by illness or self infliction as want to happen in totalitarian regimes. All the work that Jason and his allies had done was for nothing. Worse, it was now in the hands of the enemy, utilized to prevent Jason from reclaiming his lands. The Krizians would continue their expansion, kill those he had sworn to protect, and there was nothing that he could do about it other than watch helplessly from the capital.