While the Commanders were discussing the future of the planet aboard Santa Maria, Koleska Central Command was also having an intense discussion about the situation.
It was clear to them that the location was a high priority for attack and that they would have lost the world today if their alien allies hadn't been terrifyingly heavily armed. That did not bode well for the future of the civilians on the planet's surface.
Abandoning the planet entirely would be too great of a loss, as the number of planets within their territory which could be suitable for habitation with their innate gravity levels was limited, so the goal of that day's meeting was to find an alternative use for the world that did not involve a dense population, or ideally, any civilians at all.
"What if we moved the civilians to planets further from the battlefront and reallocated the entire world as a military facility to guard the Anomaly? We share the view of the humans that letting the Arisen through would be a disaster, and with the increase in the scale of the attacks in the region, it would be prudent to increase the military population of the world." One of the bureaucrats suggested to the Minister of Defence.
The Minister thought back to when he had met the human Commanders called Max and Nico. They were extremely open-minded about military matters, and they put a lot of faith in their allies to keep up their end of the bargain while also doing what they could to help.
The learning devices they had provided had been widely used by the region's Military Academies, and the results were amazing. He had also noticed that the Station Commander had added some human-made Virtual Reality devices, which were marked as entertainment, needing no outside approval, but were more likely a form of training that the humans had come up with.
If he could rearrange the planet so that there were multiple military Academies on the surface, he could appeal for a larger planetary shield from the Governor and more stationed fleet assets.
That would give them the ability to fight off the Arisen and defend the Academies, which had been repeatedly targeted on other planets.
Every time they moved them, there seemed to be an attack on the new Academy world. It was a logistical nightmare, and he couldn't find a reason why it kept happening.
Commander Yuri, as well as a number of others, had made a report on the situation with the Co-Operative ships and passed it through the chain of command, but the Ministers hadn't actually gotten around to reading it yet. Their subordinates viewed it as a small matter now that the humans had taken the problematic travellers off their hands and had missed the implications that the planets were being targeted because of an infected computer system travelling between locations and stopping long enough to alert the Arisen.
Some of the junior staffers were already on it, but with such a backlog of things to do, they hadn't managed to get it to their bosses' desks yet. Unlike the Commanders, they didn't have the authority to bypass the first in, first out system that the bureaucracy had in place.
While they discussed the movement of the population, the Destroyers had already constructed a half dozen terraforming drones and deployed them to the atmosphere to normalize the gas levels and cleanse the dust, preventing the inevitable onset of volcanic winter.
That was as far as they would go for now since they didn't have approval from anyone but the Station Commander, but by the terms of their agreement, emergency aid in a desperate situation was to be provided, and Max was certain that he could make the argument that this definitely fell under that category.
In the end, when the delegates from the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Defence arrived at the station, it was chaos. None of them knew yet that the atmosphere had been stabilized, and their plans had been based on the need to fully terraform the planet to make it habitable, but on the other hand, the basic premise was still solid.
They wanted to move the civilians and turn the entire planet into a Military Academy, turning out millions of hybrid-trained soldiers, both with the Koleska methods and the human technologies to improve their skills.
They would keep the other Academies going as they were and hopefully keep those trainees for planetary defence forces while these more heavily trained ones did the majority of the fighting. That would also give them a backup if the new training had issues or this world was lost to the Arisen.
The three Commanders listened carefully as the directives from the Government were passed down, and the arrival of the Ministers to discuss the final plans to relocate the population was scheduled.
"Well, I didn't expect that. Do you think that they considered the fact that it might be our level of firepower that is making the attacks worse? If the Arisen are actually ramping up their attacks because we have been winning, it might be a terrible idea to add more military assets.
We would gain in the short term and then lose even more in the long term." Nico suggested.
Commander Yuri nodded. "I believe they have, but there is also the possibility that by concentrating all the Arisen attacks here, they will save many lives in the rest of the Empire for years or even decades.
If they increase their attacks and send all their forces to us, we are distracting them from the rest of the Koleska worlds, and the longer we hold here, the safer they will be."
There were some huge gaping holes in that logic, but if that was how the Government was operating, Max could only hope that they were right or that they could actually chase away the Arisen for a time.
There was still most of a year before the rest of the Mecha team would be fully trained and ready, but with a pair of Destroyers here, equipped with all the latest gear, but still, in the angular and ornate style of a classic Cygnus Military vessel, the Arisen would have to try very hard to get through their defences.
The thought was enough to make Nico happy, and her cheerful attitude was putting Commander Yuri off guard, under the assumption that she had calculated a large chance of success for their plan, or at least survival for his people.
Max would let him have it. They had enough headaches coming up if they were going to make sure that every Koleska vessel which came near the station was cleansed of the Arisen Computer Virus and trackers.
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