The level of fear and confusion in the meeting room was evident to Max as soon as he got near the station. They were waiting quietly for him to arrive and the meeting to start, but that didn't slow their minds, and every Koleska officer, Minister and Diplomat had the very worst-case scenario running through their minds.
"Greetings, Esteemed Ladies and Gentlemen." Max greeted the room as he entered and took his seat near one end of the room, next to Commander Yuri, who was seated at the foot of the table.
"Commander Keres Max, it is an honour, as always, for you to meet with us on such short notice. Your intelligence-gathering abilities seem to be quite capable, so I will assume that you already know we are concerned about the implications of the actions the Arisen Army took today." The Minister of Defence replied slowly.
Max nodded. "Of course, Minister. It is only natural to be concerned about new developments, but I suspect that the situation isn't as dire as you might suspect that it is. The Arisen were happy to fight us in the past, but from what we could gather from their actions, it was only incidental to their goal.
They are not here to fight us. They appear to be here exclusively to test the Koleska. They have increased and decreased the scale of their attacks to see how you would respond. They tested the Anomaly and abandoned the attempts to get through it after both the Human forces and the Knife Ears moved to prevent them from leaving the region.
So, the logical explanation seems to be that they are actually testing the Koleska or attempting to prepare you for something.
Are the Koleska familiar with the concept of culling a herd of its weakest members to increase the overall strength of the group?"
That confused most of the Koleska, as it didn't translate perfectly into their language, but after a few seconds, they got what Max was after.
"Yes, we are familiar with the theory that if the weakest are eliminated, a large group will function more effectively." The Defence Minister replied, not quite understanding what Max was implying.
It is the opinion of the Reavers that the Arisen Army is attempting to do exactly that with the Koleska. If you look at this data here, they have attacked many forces before, and in a certain group of situations, they ceased their attacks before the species was eliminated."
Max transmitted the data to everyone in the room, so they could see what he and Nico had compiled about the history of the region as it pertained to the attacks by the Arisen Army.
"I do not see the connection." One of the bureaucrats responded after a few minutes of silent reading.
"Each of the species who were abandoned by the Arisen were the ones who did not give up. They were the species that forged an increasingly powerful military force as they were eliminated, and although it was clear that the Arisen forces could easily overrun them toward the end, once the resistance got to a certain level, they stopped." Max explained.
"So, you're saying that if we fight back hard enough, they will leave the station alone?" The bureaucrat asked.
"No. If your entire species fights back hard enough, they will leave you all alone. Once you have been forged into a militant species of sufficient determination, they will deem you worthy of living."
The bureaucrat nodded happily. "So, if we just buy more powerful Mecha from you, we will live. It is genius."
Max shook his head while Commander Yuri and the Defence Minister facepalmed in shame for the man's lack of understanding.
The Defence Minister spoke next. "They're not testing our military capability. That isn't the common denominator among the survivors. Some were actually quite weak but fought incredibly tenaciously. The Arisen are testing our willpower and cohesion as a species, according to the theory that humans have put forward.
Commander Yuri made a buzzing noise that was the Koleska equivalent of a frustrated sigh.
"If he is right, that's why they keep attacking civilian planets. They're testing the weakest of our species first to see what the minimum level of resistance they will receive is. Because we have planets with no real fighters, they continue to wipe out our armies, to force us to conscript more and more of our people."
That devolved the conversation in the room into small groups of panicked planning. The Koleska had no plan for what to do if the Arisen wanted their entire society to militarize. They were strictly caste and role-based, with many of their citizens' career paths set from birth, with their own accomplishments determining how far they made it along that genetically optimized path.
Making everyone a soldier would collapse their entire society.
"I think we need time to consider this. We won't be able to come to a decision on this in one sitting, so everyone, please present a hypothetical report to the Defence Minister within the next seven days on how you might prepare your sector of society to defend themselves against an Arisen attack."
For most of them, that was a nearly impossible task, but it didn't really involve Commander Yuri. Those under his responsibility were already soldiers. The Agriculture Minister also seemed to have something resembling a basic plan on how to make his people less of a target.
Max could tell that he had been working on it for a while, but he couldn't divert resources to it, as the farmers weren't authorized to use military equipment, and the army was in charge of defending them from attack. Making plans for them to fight without orders from above would look like he was wasting government resources and might get him demoted from his position.
Agriculture Minister was an influential position, after all, and the competition was intense.
But if he could prove to others that his farmers could defend against Arisen the same way that they defended the fields against pests and varmints if they just had the training and equipment, then he would come out of this assignment looking like a hero, championing the masses.
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