The Martial Unity

The events of Arima III shook the star system. A massive wormhole had just appeared out of nowhere, stretching a thousand kilometers in diameter. The alien army that invaded from that wormhole was even more shocking. Although the light took some time to finally reach the planets within the star system, the truth of what was happening couldn’t possibly be hidden from the public.

”AHHRHGHHHH! THE ALIENS ARE HERE!”

”Run! We need to get as far away from here as we possibly can!”

”WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!”

The streets of City Stormfront drowned in chaos. A flood of civilians and maglev vehicles clogged the streets as they rushed towards one of the many means of transit in and out of the system.

RUMBLE

Gravitational radiation rippled across the city and the planet, maintained by the remaining arakai interdiction force. And yet, not even the nausea and the migraines that they caused were enough to prevent people from doing everything in their power to get out of the city and off the planet.

Martial Artists skywalked towards outer space with their exo-Martial suits active, determined to escape from Planet Sarantel. Their departing figures checkered the bright red skies, only fueling the escapist fever that had grasped the populations of the city. Many of them kept track of the giant holographic news feeds in front of buildings of news stations covering the anomalous activity.

The sight of the giant wormhole and that horrifying invading force was enough to completely crush any attempt by the Stormfront Peacekeeping Force to maintain law and order.

”Please remain calm!” one peacekeeping official shouted through a megaphone. ”Do not panic and do not run in the streets! Return to your homes and your temporary residences and wait for instructions from the mayor!”

”Do not rush towards the transit ports!”

”DO NOT PANIC!”

The well-meaning attempts at trying to calm down the frenzied population failed. Even though the peacekeeping force and the local police force were armed with riot shields and pathwalkers, it was not possible to subdue the entire population with raw force without causing harm to the civilians.

Excessive force would cause mass injuries and even deaths, and that would only exacerbate the situation and make things worse. Unfortunately, once the population had decided that the authorities would not be able to protect them from the invading alien force. In the first place, the population of frontier states was not ordinary people. These were people who had traveled a long way to come to the edge of human civilization where law and order was less absolute, where hospitality and luxury were more crude, and where safety was limited.

They were not the same as pliant as populations deeper in the hinterlands of human civilization. The peacekeeping force never stood a chance at being able to quell the outbreak of upheaval even if they were in perfect condition, but they were in anything but that, considering that their own members had been deserting their stations and evacuating with the citizens.

”Where are you going?!” One commanding officer barked at a skywalking Martial Squire. ”You have a duty to protect law and order in the face of adversity! Come back here, or you will be fired for dereliction of duty!”

The Martial Squire simply looked down at his commanding officer with a dubious sneer even as he skywalked away. ”You think I give a damn about this job right now? Look at that invading army, you fool!”

He pointed to the nearest hologram board on a massive skyscraper featuring news streams detailing the invading army. ”That army cannot be stopped! They will destroy this entire star system and kill every single human being in it! I feel bad for abandoning the people, but I’m not sacrificing my life for this job! I don’t get paid enough!”

He didn’t even bother listening to his former boss’s retort. It was all irrelevant, as far as the eighteen-year-old Martial Squire was concerned. He didn’t care if this put a blemish on his record. Life was more precious than anything else.

The rushing population of the City Stormfront and Planet Sarantel all had but one goal at the moment: to leave the planet and leave the star system. The numerous transit ports and means of travel became flooded with civilians.

”I want to buy a one-way ticket off this planet on the next space elevator!” One barked, pushing through a crowd that had gravitated to the ticket counters of the elevator station.

”Hey! Get in line! I’ve been waiting for a ticket for the past fifteen minutes!”

”Move, you space peasants! I am the descendant of the Morlatar Clan! I will destroy your lives if you don’t let me through!”

The space elevators were the slowest, but the widest means for people to escape through, which was why many people rushed to them. Massive, kneaded steel wires stretched into space with a hooking station at the very end that kept the wires taut with centrifugal force.

Elevators slowly climbed up and down these wires, transmitting nearly a thousand people each way. However, the sheer number of people swamping the elevator stations was so high that it would have taken hundreds of rounds up and down to transport all of them.

The other means of transit were even more strained. There weren’t enough rocket pods to carry even a fraction of the people that demanded a ticket and certainly nowhere near enough fuel. Not to mention, even if the citizens of City Stormfront and Planet Sarantel could get to space, there weren’t enough spaceships able or willing to transport them all. From the moment the news reached crews manning these massive vessels, they immediately distanced themselves to get as far away from the wormhole as they possibly could.

Some of them managed to enter FTL before the interdiction force commenced its field denial operation. However, many weren’t able to make it in time, causing them to be stranded in the same star system as the calamitously massive and powerful Web of War that sought to dominate the zone and turn it into a launch pad for their offensive upon the rest of human civilization.