the roaring lion.

A huge muscular dark-skinned man appeared on the screens.

He was seated on a throne made of wood and sculpted bones, wearing only a long scarf of colorful paterned fabric wrapped around him.

Over 2 meters tall, he had arms as thick as your thighs, huge pectoral and abdominal muscles. His face was painted with a white chalk-like powder and he had his hair in long dreadlocks. Every part of his ebony body was covered in ritual scarification and he had a lot of piercings in his ears, nose, face, torso and even on his foot long cock that was dangling in full view of the camera between his spread legs. Circles of small brass balls were embedded into the skin along the entire length of his phallus in evenly spaced rings and bigger beads decorated the head.

"I am Abinaje, champion of the great Shaman-King Okumba." The massive warrior who looked like he had stepped out a graphic novel intoned with somber confidence. "Your imperialist kind won't take Verdana from us like you took our land and our people from our ancestors. This is not a place for your pale-faced weakness." For the first time the face on the view screen smiled, but it is not a kind smile.

"Let's test our strength. When you are defeated, the strongest of your men will be slaves to work our fields and we will feed the flesh of those to old or weak for labor to our dogs." He paused for effect spreading his knees slightly wider displaying his massive organ. "As for your women, they will serve us as well. We will use your pampered females like breeding sows, filling their soft bellies with the seed of the true race of the humans."

He didn't add a word past that; the planetary fleet burst into its attack barely one second after the transmission.

The Gorgon's enhanced visual sensors were powerful enough to let you see that the ships were adorned with animal heads on their bow. Monkeys, bulls, serpents, rhinoceros, elephant and the biggest one, the flag ship, a roaring lion.

The Monkeys moved in fast, too fast to get a strong solution with their weapons, but they didn't seem to care about their inability to fire accurately. They fired from large flak cannons. It was ridiculous, the weapons were primitive, launching actual massive balls of matter instead of the high-energy plasma or photons of the UTF fleet heavy energy-weapons. In the absence of atmosphere and gravity these projectiles travelled in perfectly flat trajectories through the emptiness of space. The objects were massive, but still too small and slow to have any hope of damaging your ships through the shields, and the automated defense lasers were already preparing to blast the ridiculous objects into oblivion.

The Bulls and Rhinos advanced in a tight formation flanking the Lion flagship and you almost laughed at the lack of sophistication with the Elephant ships above and below, only the Serpent ship held its position, but it just didn't matter. If their weapons were as primitive as the Monkey ship's cannons they couldn't possibly touch your fleet, it did not surprise you that Admiral Caldwell did not return fire immediately. As far as you can tell, none of these ships even had energy shields, relying instead on their size and lead shielding to protect them.

The engineer systems on the Gorgon lit up, the asteroid-mining capabilities of the support corvette kept the computer on the prowl for useful resources.

100% pure iridium, thousands of tons of it.

The same iridium you plated railgun slugs and your warheads to help them burrow through enemy shields. Before you or any other officer had a chance to digest this new information, the laser fire of the Fleet's automated defense system disintegrated the iridium projectiles into particles no bigger than the head of a pin.

A large cloud of it enveloped the UTF fleet jamming every shield systems and blinding the fire-control sensors of the heavy cruisers. Now the second wave of attack ships, the Elephants, Bulls, Rhinos and the Lion, that were on close-intercept courses with the Acheron and her escort frigates, all opened fire with all they had...

And it was a lot.

Space filled with fire as most of your fleet exploded from shots, projectiles and torpedoes. Some were even being rammed and boarded by swarms of marines who crawled through the gapping holes in the battle-steel hulls. Even the titanesque ship-carrier broke in two, and you stared in disbelief as you saw the mighty Acheron tear apart before your eyes.

Too small or insignifiant to have been targeted you witnessed the destruction of your fleet in relative peace.

Until a fast torpedo sprinted in your direction.

The high-g maneuvers of Williams weren't enough to outpace the torpedo and the broad-spectrum EM jamming could not break its lock on the Gorgon. The impact blasted you straight towards the green and blue fourth planet of the system, where your wrecked ship would surely crash - if you survived the impact.