"Yes, I was commander of the Scorpionis Navy in Staru.
I came in with the victory-fleet under Admiral Kallathi on 096, after we
won the Battle of Dulu. We found a system totally occupied by the
cockroaches, with only some debris to indicate that the coruska-fleet had
ever been here. We expected trouble, and found it.
"For the first ten days, neither side had the advantage.
We had ground troops and naval engagements all through the system.
Ten days in, though, we had a big battle around P4. The Admiral went
down with his ship, the Heavy Battleship Lollipop, and Rear Admiral
Aliotski took over command on the Strike Cruiser Walking Man.
We had just fifty ships left after that battle, and the roaches were pretty
smashed up too. The Walking Man even took out a BRICK class,
pretty much by itself.
"After that the roaches pulled back to the inner
orbits of the primary, while we took our marines and secured the enemy
base on S2. We held the secondary. We all stood back for a
while to rebuild our forces, and the roaches did the same.
"Still, we put a big spanner in their works on 110,
when we launched an invasion of P3-15. Unfortunately the roaches
had command of airspace, and we couldn't bring ortillery to bear on their
bases. That's when the marines went to ground and fought a resistance
action for the rest of the war. At that point we were concerned that
we were all that was left of Scorpionis. The Rear Admiral died of
his wounds two days later, and Captain Drassaki took command of the Walking
Man and the fleet.
"We managed to contact the resistance on Staru,
and we able to get supplies out to the marines in orbit three on an irregular
basis. The resistance also did a lot of sabotage of the roach facilities
on the mainworld.
"Well, we spent a few months working on our ships,
and launched a big attack on the Korokal station. That would have
been on 291. We trounced them but good, wiped out their base completely.
"The next day we moved on to Staru itself.
We had an enormous battle in close orbit, and a lot of ships on both sides
fell down the well. We emptied everything we had on the cockroach
base at the starport area, but it wasn't enough to take out their facilities.
Then Captain Drassaki took the helm of the Walking Man himself,
and plunged it down into the bases. That wiped out all the stinking
roach facilities there.
"Lieutenant Walthur was then in command. We
rushed the Light Cruiser Salathea back into action soon after, and
Wallie took that as his flagship.
"Something struck fear into the roaches a couple
of months after that, because on 345 they threw everything they had left
into a battle with us for the secondary. They nuked our base on S2,
and Wallie went down with the Salathea in the battle for the S3
gas giant.
"Well, they pretty much wiped us out. Only
my destroyer, the Yulethiqi, was left. Second Lieutenant Derrino
was in command of the ship, and of the Navy of course. We took off
for S3-15 to join the resistance. The Yuletiqi was in no shape
to land, but the supplies were important so we crash-landed and took to
the jungle with the marines. I took command a day later when Derrino
died of bung fever. That's where we stayed until we were relieved."
Garratea was then asked about the aliens, what they were like. He said:
"They're ugly and they smell really bad. They are nasty, look a bit like enormous cockroaches. They're horrible, ugly, they smell and they eat people. They torture their prisoners before questioning them, and they flay people alive. They fight like demons. We have to wipe them out."