On the side of the federation, Salessa seemed to understand the plan of the zerg queen. Sending the majority of the regular zerg towards the federation, whilst attacking the empire with the elite warriors. The empire was unprepared and would suffer catastrophic losses. This would cripple the empire, and the federation would have to split their forces to help protect the empire, so as not to be attacked from both sides.
Although it was a basic tactic, it showed that the zerg queen's intelligence was evolving. This wasn't a good thing for humanity. At first she was preparing which forces could be divided and sent to the empire to aid their defence, but she received reports from some of the students that had gone with the exchange, that a powerful force intervened in one of the battlefields, annihilating the group of elite zerg, without losing a single one of their own. However the student also said that the group probably didn't belong to the emperor, nor any aristocratic family, and after that battle, disappeared without a trace.
During the subsequent battles, the force had never shown themselves again, which could prove that they didn't belong to the court. This news made Salessa a little worried. She didn't expect the empire to have such a strong hidden group, but after pondering, she wondered if it was a private group. Seeing as they only showed up for that one battle, when calculating she realised that if the battle was lost at that point, the empire would have no chance to survive the attack, but in the battles afterwards, the empire could still remain.
She guessed that the bottom line of this group was tk maintain the survival of the empire, but they didn't care how badly the empire's foundation was damaged. This revelation excited her very much, because it proves that the group doesn't want to see the court in power, but she wasn't able to guess their bottom line.
"Did they want to be in power themselves?" she wondered.
Her thoughts on this matter had to be shelved though. Knowing that she didn't need to send reinforcements to the empire made her more relaxed. So instead of choosing to stabilise the border, she decided to incorporate more aggressive tactics, which seemed to surprise the zerg queen Far away in the heartland of the zerg territory.
The zerg queen was far larger than all the zerg that humanity had ever seen. Her body was as large as half a planet. All around her were zergs of different sizes, maintaining a steady order, following the same process as they did everyday.
The zerg queen could see what was happening on both the battlefronts at the same time. She watched the losses of her own offspring in the empire with indifferent eyes, however a gleem of curiosity filled her countless beady eyes. She recounted the memory of the human machinations that managed to slaughter her children with ease. She had never seen such fierce human inventions, but she knew that these things must be met with caution.
She had already concluded that this attack would fail in the end. Although it caused heavy losses to her population, but the humans would not come out unscathed. So she chose to abandon the rest of those soldiers, allowing them to drag as many of the humans to death with them.
This was under the belief that the humans didn't dare to attack her territory, otherwise she might choose to cut the losses, and retreat all the living zerg still fighting. However humans for centuries have chosen simply to defend, and they have never taken the initiative to attack her home world.
Both the federation and empire saw that the zerg no longer received reinforcements, and they knew the zerg queen had chosen to abandon the forces still attacking them. This discovery greatly boosted the morale of both sides, and the previous stalemate became a unilateral massacre on the side of the zergs.
When the final zerg was killed, the cheers could be heard over every communication channel. The soldiers and civilians on both sides wept with joy, knowing that they had survived the terrifying battle. But mixed with joy was the realisation of the damage and loss that occurred during the battle.
Countless planets had collapsed from the constant attacks. Tens of millions of humans from both the empire and the federation had fallen in battle. The alphas that were forced to stand on the front line bore the brunt of the losses, and the already rare gender became even more scarce. However those alphas were mostly regular people, which caused little implications to the aristocratic families.
So amongst the cheers of victory, the sadness of what was lost was also prevalent. Many people lost not only their family, but also their home. The governments on both sides were working at maximum capacity. People needed to be rehoused, the damaged fleets needed repairs and recruitment. The border fleet that was completely destroyed needed another to take its place.
The same process was happening in the federation, but on a smaller scale. The federation has richer resources than the empire, and a greater number, so the losses were more manageable.
Salessa quickly went to work, sending orders to the politicians under her. The process was much smoother, since they had become accustomed to this. As after every battle with the zerg, they would have to complete it.
So while the empire was trying their best to stabilise, so that they could begin their rehabilitation. The federation was already in full swing. New planets further into the federation already had new housing built, many civilians had already chosen to move away from the border, but some just cared too much about their original planets, and refused to leave; which is where majority of the civilian losses came from.
The federation also took the opportunity to study the equipment that the empire sent. At the time they were worried when the elite zerg were going to attack, and didn't have the time to waste researching, but now that the empire has been so severely damaged, they would be morons if they didn't take advantage to increase their own technology.
