396 Failures And Victories

As the news trickled in, Max began to notice a pattern to the madness. The entire inner rim of the Kepler Empire, closest to the Galactic Core, had proven impregnable to the foreign troops, and the border closest to Rae 5, where the most recent Rebel activity had been, was proving decidedly deadly for the Rebels as well.

Those sectors linked to create a crescent-shaped territory that held the majority of the Empire's rare resources and heavy manufacturing facilities but very few of its citizens. Two nations' entire fleets had been lost with only garbled cries for assistance, and nobody really knew what was happening until the fateful moment that a force finally got a warning out to the Galaxy.