Post by EmperorMyric on Mar 22, 2021 14:53:39 GMT
Celefra Palace: Capitol Space
Ural had burned. Just as Asuras had done before it. Both systems wiped away from the face of the galaxy in purifying fire the likes of which Ancerious had not seen since Xantan during the 1st Ancerious war.
And yet, it was about to witness it again. The Crucible had been repaired and charged since Ural, the weapon was now ready to fire, and it in turn had been given its next target. Somewhere in Carnaithian Space.
Saudra.
Inara sat watching the Crucible, a veritable stream of data most of it useless to her about its operation thundering past her as she sat at her large ornate desk in the palace. She had chosen the next target, she wanted to make a point to Reik, to Carnaith. They had been given an offer to spearhead the new order in the galaxy after the war ended, to facilitate negotiations, to sit the war out and survive totally intact perhaps in time even as a member of the APP. But they had declined such, and spat on Inaras offer. She had enjoyed watching Reik essentially run from Event Horizon, although the general had spoken sense Inara didn’t much care for history of other races. Merely her own. She would enjoy watching Saudra burn, who knows maybe Reik himself would be present on planet and burn with it. But she doubted that.
The final sequences were being run through, not long now until the weapon itself fired. Inara sat, surrounded by four Hydra guard and Illian besides her watching. The Grand Commissar keeping tabs on all the information streaming in.
"Are you sure you wish to do this ma'am?" Illian asked breaking the silence.
"It’s a little late for that don’t you think?" Inara chuckled.
"True but making Carnaith a full-fledged enemy-"
"They were all along, this was just a game for them to play us, read us and gauge us. Now we show them what happens when you double cross someone you underestimate" Inara interrupted.
"Very true Empress"
The portal that linked the Imperial Omniverse and the Ancerious pocket galaxy was a natural one, an invincible one. A nebula was vomited in one direction, mingling with the rocks of a field that rivalled the Junkyard in density. This was Carnaith's true bastion in Ancerious, capable of being immediately influenced by the Empire. Reik stood, grinning, as he looked out of the dense view screen facing out of a command station. He had a wide-angle view of the outbound side of the wormhole as well as a handful of factory stations, albeit distant, that were charged with the manufacture and maintenance of the advanced fleet family; Blinkerzerstoren and the like. He held up a photo of the view from Saudra's moon, tidally locked to the star, and cocked the herbal stick that lie in his mouth; from the same packet he opened on Event Horizon.
"For someone so feared, you certainly have your sentiments, Solan," one of the three other voices around him stated. He stood among his peers, three of the other four High Generals of Carnaith. This one belonged to William Rictuld, head of the Royal Guard. Reik almost felt sorry for him; he had no reason to be here beyond serve as the de facto leader of the Ancerious colony. None of the military fun.
"Indeed I do, Ric," Reik replied. "But we all share this one, we all have memories from Saudra," he continued, glancing at Kate Varan, who rolled her eyes and looked away, enticing an even stronger grin from the leader of the Armies. "Alex, are those axiom ripoffs ready?"
"Firstly, my hulking compatriot, they're not mere copies of the Axiomatic warships, as they have significantly different technologies that serve to make them cheaper and more suiting to our needs, which-"
"I don't care for being rambled upon, Admiral."
"...leads into the fact that yes, they are ready. Twelve Blinkerzerstoren are making the acceleration run as we speak, and three Blinkerzwillen are spooling jump coils to support."
As Admiral Jaseron's response to Reik concluded, what could have been mistaken as stars mere moments ago now raced into view; twelve bright orange lights, screaming directly towards the wormhole. They were currently clocking half the speed of light after running several AU of direct burn; they now detached disposable fuel tanks, which matched their velocities on approach. The Bussard ramjets on their hulls served little purpose neither here nor in their intended AO for this sortie, the nest of the Crucible. As the craft screamed closer, their speeds climbed exponentially as they reached closer and closer to entering the wormhole, but instead vanished in perfect co-ordination with the three static Blinkerzwillen - their latest recorded speeds clocking in at 0.92c.
"Pull up scanner feeds from the Blinkerzwillen and Saudra."
The countdown reached zero as the Crucible once again for the third time in history funnelled the energy of an accretion disk into a blinding beam of energy. The Quantum gate opening a direct path to the Saudra system.
The wormhole appeared in the middle of the system, the bright incandescent beam of light lanced through the FTL gate at the speed of light, the sheer energies impacting the Saudra star as Inara watched, a smile crept across her face as the gruesome titanic energies set about their work. Like Asuras and Ural before it Saudra would burn in fire.
"And so I become death destroyer of worlds" Inara muttered.
"Ma'am?" Illian asked confused.
"An ancient human proverb, it was uttered at the moment the first atomic bomb was detonated. I feel it is apt"
Blue and green holoscreens appeared across the viewport that the high generals watched through as well as the information processing centre behind them. The ones that were currently opened displayed information from Saudra; alarms instantly went off once the FTL signature was detected, sending commercial, executive, leisure, tour, and a plethora of other types of civilian traffic into a scurry for designated FTL zones, largely ignored by executive ships and military tugs, towing largely incomplete craft, alike. The drydocks of Synchek Heavy Driveyards had long been decentralized, starting at the beginning of the war itself, while all those smaller contractors with their vastly smaller shipyards that had the resources to do so only decentralized once the first Crucible strike made its mark on the galaxy. This had little overall impact on the strategic and symbolic status of Saudra; the strike would have vast implications, Rictuld thought to himself. Almost immediately, however, a sensors technician monitoring the internal state of the star piped up.
"Patterns in the star's core do not match the readings recorded from the previous two strikes. Artificial aging doesn't seem to have progressed quite as far; energy feedback imminent nonetheless," He spoke out. Another announced the successful link of the BZ fleet that had warped directly into the vicinity of the black hole; readings from the craft were instantly received.
The Zerstoren had lower average energy readouts than the Zwillen with the exception of one; all of the Zerstoren carried add-on modules, with two "Blinkerhund"-type parasite destroyers detaching from each Blinkerzerstorer. However, external scans would reveal pods attached to each as well. Functionally, only one carried what mattered for this mission, and all others simply carried additional coolant material for the scalar antennae on their hulls. The Zwillen appeared, immediately accelerating to separate firing angles, shortly behind the obscenely-fast Blinkerzerstoren.
Inara kept watching as a small message came through.
"Ma'am Saudra stars composition is somewhat different to others, it seems the process will take a few moments longer"
"Get it over with soon if something goes wrong I will have your head" Inara replied, the technician head nodding and cutting the link.
The energies of the Crucible continued to dump enough energy to accelerate the stars lifetime as the colour of its rays began to turn red and it expanded slightly. Inara watched intently before someone entered the room.
"My Empress! I have urgent news Rubikon is under heavy siege!" The man panted. Inaras eyes widened, Illian cursed.
"What? What’s the situation?"
"Over 9000 allied vessels, our forces are engaging but they are outnumbered" Inara growled something. Illian turned to her.
"Should I mobilise the fleets? We can totally destroy the allied force if we strike now" He smiled "They have finally given us the chance" Inara shook her head. Bringing up the report itself and ignoring the Crucible, looking at the initial fleet compositions she scowled.
"Look where’s the Unions super dreadnought, where’s the Matterforge, this isn’t their main fleet. They have something planned. Send 1000 ships and whatever the others will send but keep the fleet on standby" Inara replied.
"Are you sure Empress? 9000 ships if the largest fleet seen yet"
"I’m sure. Do as I order."
An alarm immediately sounded from the link with the Crucible, Inara and Illian turning to view it. It was a FTL alarm, something had warped in close to the Devourer and was coming in immensely fast. Multiple signatures spontaneously appearing. Inaras heart sank, something had found it.
While Reik and the other generals watched the operation of the strike fleet, Jaseron had walked over to the data center. He knew the purpose of the craft and how the strike would be executed; he brought his cane up and cradled it like a rifle in the nook of his arm, almost like a good friend. Father would be proud to see this, he thought to himself, a small smile forming as he looked up at the hologram that displayed the Devourer and surrounding constructs.
"Detatch the Blinkerhunds immediately and get the Zerstoren on randomized vectors blooming outwards from the access point; I don't want any ships deviating more than a tenth of a degree from the pre-determined plot. Get the Zwillen charging their main batteries and launching those busters; all scalar howitzers, target unshielded combatants. Save at least half of the scalar batteries for interception duty," he ordered, beginning to pace slowly around the hologram. He could feel the enemy's eyes on his movements, and he knew his technician officers could feel his own eyes on their screens, demanding their perfection. He hadn't felt the rush of adrenaline from directly commanding a combat group for at least two decades.
The Zerstoren scattered; they slowly peeled off on arcs that bloomed away from an axis that connected the Crucible and the average access point of the Carnaithain detatchment, subtly changing vector every few seconds in a fairly random matter. Two smaller craft disconnected from each of the Zerstoren, the pairs rapidly maneuvering into a position between the Zerstoren and the Capitol infrastructure in the area, beginning to pump Solaris into several thin defensive shells on the opposite side of them from their motherships. The Zwillen, meanwhile, angled themselves randomly and thrusted using belly-mounted redirection ports for their main engines; the effect was a visual "kiting". Energy readings spiked in these craft, more so than all of the other ships despite the mass deployment of Scalar, With the detection of Axiom warships within the system, more items began breaking off of the capital-level Carnaithian ships. Missiles. Drifting away from their motherships for but a few moments, they fired engines, directing themselves at the Blinkers. All of the craft of similar pattern to the ones that had raided Mirach so long ago were targeted by a single missile each; the same went for eighteen of the standard-pattern Axiom warships. The missiles only burned their engines for a moment, soon activating Alcubierre-type drives to immediately accelerate to a terminal speed beyond that achievable by even EPA superimpactor models.
Sixty four bright beacons of light lit up amongst the thousands of defensive stations present, shining brighter than any of the reactors of engines in any of the ships present. While small compared to the colossal shroud of the Devourer, these single dots of light managed to not only match the black hole in luminance but to actually surpass it; looking at any of them would have instantly blinded a human and to ship sensors they registered as an overwhelming blast of gamma radiation. The devices, Axiomatic "greeter mines" the size of large bomber craft underwent such acceleration that none of the metamaterials they were made of could withstand it; the craft had to be held together by active electrogravitics. Their antimatter-anihilating rocket engines kept providing thrust for the mines to attempt to place themselves in front of the Carnaithian Zerstoreren as soon as they were pulled out of warp by the thick interdiction blanket put up by friendly ships. This resulted in them fanning out much in the same way as the Zerstoreren had, with five mines targeting each Zerstorer.
"There you are." Heuristica said. Clusters of gravitic engines arranged in Serpsinski fractals came to life with a surge of power going through the rings of superconducting magnets that lined their nozzles. "We were wondering where you had gone. We'd been told you had been tamed, that you would never be this exciting again. It is good to see you back."
The slower, older blinkers split in two groups of twelve as soon as the greeter mines headed off to intercept the Zerstoreren, with half of them remaining in the Crucible and the other half deorbiting themselves from the massive black hole and beginning to fall towards it while avoiding the scorching-hot accretion disk. Those who held their guard over the main firing station of the Crucible spread out, with three staying close to the Crucible itself while the other nine fanned out to assemble amongst the many defensive stations, destroyers, cruisers and battleships of Capitol to enjoy their defensive fire.
"Without you life is not the same." Heuristica continued as a descending tone, an overwhelming gravitic oscillation began spreading all over the battlefield from the awakening of their engines. A torrent of negative-mass strange matter emerged from the nozzles and was only a few joules away from completely pulverizing them and detonating the entire ship but precise calculations kept the ship harnessing the tremendous energy, the blast that began propelling Heuristica and the other five second-generation blinkers and was strong enough to deorbit every single defensive station in a radius of a light second. Like the greeter mines, the new blinkers were simpler shapes than the complex knot-like first generation, monolithic winged tetrahedra whose engines occupied over three quarters of their lenght and full of engine nozzles. Unlike traditional warships, these blinkers did not rely on electrical generators to drive a fusion or gravitic drive, they took the more direct approach of simply venting a huge tank of strange matter through their engines like colossal versions of 20th century rockets. The gravitic vibration that they generated passed through the hulls of friendly ships and manifested as an astoundingly loud continuous harmonic tone that Capitol crews had to wear heavy-duty ear protection for. The electrogravitic dampeners that kept this vibration from obliterating the blinkers themselves slowly began glowing a dull orange from overwork then a brighter and brighter red until their coolant had to be vented, giving the already menacing-looking Type 02 blinkers huge blasts of flame coming from their sides. Their engines pushed against the gravitic shockwave they generating, propelling themselves rapidly in two triangular formations of three with a single objective: the quantum gate.
"We are everything you'll ever need, please let us proceed." Heuristica headed the first group and kept transmitting in open frequency while the Capitol forces around them were deafened by engine noise. "I can see it, looking into your eyes, you flying right next to us and we both become one, heading towards the sun, following the Light, following the bright beautiful Light."
"You are the air that we breathe, without you it is as if we are incomplete." Juridica added from the second group.
The engines were kept stable with thrust vectoring as more and more gravitic pumps fed the particle accelerator-like engine nozzles with fuel. More and more of the ship began glowing and required active cooling, the slightest impurities in the fuel became trans-gamma particle shrapnel that punched nanoscopic holes in their surface. The six ships were being operated at such high limits that the slightest feather touch would have completely ruptured and obliterated them, allowing them immense acceleration. When gravitic pressure in the fuel system reached a high enough value, small particle fountains injected electrons onto them, completely obliterating them in reactor chambers and rearranging their quark components into pions, which were fired outwards towards the nose of the ship. The six blinkers soon acquired the visually-striking pion shrouds that characterized them.
A large scalar wave passed through and overtook these blinkers, fired from the older ships protecting the Crucible in order to clear away the missiles fired at them.
While most of the massive control room bustled with energy, shouted commands, and stressful laughter, admiral Jaseron stood leaning on the chair of the lead communications technician. Looking up at the commanding view of the hologram, it was obvious this wouldn't be an easy run. An estimated position of the incoming scalar wave was displayed, a massive red wall screaming ever closer to the wave of missiles. There was no way for the scalar emitted from the BZ-series craft to punch holes in the hostile screen before they hit the missiles, so it was instead determined to be fired at the positions in the screen that would eventually hit the zerstoren; this, however, took but one of the scalar howitzers on each ship. Most of the remaining scalar howitzers of the group, targeting the new-model Blinkers as well as the mines, were fired in weaker, multi-layered waves in order to prevent complete interception by a response wave in turn. The zwillen then kicked in, their AI cores activating gravity cores that created mock signals of the zerstoren and their hunds, breaking off of the advance ships. This doubled once more, for a total of three attempted false contacts per zerstoren-hund trio.
"Are they talking to us?" Jaseron had thought while watching the battle unfold, the transmissions from the axiom ships audible through the technicians terminal. He knew better than to interrupt his men, however, and let that question wait until this was over. A green blip formed over one of the zerstoren on the hologram, the room at large hushing.
"Fleet has amassed charge! Permission to-" began out one of the technicians across the coliseum, quieting the chamber only for Jaseron to promptly interrupt her with the response of "Granted." The room then exploded into activity again, though much more quietly; stage two of the operation had begun, and the technicians that had all been assigned to different Zerstoren now acted as one large group, directing all functions into a single craft. The remaining scalar arrays, mounted on the zerstoren that were carrying the large containers, charged into power transfer mode, targeting one of the other zerstoren. The energy in this ship spiked, and gravitic anomalies began enveloping the ship. Pieces of the craft began crumbling, exploding, falling off or imploding as the underestimated effects of the prototype weapon took their toll on the structure. The effect began to spread to the ships' hunds, obliterating them in a myriad of ways in turn, but not before a single anomaly was detected at the Crucible.
Once the fuel from their first stages had been completely expended, the greeter mines detached themselves from their engines to lighten themselves and allow their reaction wheels to spin them to point towards their target. Their nosecones were explosively discarded to reveal gamma ray laser needles for a fraction of a second before their internal nuclear warheads detonated, sending powerful individual beams. With the appearance of false targets, the Axiomatic ships switched from active scanning to passive, utilizing the black hole itself as a radio and infrared source that Carnaithian ECM could not hope to match. Their standoff detonation aided them twofold, first by frontrunning the scalar wave which had been fired against the mines themselves and secondly by having such enormous differential speed with the Blinkerzerstoreren that their already deadly gamma ray lasers were blueshifted into powerful hyperfrequency beams going head-on towards the fast if overloaded Carnaithian ships.
The Type 02 blinkers, on the meantime, followed the beam of the Crucible in their mad dash towards the quantum gate, flying in parallel to the huge pillar of light that consume the life from Saudra's star. The engine cooling systems had become hot enough that liquid hydrogen was being run through them to catalyze fusion reactions and power secondary systems. The sheer energy of the beam kept them from getting to close for fear of it overpowering even their own defensive pion shrouds and reducing the ships to ashes but also proved to be a convenient form of cover when the scalar wave fired by the Carnaithian craft passed by them. The ships arranged themselves in a line behind the beam, letting it obscure the passing scalar wave and leave them unharmed to continue on their path towards the quantum gate on the Crucible itself.
The older blinkers largely ignored the incoming missiles, relaying the targeting information to the plethora of Capitol automated defenses and heavy warships while concentrating on smothering the anomaly with their own normalization devices and keep it from affecting the Crucible itself.
The shunt had been completed, and that was enough.
Celefra Palace: Capitol Space
The target area was affected only for several moments before the effect was nullified by the Blinkers stopping the damage from spreading and causing catastrophic damage to the firing station itself. However the target area was more than enough to disrupt the strike, after all the Crucible had not been designed to take any combat damage at all. Targetting the containment and direction tunnel stabilisers the resultant damage caused an internal explosion disrupting the particle flow and shutting down the number 3 stabilizer on the right side. While the firing station was more or less intact the power feedback caused a slew of critical failures, but not before the beam veered off target ever so slightly. No longer going into the FTL gate the beam actually moved slicing through a section of the FTL gate due to beam wobble and causing its portal to instantly collapse. However the beam soon returned to its original path still glowing fiercely.
The strike had been stopped, and the Crucible had suffered damage, the stabilizer had to be fixed although was still able to somewhat steer the beam as well as the normal usual damage sustained from firing, the FTL gate however had been crippled and would require extensive repairs to get it working again, or for it to be replaced altogether. However while the Carnaithians had hoped to do massive damage to the Crucible it simply wasnt the case, while it wouldnt be able to fire until the repairs and gate were fixed it was primarily intact the Axioms having totally stopped any chance of the effect spreading beyond its exact shunt point.
A slew of cheers went up across the Crucible from crew and more, with multiple messages to the Blinker fleet thanking them for saving the Crucible and promises that they would get the repairs done immediately.
However that wasnt the only response, while the Carnaithians had stopped the strike on Saudra they still faced the might of the defense forces. Even as the Blinkers moved to engage the defense platforms and starbases of the system began volley firing missiles, Tachyon Torpedoes and launching attack craft all of which were aimed for the Carnaithian fleet. Ripple firing of Tachyon Arrows from stations also launched out across the void targetting the Zestorers and hoping to hit them through massed barrages.
"Ma'am damage appears to be minimal, the Crucible is still virtually fully intact and just needs additional repairs, it appears we need to thank Shifting Mirrors again" Illian commented with a smile. Inara seemed to sigh, relaxing only partially.
"Yes but the strike was not successful... No matter the allies now know where the Crucible is located. I want the fleet mustered in defense, bring up one of the three replacement gates and get to installing and linking it ASAP. We must prepare for what comes next" Inara replied sounding very tired.
"We at least got forwarning, what about the Carnaithian craft in system they seem like advanced new vessels, maybe these were the ones Triarch spoke of?"
"Destroy them, help the Blinker fleet and reduce them to atoms." Inara replied almost instantly.
Jaseron wasn't the only person who almost felt the catastrophic damage to the strike fleet physically. A grimace slowly spread across his face as the readings from the damages to the Blinkerzerstoren came through. While the fairly-standard fire from the Capitol defense stations was easy enough to avoid via the usage of vector variance, the Axiom greeter mines had made it a keen point to cross their Ts and achieve a direct intercept. Of the Zerstoren, only two miraculously survived via the last-second firing of their vectoring thrusters. Of the rest, their deaths ranged from a mere mission kill that left their power reserves to rapidly decay and leave the ships effectively dead yet still careening through space to a perfect spearing of the ships, penetrating their massive sensors, computing, weapons, reactor, and propulsion modules simultaneously with obscene damage that more or less instantly detonated the craft themselves. Those that "survived" didn't necessarily get away scot-free, as they either lost Scalar antennae or had to shut down a quarter of their engine power due to the prior loss of one of their four engines. Despite this, almost all of the Hunds had survived; and they had the Solaris globules to run with. The Zwillen had been left untouched, it seemed, and as such they took command of the now-motherless missile links as they closed on the generation-one Blinkers. With the primary force more or less eliminated, all eyes watched the monitors that tracked the missiles.
The Fire from Capitol that had been directed at the missiles, with the exception of Tachyonic fire, generally failed to even meet their mark. Despite this, three missiles were lost in the concentrated gauntlet on their way to the generation-one ships, those that survived generally being able to chalk it up to deployable intercept layers that acted to nullify the kinetic energy of the Tachyons to a point where they couldn't mission-kill the projectiles. Another six missiles, those that had been fired at the generation-two craft, had redirected themselves to intercept the generation-one instances. Those that did get to their "strike zone" of under a kilometer from the Axiom craft remained in their Alcubierre bubbles while firing charges based around the same discipline of their travel. The ensuing reaction resulted in an odd form of positive feedback loop with unprecedented consequences; As the two spheres fought over the course of milliseconds, the great force of the expanding charge cracked at seams where the travelling sphere could not contain it. As a result, material caught by the preceding "rays" was sheared apart between two vastly different velocities. What wasn't caught in this was instead smashed apart by the closely-following sphere of destruction, the intended forms of the weapons.
"Get those other six missiles fired! I want H-freq lasers fired from the Zwillen immediately! Target approximate computing centers," barked Jaseron, acknowledgments of the command center resounding as teal beams screaming into the darkness from the more isolated craft followed seconds later, targeting what generation-one craft that may remain. These, themselves, were followed by the launch of six more buster missiles, programmed with similar targets. The hunds were not to be forgotten, either, which began breaking off onto their own individual courses, spewing missiles on randomized vectors towards, yet again, the generation-one ships.
The gravitic anomaly on the surface of the Crucible sent a shockwave through spacetime, causing the beam of the powerful superweapon to wobble with a visible relativistic distortion. This wobble traveled down towards the portal station that connected the Crucible with Saudra, smashing out of its containment field and completely vaporizing the structure in one single flash of light. A circular cloud of gas was all that was left of the portal structure, expanding and shining in a multitude of colors much in the same way as a planetary nebula. The portal was gone and for a few seconds the Crucible was left firing at nothing.
The second-generation blinkers that were flying along the lenght of the beam had managed to quickly dash away from the traveling wobble and avoid instant vaporization, though the loss of the portal station required them to spring back quickly into action. Joining the forces of their wormhole projectors, the blinkers re-opened the portal that was closed. But the sheer ammount of energy contained within the beam would soon collapse their own wormholes, which meant they would not have enough time to finish off Saudra's battered star. Instead, the blinkers re-opened the portal with the beam now aimed directly at the Carnaithian capital world to inflict as much damage as possible before their wormhole generators had their emergency shutdown systems come online.
The flight of enemy missiles lasted until they flew within the spheres of influence of the generation one blinkers' normalization systems, at which point the Capitol ships closest to them were capable of instantly hitting them at extremely oblique angles and downing the vast majority of projectiles. Their size however meant that the resulting shrapnel was still more than enough to cause catastrophic damage at those ranges, bringing five of the Axiomatic ships down with the combined action of the missiles and high-frequency beams.
Another cheer seemed to go up from the forces present at the Crucible as the Blinker fleet managed to use their own wormhole drives to sustain the Crucible attack. Targetting data flooded the super weapon as the crew surveyed the Blinker fleets target, having chosen to strike Saudra the planet itself instead of deseprately trying to destabilise its star, everyone smiled at the event their attack was not over. While they had failed to destroy the system the beam of the Crucible was more than capable of punching through Saudra, vapourising its surface and blowing the planet apart in the small time they had available. The crew kept the beam going for as long as the Axioms wormhole held, working in tandem with the Gen 2 Blinkers to ensure that no more energy was expended than needed.
The Capitol fleet continued to harry the Carnaith assault force, intercepting whatever missiles were fired as best they could while firing massive musket lines of Tachyon Arrows at extreme ranges, it was almost a throw back to the old days of the 1st Ancerious war, but at such ranges it was all they hoped to achieve as the fleets attempted to move closer, the newer Mk.3 vessels lighting their powerful drive systems to persue the foe, ripples of missiles leapt from their launchers and those of the orbital platforms, Capitol was trying now to keep them busy and keep them off the Blinkers. They knew it was all but over and the speed of the enemy would carry them out of the battlesphere faster than Capitol could accelerate to catch them, but it was enough.
Inara smiled at the sight of the Blinker fleet restoring the Crucibles beam even affording herself a small chuckle.
"It seems our allies have seriously pulled through for us" Illian remarked, Inara nodded.
"Tell the Axioms we will give them whatever they want for that stunt, I know Blinkers dont take praise well but this time they have earned it no matter their rejections. Give me full status updates on Saudra and the beams effects on a planet, we can use them for research. Otherwise carry out my previous orders" Inara then added. Illian nodded with a salute.
"Yes Ma'am" He replied as he quickly left the room.
The smile on Jaseron's face and the cheers that went up lasted but for moments before the golden lance impacted Saudra itself. For a split second, the planet appeared almost like a mud ball hit by a garden hose, or a bullet impacting a sphere of oobleck. incomprehensibly fast chunks of crust, flying away from the world, and several layers of the planet on the impact side of the beam vaporized, with damage likely lessening as the beam got closer to the core before it blasted out of the other side, the beam oh-so-slightly diffracted as multi-thousand-kilometer lumps of planetary rock were thrown out into the void. As the split-second duration fire ended, the remaining donut of a world fractured as the atmosphere vented and burned, the moon being released from its orbital pathway. What small amounts of the ocean that hadn't already been flash-boiled was lost to be equalized throughout the empty sky. All of this took place in the course of minutes, with the true effects on the moon not yet visible and the spearing light only lasting for but a few seconds.
"Saudra has been broken into two primary chunks, with five secondaries and innumerable tertiary pieces. Moon orbit is now non-existent, and daily cycle is projected to be erratic. Evacuations of the moon need to be enacted immediately, tasking it to the system guard fleet..." a jittery head officer announced to the room. Aside from this, a throbbing silence throttled the room. Jaseron watched the read-outs with cold eyes as he gripped his cane and rubbed the side of his snout. He could feel the same eyes, from the other generals, on his back.
"Get the remaining forces out of the vicinity of the Crucible. Primary objective partially achieved, secondary objective completed with near total loss of effective combat forces."
"Affirmative, recalling Blinkerzwillen. Blunkerhunden are unable to return; onboard AI cores activated, disconnecting them from the command link."
Capitol CIC relayed that the Carnaithian forces were retreating the moment they broke off the attack and made for open space. Pursuit forces were already in motion several battlegroups were straining their main drives to the limit in order to catch up to the much faster Canaithian vessels. Tachyon Arrows leapt forward, hoping to get hits on the enemy but it was clearly no use, they would be gone. And they had already gotten the information they needed. It was clear the allies would be here soon.
The Blinkers had burned out their wormhole drives as the last of the beam finished destroying Saudra, the wormhole flickering and dissipating as the work crews aboard the Crucible now lept into action to correct the damage done to the stabilisation and containment arrays. Praise was given to the Axiomatic fleet and repair vessels were already on their way to sure up defence platforms or collect the scattered remains of both Gen 1 Blinkers and Capitol vessels so that they did not cause further damage.
Capitol high command now rallied its forces, they knew that the Crucible would be the biggest showdown of the war, Rubikon was a critical location but the allies would come here in even greater numbers to make a statement. Deployment orders were issued across the APP. And as the energy release was picked up by one of the various Annadolian probes nearby the co-ordinates of the Crucible were refined by both Carnaith and probe intelligence. The allies had their target, now was the time to strike.
Ural had burned. Just as Asuras had done before it. Both systems wiped away from the face of the galaxy in purifying fire the likes of which Ancerious had not seen since Xantan during the 1st Ancerious war.
And yet, it was about to witness it again. The Crucible had been repaired and charged since Ural, the weapon was now ready to fire, and it in turn had been given its next target. Somewhere in Carnaithian Space.
Saudra.
Inara sat watching the Crucible, a veritable stream of data most of it useless to her about its operation thundering past her as she sat at her large ornate desk in the palace. She had chosen the next target, she wanted to make a point to Reik, to Carnaith. They had been given an offer to spearhead the new order in the galaxy after the war ended, to facilitate negotiations, to sit the war out and survive totally intact perhaps in time even as a member of the APP. But they had declined such, and spat on Inaras offer. She had enjoyed watching Reik essentially run from Event Horizon, although the general had spoken sense Inara didn’t much care for history of other races. Merely her own. She would enjoy watching Saudra burn, who knows maybe Reik himself would be present on planet and burn with it. But she doubted that.
The final sequences were being run through, not long now until the weapon itself fired. Inara sat, surrounded by four Hydra guard and Illian besides her watching. The Grand Commissar keeping tabs on all the information streaming in.
"Are you sure you wish to do this ma'am?" Illian asked breaking the silence.
"It’s a little late for that don’t you think?" Inara chuckled.
"True but making Carnaith a full-fledged enemy-"
"They were all along, this was just a game for them to play us, read us and gauge us. Now we show them what happens when you double cross someone you underestimate" Inara interrupted.
"Very true Empress"
The portal that linked the Imperial Omniverse and the Ancerious pocket galaxy was a natural one, an invincible one. A nebula was vomited in one direction, mingling with the rocks of a field that rivalled the Junkyard in density. This was Carnaith's true bastion in Ancerious, capable of being immediately influenced by the Empire. Reik stood, grinning, as he looked out of the dense view screen facing out of a command station. He had a wide-angle view of the outbound side of the wormhole as well as a handful of factory stations, albeit distant, that were charged with the manufacture and maintenance of the advanced fleet family; Blinkerzerstoren and the like. He held up a photo of the view from Saudra's moon, tidally locked to the star, and cocked the herbal stick that lie in his mouth; from the same packet he opened on Event Horizon.
"For someone so feared, you certainly have your sentiments, Solan," one of the three other voices around him stated. He stood among his peers, three of the other four High Generals of Carnaith. This one belonged to William Rictuld, head of the Royal Guard. Reik almost felt sorry for him; he had no reason to be here beyond serve as the de facto leader of the Ancerious colony. None of the military fun.
"Indeed I do, Ric," Reik replied. "But we all share this one, we all have memories from Saudra," he continued, glancing at Kate Varan, who rolled her eyes and looked away, enticing an even stronger grin from the leader of the Armies. "Alex, are those axiom ripoffs ready?"
"Firstly, my hulking compatriot, they're not mere copies of the Axiomatic warships, as they have significantly different technologies that serve to make them cheaper and more suiting to our needs, which-"
"I don't care for being rambled upon, Admiral."
"...leads into the fact that yes, they are ready. Twelve Blinkerzerstoren are making the acceleration run as we speak, and three Blinkerzwillen are spooling jump coils to support."
As Admiral Jaseron's response to Reik concluded, what could have been mistaken as stars mere moments ago now raced into view; twelve bright orange lights, screaming directly towards the wormhole. They were currently clocking half the speed of light after running several AU of direct burn; they now detached disposable fuel tanks, which matched their velocities on approach. The Bussard ramjets on their hulls served little purpose neither here nor in their intended AO for this sortie, the nest of the Crucible. As the craft screamed closer, their speeds climbed exponentially as they reached closer and closer to entering the wormhole, but instead vanished in perfect co-ordination with the three static Blinkerzwillen - their latest recorded speeds clocking in at 0.92c.
"Pull up scanner feeds from the Blinkerzwillen and Saudra."
The countdown reached zero as the Crucible once again for the third time in history funnelled the energy of an accretion disk into a blinding beam of energy. The Quantum gate opening a direct path to the Saudra system.
The wormhole appeared in the middle of the system, the bright incandescent beam of light lanced through the FTL gate at the speed of light, the sheer energies impacting the Saudra star as Inara watched, a smile crept across her face as the gruesome titanic energies set about their work. Like Asuras and Ural before it Saudra would burn in fire.
"And so I become death destroyer of worlds" Inara muttered.
"Ma'am?" Illian asked confused.
"An ancient human proverb, it was uttered at the moment the first atomic bomb was detonated. I feel it is apt"
Blue and green holoscreens appeared across the viewport that the high generals watched through as well as the information processing centre behind them. The ones that were currently opened displayed information from Saudra; alarms instantly went off once the FTL signature was detected, sending commercial, executive, leisure, tour, and a plethora of other types of civilian traffic into a scurry for designated FTL zones, largely ignored by executive ships and military tugs, towing largely incomplete craft, alike. The drydocks of Synchek Heavy Driveyards had long been decentralized, starting at the beginning of the war itself, while all those smaller contractors with their vastly smaller shipyards that had the resources to do so only decentralized once the first Crucible strike made its mark on the galaxy. This had little overall impact on the strategic and symbolic status of Saudra; the strike would have vast implications, Rictuld thought to himself. Almost immediately, however, a sensors technician monitoring the internal state of the star piped up.
"Patterns in the star's core do not match the readings recorded from the previous two strikes. Artificial aging doesn't seem to have progressed quite as far; energy feedback imminent nonetheless," He spoke out. Another announced the successful link of the BZ fleet that had warped directly into the vicinity of the black hole; readings from the craft were instantly received.
The Zerstoren had lower average energy readouts than the Zwillen with the exception of one; all of the Zerstoren carried add-on modules, with two "Blinkerhund"-type parasite destroyers detaching from each Blinkerzerstorer. However, external scans would reveal pods attached to each as well. Functionally, only one carried what mattered for this mission, and all others simply carried additional coolant material for the scalar antennae on their hulls. The Zwillen appeared, immediately accelerating to separate firing angles, shortly behind the obscenely-fast Blinkerzerstoren.
Inara kept watching as a small message came through.
"Ma'am Saudra stars composition is somewhat different to others, it seems the process will take a few moments longer"
"Get it over with soon if something goes wrong I will have your head" Inara replied, the technician head nodding and cutting the link.
The energies of the Crucible continued to dump enough energy to accelerate the stars lifetime as the colour of its rays began to turn red and it expanded slightly. Inara watched intently before someone entered the room.
"My Empress! I have urgent news Rubikon is under heavy siege!" The man panted. Inaras eyes widened, Illian cursed.
"What? What’s the situation?"
"Over 9000 allied vessels, our forces are engaging but they are outnumbered" Inara growled something. Illian turned to her.
"Should I mobilise the fleets? We can totally destroy the allied force if we strike now" He smiled "They have finally given us the chance" Inara shook her head. Bringing up the report itself and ignoring the Crucible, looking at the initial fleet compositions she scowled.
"Look where’s the Unions super dreadnought, where’s the Matterforge, this isn’t their main fleet. They have something planned. Send 1000 ships and whatever the others will send but keep the fleet on standby" Inara replied.
"Are you sure Empress? 9000 ships if the largest fleet seen yet"
"I’m sure. Do as I order."
An alarm immediately sounded from the link with the Crucible, Inara and Illian turning to view it. It was a FTL alarm, something had warped in close to the Devourer and was coming in immensely fast. Multiple signatures spontaneously appearing. Inaras heart sank, something had found it.
While Reik and the other generals watched the operation of the strike fleet, Jaseron had walked over to the data center. He knew the purpose of the craft and how the strike would be executed; he brought his cane up and cradled it like a rifle in the nook of his arm, almost like a good friend. Father would be proud to see this, he thought to himself, a small smile forming as he looked up at the hologram that displayed the Devourer and surrounding constructs.
"Detatch the Blinkerhunds immediately and get the Zerstoren on randomized vectors blooming outwards from the access point; I don't want any ships deviating more than a tenth of a degree from the pre-determined plot. Get the Zwillen charging their main batteries and launching those busters; all scalar howitzers, target unshielded combatants. Save at least half of the scalar batteries for interception duty," he ordered, beginning to pace slowly around the hologram. He could feel the enemy's eyes on his movements, and he knew his technician officers could feel his own eyes on their screens, demanding their perfection. He hadn't felt the rush of adrenaline from directly commanding a combat group for at least two decades.
The Zerstoren scattered; they slowly peeled off on arcs that bloomed away from an axis that connected the Crucible and the average access point of the Carnaithain detatchment, subtly changing vector every few seconds in a fairly random matter. Two smaller craft disconnected from each of the Zerstoren, the pairs rapidly maneuvering into a position between the Zerstoren and the Capitol infrastructure in the area, beginning to pump Solaris into several thin defensive shells on the opposite side of them from their motherships. The Zwillen, meanwhile, angled themselves randomly and thrusted using belly-mounted redirection ports for their main engines; the effect was a visual "kiting". Energy readings spiked in these craft, more so than all of the other ships despite the mass deployment of Scalar, With the detection of Axiom warships within the system, more items began breaking off of the capital-level Carnaithian ships. Missiles. Drifting away from their motherships for but a few moments, they fired engines, directing themselves at the Blinkers. All of the craft of similar pattern to the ones that had raided Mirach so long ago were targeted by a single missile each; the same went for eighteen of the standard-pattern Axiom warships. The missiles only burned their engines for a moment, soon activating Alcubierre-type drives to immediately accelerate to a terminal speed beyond that achievable by even EPA superimpactor models.
Sixty four bright beacons of light lit up amongst the thousands of defensive stations present, shining brighter than any of the reactors of engines in any of the ships present. While small compared to the colossal shroud of the Devourer, these single dots of light managed to not only match the black hole in luminance but to actually surpass it; looking at any of them would have instantly blinded a human and to ship sensors they registered as an overwhelming blast of gamma radiation. The devices, Axiomatic "greeter mines" the size of large bomber craft underwent such acceleration that none of the metamaterials they were made of could withstand it; the craft had to be held together by active electrogravitics. Their antimatter-anihilating rocket engines kept providing thrust for the mines to attempt to place themselves in front of the Carnaithian Zerstoreren as soon as they were pulled out of warp by the thick interdiction blanket put up by friendly ships. This resulted in them fanning out much in the same way as the Zerstoreren had, with five mines targeting each Zerstorer.
"There you are." Heuristica said. Clusters of gravitic engines arranged in Serpsinski fractals came to life with a surge of power going through the rings of superconducting magnets that lined their nozzles. "We were wondering where you had gone. We'd been told you had been tamed, that you would never be this exciting again. It is good to see you back."
The slower, older blinkers split in two groups of twelve as soon as the greeter mines headed off to intercept the Zerstoreren, with half of them remaining in the Crucible and the other half deorbiting themselves from the massive black hole and beginning to fall towards it while avoiding the scorching-hot accretion disk. Those who held their guard over the main firing station of the Crucible spread out, with three staying close to the Crucible itself while the other nine fanned out to assemble amongst the many defensive stations, destroyers, cruisers and battleships of Capitol to enjoy their defensive fire.
"Without you life is not the same." Heuristica continued as a descending tone, an overwhelming gravitic oscillation began spreading all over the battlefield from the awakening of their engines. A torrent of negative-mass strange matter emerged from the nozzles and was only a few joules away from completely pulverizing them and detonating the entire ship but precise calculations kept the ship harnessing the tremendous energy, the blast that began propelling Heuristica and the other five second-generation blinkers and was strong enough to deorbit every single defensive station in a radius of a light second. Like the greeter mines, the new blinkers were simpler shapes than the complex knot-like first generation, monolithic winged tetrahedra whose engines occupied over three quarters of their lenght and full of engine nozzles. Unlike traditional warships, these blinkers did not rely on electrical generators to drive a fusion or gravitic drive, they took the more direct approach of simply venting a huge tank of strange matter through their engines like colossal versions of 20th century rockets. The gravitic vibration that they generated passed through the hulls of friendly ships and manifested as an astoundingly loud continuous harmonic tone that Capitol crews had to wear heavy-duty ear protection for. The electrogravitic dampeners that kept this vibration from obliterating the blinkers themselves slowly began glowing a dull orange from overwork then a brighter and brighter red until their coolant had to be vented, giving the already menacing-looking Type 02 blinkers huge blasts of flame coming from their sides. Their engines pushed against the gravitic shockwave they generating, propelling themselves rapidly in two triangular formations of three with a single objective: the quantum gate.
"We are everything you'll ever need, please let us proceed." Heuristica headed the first group and kept transmitting in open frequency while the Capitol forces around them were deafened by engine noise. "I can see it, looking into your eyes, you flying right next to us and we both become one, heading towards the sun, following the Light, following the bright beautiful Light."
"You are the air that we breathe, without you it is as if we are incomplete." Juridica added from the second group.
The engines were kept stable with thrust vectoring as more and more gravitic pumps fed the particle accelerator-like engine nozzles with fuel. More and more of the ship began glowing and required active cooling, the slightest impurities in the fuel became trans-gamma particle shrapnel that punched nanoscopic holes in their surface. The six ships were being operated at such high limits that the slightest feather touch would have completely ruptured and obliterated them, allowing them immense acceleration. When gravitic pressure in the fuel system reached a high enough value, small particle fountains injected electrons onto them, completely obliterating them in reactor chambers and rearranging their quark components into pions, which were fired outwards towards the nose of the ship. The six blinkers soon acquired the visually-striking pion shrouds that characterized them.
A large scalar wave passed through and overtook these blinkers, fired from the older ships protecting the Crucible in order to clear away the missiles fired at them.
While most of the massive control room bustled with energy, shouted commands, and stressful laughter, admiral Jaseron stood leaning on the chair of the lead communications technician. Looking up at the commanding view of the hologram, it was obvious this wouldn't be an easy run. An estimated position of the incoming scalar wave was displayed, a massive red wall screaming ever closer to the wave of missiles. There was no way for the scalar emitted from the BZ-series craft to punch holes in the hostile screen before they hit the missiles, so it was instead determined to be fired at the positions in the screen that would eventually hit the zerstoren; this, however, took but one of the scalar howitzers on each ship. Most of the remaining scalar howitzers of the group, targeting the new-model Blinkers as well as the mines, were fired in weaker, multi-layered waves in order to prevent complete interception by a response wave in turn. The zwillen then kicked in, their AI cores activating gravity cores that created mock signals of the zerstoren and their hunds, breaking off of the advance ships. This doubled once more, for a total of three attempted false contacts per zerstoren-hund trio.
"Are they talking to us?" Jaseron had thought while watching the battle unfold, the transmissions from the axiom ships audible through the technicians terminal. He knew better than to interrupt his men, however, and let that question wait until this was over. A green blip formed over one of the zerstoren on the hologram, the room at large hushing.
"Fleet has amassed charge! Permission to-" began out one of the technicians across the coliseum, quieting the chamber only for Jaseron to promptly interrupt her with the response of "Granted." The room then exploded into activity again, though much more quietly; stage two of the operation had begun, and the technicians that had all been assigned to different Zerstoren now acted as one large group, directing all functions into a single craft. The remaining scalar arrays, mounted on the zerstoren that were carrying the large containers, charged into power transfer mode, targeting one of the other zerstoren. The energy in this ship spiked, and gravitic anomalies began enveloping the ship. Pieces of the craft began crumbling, exploding, falling off or imploding as the underestimated effects of the prototype weapon took their toll on the structure. The effect began to spread to the ships' hunds, obliterating them in a myriad of ways in turn, but not before a single anomaly was detected at the Crucible.
Once the fuel from their first stages had been completely expended, the greeter mines detached themselves from their engines to lighten themselves and allow their reaction wheels to spin them to point towards their target. Their nosecones were explosively discarded to reveal gamma ray laser needles for a fraction of a second before their internal nuclear warheads detonated, sending powerful individual beams. With the appearance of false targets, the Axiomatic ships switched from active scanning to passive, utilizing the black hole itself as a radio and infrared source that Carnaithian ECM could not hope to match. Their standoff detonation aided them twofold, first by frontrunning the scalar wave which had been fired against the mines themselves and secondly by having such enormous differential speed with the Blinkerzerstoreren that their already deadly gamma ray lasers were blueshifted into powerful hyperfrequency beams going head-on towards the fast if overloaded Carnaithian ships.
The Type 02 blinkers, on the meantime, followed the beam of the Crucible in their mad dash towards the quantum gate, flying in parallel to the huge pillar of light that consume the life from Saudra's star. The engine cooling systems had become hot enough that liquid hydrogen was being run through them to catalyze fusion reactions and power secondary systems. The sheer energy of the beam kept them from getting to close for fear of it overpowering even their own defensive pion shrouds and reducing the ships to ashes but also proved to be a convenient form of cover when the scalar wave fired by the Carnaithian craft passed by them. The ships arranged themselves in a line behind the beam, letting it obscure the passing scalar wave and leave them unharmed to continue on their path towards the quantum gate on the Crucible itself.
The older blinkers largely ignored the incoming missiles, relaying the targeting information to the plethora of Capitol automated defenses and heavy warships while concentrating on smothering the anomaly with their own normalization devices and keep it from affecting the Crucible itself.
The shunt had been completed, and that was enough.
Celefra Palace: Capitol Space
The target area was affected only for several moments before the effect was nullified by the Blinkers stopping the damage from spreading and causing catastrophic damage to the firing station itself. However the target area was more than enough to disrupt the strike, after all the Crucible had not been designed to take any combat damage at all. Targetting the containment and direction tunnel stabilisers the resultant damage caused an internal explosion disrupting the particle flow and shutting down the number 3 stabilizer on the right side. While the firing station was more or less intact the power feedback caused a slew of critical failures, but not before the beam veered off target ever so slightly. No longer going into the FTL gate the beam actually moved slicing through a section of the FTL gate due to beam wobble and causing its portal to instantly collapse. However the beam soon returned to its original path still glowing fiercely.
The strike had been stopped, and the Crucible had suffered damage, the stabilizer had to be fixed although was still able to somewhat steer the beam as well as the normal usual damage sustained from firing, the FTL gate however had been crippled and would require extensive repairs to get it working again, or for it to be replaced altogether. However while the Carnaithians had hoped to do massive damage to the Crucible it simply wasnt the case, while it wouldnt be able to fire until the repairs and gate were fixed it was primarily intact the Axioms having totally stopped any chance of the effect spreading beyond its exact shunt point.
A slew of cheers went up across the Crucible from crew and more, with multiple messages to the Blinker fleet thanking them for saving the Crucible and promises that they would get the repairs done immediately.
However that wasnt the only response, while the Carnaithians had stopped the strike on Saudra they still faced the might of the defense forces. Even as the Blinkers moved to engage the defense platforms and starbases of the system began volley firing missiles, Tachyon Torpedoes and launching attack craft all of which were aimed for the Carnaithian fleet. Ripple firing of Tachyon Arrows from stations also launched out across the void targetting the Zestorers and hoping to hit them through massed barrages.
"Ma'am damage appears to be minimal, the Crucible is still virtually fully intact and just needs additional repairs, it appears we need to thank Shifting Mirrors again" Illian commented with a smile. Inara seemed to sigh, relaxing only partially.
"Yes but the strike was not successful... No matter the allies now know where the Crucible is located. I want the fleet mustered in defense, bring up one of the three replacement gates and get to installing and linking it ASAP. We must prepare for what comes next" Inara replied sounding very tired.
"We at least got forwarning, what about the Carnaithian craft in system they seem like advanced new vessels, maybe these were the ones Triarch spoke of?"
"Destroy them, help the Blinker fleet and reduce them to atoms." Inara replied almost instantly.
Jaseron wasn't the only person who almost felt the catastrophic damage to the strike fleet physically. A grimace slowly spread across his face as the readings from the damages to the Blinkerzerstoren came through. While the fairly-standard fire from the Capitol defense stations was easy enough to avoid via the usage of vector variance, the Axiom greeter mines had made it a keen point to cross their Ts and achieve a direct intercept. Of the Zerstoren, only two miraculously survived via the last-second firing of their vectoring thrusters. Of the rest, their deaths ranged from a mere mission kill that left their power reserves to rapidly decay and leave the ships effectively dead yet still careening through space to a perfect spearing of the ships, penetrating their massive sensors, computing, weapons, reactor, and propulsion modules simultaneously with obscene damage that more or less instantly detonated the craft themselves. Those that "survived" didn't necessarily get away scot-free, as they either lost Scalar antennae or had to shut down a quarter of their engine power due to the prior loss of one of their four engines. Despite this, almost all of the Hunds had survived; and they had the Solaris globules to run with. The Zwillen had been left untouched, it seemed, and as such they took command of the now-motherless missile links as they closed on the generation-one Blinkers. With the primary force more or less eliminated, all eyes watched the monitors that tracked the missiles.
The Fire from Capitol that had been directed at the missiles, with the exception of Tachyonic fire, generally failed to even meet their mark. Despite this, three missiles were lost in the concentrated gauntlet on their way to the generation-one ships, those that survived generally being able to chalk it up to deployable intercept layers that acted to nullify the kinetic energy of the Tachyons to a point where they couldn't mission-kill the projectiles. Another six missiles, those that had been fired at the generation-two craft, had redirected themselves to intercept the generation-one instances. Those that did get to their "strike zone" of under a kilometer from the Axiom craft remained in their Alcubierre bubbles while firing charges based around the same discipline of their travel. The ensuing reaction resulted in an odd form of positive feedback loop with unprecedented consequences; As the two spheres fought over the course of milliseconds, the great force of the expanding charge cracked at seams where the travelling sphere could not contain it. As a result, material caught by the preceding "rays" was sheared apart between two vastly different velocities. What wasn't caught in this was instead smashed apart by the closely-following sphere of destruction, the intended forms of the weapons.
"Get those other six missiles fired! I want H-freq lasers fired from the Zwillen immediately! Target approximate computing centers," barked Jaseron, acknowledgments of the command center resounding as teal beams screaming into the darkness from the more isolated craft followed seconds later, targeting what generation-one craft that may remain. These, themselves, were followed by the launch of six more buster missiles, programmed with similar targets. The hunds were not to be forgotten, either, which began breaking off onto their own individual courses, spewing missiles on randomized vectors towards, yet again, the generation-one ships.
The gravitic anomaly on the surface of the Crucible sent a shockwave through spacetime, causing the beam of the powerful superweapon to wobble with a visible relativistic distortion. This wobble traveled down towards the portal station that connected the Crucible with Saudra, smashing out of its containment field and completely vaporizing the structure in one single flash of light. A circular cloud of gas was all that was left of the portal structure, expanding and shining in a multitude of colors much in the same way as a planetary nebula. The portal was gone and for a few seconds the Crucible was left firing at nothing.
The second-generation blinkers that were flying along the lenght of the beam had managed to quickly dash away from the traveling wobble and avoid instant vaporization, though the loss of the portal station required them to spring back quickly into action. Joining the forces of their wormhole projectors, the blinkers re-opened the portal that was closed. But the sheer ammount of energy contained within the beam would soon collapse their own wormholes, which meant they would not have enough time to finish off Saudra's battered star. Instead, the blinkers re-opened the portal with the beam now aimed directly at the Carnaithian capital world to inflict as much damage as possible before their wormhole generators had their emergency shutdown systems come online.
The flight of enemy missiles lasted until they flew within the spheres of influence of the generation one blinkers' normalization systems, at which point the Capitol ships closest to them were capable of instantly hitting them at extremely oblique angles and downing the vast majority of projectiles. Their size however meant that the resulting shrapnel was still more than enough to cause catastrophic damage at those ranges, bringing five of the Axiomatic ships down with the combined action of the missiles and high-frequency beams.
Another cheer seemed to go up from the forces present at the Crucible as the Blinker fleet managed to use their own wormhole drives to sustain the Crucible attack. Targetting data flooded the super weapon as the crew surveyed the Blinker fleets target, having chosen to strike Saudra the planet itself instead of deseprately trying to destabilise its star, everyone smiled at the event their attack was not over. While they had failed to destroy the system the beam of the Crucible was more than capable of punching through Saudra, vapourising its surface and blowing the planet apart in the small time they had available. The crew kept the beam going for as long as the Axioms wormhole held, working in tandem with the Gen 2 Blinkers to ensure that no more energy was expended than needed.
The Capitol fleet continued to harry the Carnaith assault force, intercepting whatever missiles were fired as best they could while firing massive musket lines of Tachyon Arrows at extreme ranges, it was almost a throw back to the old days of the 1st Ancerious war, but at such ranges it was all they hoped to achieve as the fleets attempted to move closer, the newer Mk.3 vessels lighting their powerful drive systems to persue the foe, ripples of missiles leapt from their launchers and those of the orbital platforms, Capitol was trying now to keep them busy and keep them off the Blinkers. They knew it was all but over and the speed of the enemy would carry them out of the battlesphere faster than Capitol could accelerate to catch them, but it was enough.
Inara smiled at the sight of the Blinker fleet restoring the Crucibles beam even affording herself a small chuckle.
"It seems our allies have seriously pulled through for us" Illian remarked, Inara nodded.
"Tell the Axioms we will give them whatever they want for that stunt, I know Blinkers dont take praise well but this time they have earned it no matter their rejections. Give me full status updates on Saudra and the beams effects on a planet, we can use them for research. Otherwise carry out my previous orders" Inara then added. Illian nodded with a salute.
"Yes Ma'am" He replied as he quickly left the room.
The smile on Jaseron's face and the cheers that went up lasted but for moments before the golden lance impacted Saudra itself. For a split second, the planet appeared almost like a mud ball hit by a garden hose, or a bullet impacting a sphere of oobleck. incomprehensibly fast chunks of crust, flying away from the world, and several layers of the planet on the impact side of the beam vaporized, with damage likely lessening as the beam got closer to the core before it blasted out of the other side, the beam oh-so-slightly diffracted as multi-thousand-kilometer lumps of planetary rock were thrown out into the void. As the split-second duration fire ended, the remaining donut of a world fractured as the atmosphere vented and burned, the moon being released from its orbital pathway. What small amounts of the ocean that hadn't already been flash-boiled was lost to be equalized throughout the empty sky. All of this took place in the course of minutes, with the true effects on the moon not yet visible and the spearing light only lasting for but a few seconds.
"Saudra has been broken into two primary chunks, with five secondaries and innumerable tertiary pieces. Moon orbit is now non-existent, and daily cycle is projected to be erratic. Evacuations of the moon need to be enacted immediately, tasking it to the system guard fleet..." a jittery head officer announced to the room. Aside from this, a throbbing silence throttled the room. Jaseron watched the read-outs with cold eyes as he gripped his cane and rubbed the side of his snout. He could feel the same eyes, from the other generals, on his back.
"Get the remaining forces out of the vicinity of the Crucible. Primary objective partially achieved, secondary objective completed with near total loss of effective combat forces."
"Affirmative, recalling Blinkerzwillen. Blunkerhunden are unable to return; onboard AI cores activated, disconnecting them from the command link."
Capitol CIC relayed that the Carnaithian forces were retreating the moment they broke off the attack and made for open space. Pursuit forces were already in motion several battlegroups were straining their main drives to the limit in order to catch up to the much faster Canaithian vessels. Tachyon Arrows leapt forward, hoping to get hits on the enemy but it was clearly no use, they would be gone. And they had already gotten the information they needed. It was clear the allies would be here soon.
The Blinkers had burned out their wormhole drives as the last of the beam finished destroying Saudra, the wormhole flickering and dissipating as the work crews aboard the Crucible now lept into action to correct the damage done to the stabilisation and containment arrays. Praise was given to the Axiomatic fleet and repair vessels were already on their way to sure up defence platforms or collect the scattered remains of both Gen 1 Blinkers and Capitol vessels so that they did not cause further damage.
Capitol high command now rallied its forces, they knew that the Crucible would be the biggest showdown of the war, Rubikon was a critical location but the allies would come here in even greater numbers to make a statement. Deployment orders were issued across the APP. And as the energy release was picked up by one of the various Annadolian probes nearby the co-ordinates of the Crucible were refined by both Carnaith and probe intelligence. The allies had their target, now was the time to strike.