Post by jadegreen on Jul 1, 2021 17:01:54 GMT
Octoazura, Assiduous
“…And that’s the plan. Any questions?” The Galactic admiral said sternly. A Hologram of the star system sat on her left, a hologram of the FDS Sallag on her right. A large group of command staff sat in a semicircular ampiteatre with their hoods drawn. For a moment it was silent, just the buzzing of the oscillating magnetic field designed to short-circut microscopic bugs.
“Very well…” She said making an about turn, walking away from the group. “This campaign will be costly. I do not expect this to be a clean and easy victory, but that is a sacrifice that each and every one of us must willing to make. Evolution does not favor the weak and unresponsive, and if our way of life is to survive, we must be prepared to defend ourselves through that most universal of methods. Violence.”
She turned back to face them. Admiral Quoe, her second in command for this operation was seated near the front. He nodded.
“And whether this war is the twilight hours of the Dominion… or we go on to live another hundred trillion years until the last stars burn out and the universe is plunged into darkness; we will be remembered as heroes until its end. Rahbakun Parakos los Dominion! Rahbakun Parakos Kragleosha Gauss!”
“Rahbakun Parakos los Dominion! Rahbakun Parakos Kragleosha Gauss!” Her subordinates shouted back.
“Everyone get to your ships. We depart tonight.”
Everyone Stood, bowed and left the room.
…
The Admiral had gone through a great deal of effort to obfuscate the true nature of her attack and some of the special modifications she had ordered for the fleet. Around a third of the attacking fleet departed Assiduous without much fanfare in a manner that made it seem like a routine fleet rotation with other major systems. Another third of the fleet was departing from the capital of Sinhipsue in the Tausangrool System, while the remaining third came in smaller elements scattered about.
The Galactic Admiral had formally chosen the Shoto, a modifided Instigator class equipped with Kayon lances as her flagship. Though in reality the Galactic Admrial had around a dozen avatars invested in this. Clone Bodies connected via a quantum entangled neural lace in her brainstem made each avatar just a physical body. In reality her conciousness was distributed across numerous biological brains and computer systems, and almost impossible to decapitate. Cutting edge and top secret technology, even by the standards of the dominion; reserved exclusively for her and a select few others.
Still she retained her more humanistic, mortal aspect. Taking a moment to gaze over at the leading sensor officer’s console. The sensor system doing its best to interpet the higher dimensional space; a mass of blueshifted light and vauge sillouetes of nearby ships traveling alongside them. Another avatar, on another ship gazed back. Pushing aside existential questions, she turned back to focus on the coming battle, mentally preparing herself for whatever was to transpire.
…
The Admiral had gone through a great deal of effort to obfuscate the true nature of her attack and some of the special modifications she had ordered for the fleet. Around a third of the attacking fleet departed Assiduous without much fanfare in a manner that made it seem like a routine fleet rotation with other major systems. Another third of the fleet was departing from the capital of Sinhipsue in the Tausangrool System, while the remaining third came in smaller elements scattered about.
The Galactic Admiral had formally chosen the Shoto, a modifided Instigator class equipped with Kayon lances as her flagship. Though in reality the Galactic Admrial had around a dozen avatars invested in this. Clone Bodies connected via a quantum entangled neural lace in her brainstem made each avatar just a physical body. In reality her conciousness was distributed across numerous biological brains and computer systems, and almost impossible to decapitate. Cutting edge and top secret technology, even by the standards of the dominion; reserved exclusively for her and a select few others.
Still she retained her more humanistic, mortal aspect. Taking a moment to gaze over at the leading sensor officer’s console. The sensor system doing its best to interpet the higher dimensional space; a mass of blueshifted light and vauge sillouetes of nearby ships traveling alongside them. Another avatar, on another ship gazed back. Pushing aside existential questions, she turned back to focus on the coming battle, mentally preparing herself for whatever was to transpire.
Pobbma II, Pobbma System
The winter had set in on Pobbma two, its snow-capped peaks cast a shadow over the cities in the valleys of the mountains, a thick layer of snow-covered everything. However, snow or not, the factories continued their operations. The planetary drydocks, each no larger than three kilometres, continued to produce smaller ships. Once in a while, a corvette, destroyer or even heavy cruiser took to the skies, only to touch down later at one of the planet’s spaceports. Others simply disappeared into hidden bases, deep inside the mountains. It had been almost three weeks since the battle of Luasu, and the fleet that had survived the Battle had touched down at the planetary drydocks. Some smoother than others. The D’Karesi, the second ship in command of the invasion, came down especially hard. When it landed, three weeks ago, it was little more than a burning wreck. The jump-drive had miraculously survived the jump towards Pobbma but violently exploded afterwards. Fire crews needed two whole days to remove the threat of a core breach, and four before they were finally able to extinguish all the fires. Its reconstruction became a local drama, as the city next to it received never-ending transports of hull plating, disruptor chambers or energy conduits.
The system’s governor, a tall Furrelian man who went by the name of Honumit Inema, happened to be at the main spaceport of Pobbma two when one of these transports arrived. A supply ship slowly touched down at the spaceport, raising the attention of the ground crew. Like ants, they ran towards the ship. The foreman located the ship’s captain and asked him to sign a series of documents. Meanwhile, cargo-crates were unloaded upon large platforms, which returned towards the main building of the spaceport, where they would be loaded upon convoys for the drydocks. The governor did not come for that, though.
His shuttle got permission for take-off, and slowly came off the ground, it floated for a minute as the pilot made his last calculations, and then flew away. A duo of fighters flew escort, but they withdrew back towards the military spaceport when the shuttle left the atmosphere. For almost five minutes, it silently made its way towards the station in orbit, before it slowed down for an approach. It landed at one of the runways, and the governor left for the briefing room. His identity was verified multiple times before he was finally allowed in. The long metal table was used as a meeting table and had multiple holographic displays installed on it. On its seats were major players in the system’s government. A few admirals and generals, economic specialists, representatives of Pobbma Shipyards and more.
“Give me updates, when will the Wrath of Sallag arrive? Is our defensive grid ready, and are the fleets prepared?” The governor said in a strict tone. One of the admirals answered.
“According to Admiral Werasik, his ship is scheduled to arrive somewhere this evening, Yard 5-21 has been prepared for her arrival, and this station is ready for the incoming troops who are going on shore-leave. So, if you want to get fresh Hinumets from the bar downstairs, you’d better hurry!” The Admiral said, the group chuckled for a bit, before he sat back down, and continued to speak.
“And for your other questions. Yes, the patrol fleet has been having test exercises with the grid the last few days, and are returning back to base today. Reports show that the defensive platforms are fully operational, as with the asteroid-traps. The minefield needs some expansion, but a construction ship is currently preparing to go there, so that has been taken care of. And for your last question; the patrol fleet is completely ready, as with the fleet at the yards. The task force stationed in orbit of Pobbma two is expecting a few reinforcements from Sallag, but are ready to pull-out on a moments notice.”
“Good,” The governor said. “We do not know when they will attack, but it will happen sooner or later, and I do not want to lose this system and her capacities to us being unprepared. May Greyas curse those who dare oppose us!”
“With our flesh and faith in Greyas we go into battle!” the group responded, it was a traditional Furrelian warcry, and it was probably never more appropriate than now.
Pobbma
The fleet loitered in subspace, shunted off from the pobbma system across a higher dimension and only able to traverse to it, to specific points through an elaborate series of calculations. Many of the ships they had been traveling alongside had faded from view, maneuvering to their appropriate positions. All that remained was a mass of blueshifted light and
“All ships take your designated positions… final check. I will send modifications as the need arises; do not deploy until you are given the order.” The admiral ordered.
“All ships signing off… green across the board.” Her comms officer returned.
“Alright. We are go for phase one. I repeat, go for phase one.” The Admiral ordered.
Six ships in total made the transit from Subspace; all of them Lucidity class, and all except for one arrived at their designated positions. The Lucidity bound for Pobbma-VIII had been interdicted and forced from low level subspace just short of its intended position, with the ships also arriving at Pobbma-V and Pobbma VI, with two more arriving far above and below the plane of the solar system at the poles of the star.
Immediately the ships had two priorities. From the moment they arrived they began a campaign jamming transmissions out of the system and attempting to listen in on those coming in. Old transmissions recorded from the days when the Penumbra had been stationed at P-5280 were broadcast over the jamming out to the neighboring systems, slightly modified to reflect current events and with up-to-date timestamps. The other priority was to scan the system for defenses and the positions of the standing fleets, especially pertinent for the ship bound for Pobbma-VIII which began searching for the source of the interdiction.
The only exception was the ship at Pobbma VII which seemed to have an altogether different goal. It had arrived on the far side of the gas giant and utterly unable to see the system in its entirety. As soon as it entered the ship began scanning the gas giant and its nearby moons with the upmost scrutiny; as well as searching for any furrelian satellites or stations that might have direct line of sight to the ship.
The Go’shii studied the feed of information, tabbing through various sensor feeds while analyzing countless more that were being downloaded directly into her brain.
“Where are you, you fat fuck...?” She mumbled to herself.
Pobbma system
The defence office on the orbital station had been busy. The whole day, they had worked on integrating new mines into the computer system. It was a gigantic task, and the Furrelians working on it were finally able to go to bed, as the day-shift took back over. The commander of the defences in Pobbma came to the office with a mug of hot fluid and took a sip of it. However, he almost spat it out as on the holographic map of the system, multiple alarms went off. Six red dots appeared all over the system, and upon closer investigation, showed that they were Gaussian ships. The commander knew that they were under attack and that it would just take a while for the rest of the enemy fleet to arrive.
“Get the command centre on the comms, urgency level one! We are under attack!” The commander shouted, quickly turning towards a console and opening a direct communications line with the second command centre of the system, a station in the outer interdiction ring. They answered the call.
“Incoming Gaussian attack! Weapons free, eliminate all the enemy ships which are already here! This is probably the scouting force, their actual force must show up later!”
“Copy that,” The commander of the outpost responded, he could be heard giving orders in the background, but the communications system was eventually closed. The patrol fleet, divided into small parts around the outer planets and interdiction ring, received the same orders. For the Ludicity which was en-route to Pobbma VIII, that was disastrous, as it jumped directly in between two unmanned defence platforms. Both directly opened fire, firing disruptor beams, bolts and missiles at the ship. This was the fate of many of the other Ludicities, the one above Pobbma V was targeted and fired upon by a series of orbital defence platforms, as was the one at Pobbma VI.
The three remaining Ludicities were each targeted by ships, but the ones around the solar poles were too far away for any instant actions, so they were left alone, for the time being. The cruiser above Pobbma VII did not find the Wrath or Sallag, or any other dreadnought for that fact. Instead, all it could find above Pobbma VII were weapons testing sites and a few smaller colonial cities in the sky. But before it was able to get a good look at those, it fell under attack. As with a majority of the other ships, it was picked apart by an unmanned defensive station.
Sallag System
“Attention Wrath of Sallag, your flight-path has been authorised, and you are allowed to jump as soon as you’ve been granted permission from Sallag Spa.aa…-” The communications array of the FDS Wrath of Sallag transmitted, with a direct connection with the shipyards in Pobbma. The message had suddenly been interrupted with standard background chatting in the middle of the conversation. Something that was rather unusual.
“Pobbma, we have lost connection. Can you repeat that please?” the communications officer said, awaiting a response that would never come.
“Pobbma shipyards, do you receive us?” the officer responded after less than twenty minutes, the captain of the Sallag, Admiral Werasik, immediately understood that something was wrong.
“It might be possible that these are pre-recorded tapes, and are simply intercepting their message.” He said to the communications officer.
“But why would they do that?”
“Maybe they didn’t… It certainly seems unlikely.” He said, thinking for a while before he finally responded. “Unless… They are being invaded, and these messages are being transmitted by the… By Greyas.” he said, quickly turning back to his own console and opening a communications line with the headquarters of the Furrelian Defence Service.
“Pobbma is under attack, I am taking my ship and her accompanying taskforce there to reinforce the defence fleet there!”
Pobbma VIII
The ship transitioned rather violently from Subspace. The ship had scant moments to react before it realized its predicament, beginning a headlong sublight burn to close the gap to the planet. A futile and ill-informed decision made by her captain in the heat of panic. Caught by a series of disruptors the first of which were arrested by the hardlight shields; though the latter absorbed by one of the engine nacelles. Normally the opposite engine would have shut down to prevent a disabled engine from throwing the ship into a spin.
In this instance that failsafe had been absent and the ship quickly began to spiral helplessley out of control. With several thrusters disabled it was unable to come about. It was one of the mines that finally did the ship in. The point defense system tried in vein to acquire a targeting solution under the intense spin, sweeping space in all direction with fading strings of hardlight. Catching the mine all too late the ship was struck in the underbelly; the explosion dealing immense damage to her. For a few more seconds after the impact the ship spun, shedding melted armor panels and scrap before the reactor detonated, scuttling the wreck.
Less than a minute after the initiation first phase, and the Furrelians had already scored a kill.
Pobbma V
The ship promptly made an about turn from the situation, spinning up its FTL drive as it did. However the admiral had a hypothesis she wished to test. In their data from the battle of Luasu they had noted that EMP weaponry had a serious effect on Furrelian warships and after piecing together the battle had apparently caused explosions as well one ship to go completely haywire and crash. Such behavior was not common of their own craft, where such weapons only had a temporary disruptive effect. Luss had hypothesized that their antimatter containment was possibly magnetic based, and that the pulse could theoretically disrupt this system long enough for the antimatter to come into contact with the walls of its container and lead to its destruction.
Hence she had requsitioned a high percentage of these torpedoes for her attacking force. There was still time before phase 2 of the attack began, and given many of the pieces were not in desirable positions; her descision to follow through with the subsequent phases of the attack hinged partially on confirming this hunch. Of the 180 torpedoes typically carried onboard a Lucidity Class, 72 of them carried pulse warheads, with another 72 being conventional skipper warheads and the remaining a mixure of more specialized types such as jammers or MIRVs. The entirety of the torpedo compliment was ungracefully dumped from the rear of the ship before the magazines themselves detached, buying them just a bit more acceleration. One empty magazine caught a disruptor bolt that otherwise would have connected, leaving a hole through the contraption rimmed in plasma. The few follow up shots connected with the rear. This discharged most of their shield’s power reserve but the ship itself remained undamaged.
The torpedoes didn’t have far to go to reach the nearest ODPs. The torpedoes fired their terminal phases early, almost immediately; as the ODPs were assumed to be largely immobile and unable to dodge the unguided terminal warheads in any timely manner. Single stage Orion drives propelled the warheads in for the kill at hyperaccelerated velocities.
Pobbma VI
The situation here played out nearly identical to the ship at Pobbma V. The ship was taken aback, though the ship here did not flip; simply reversing thrust (The Lucidity class was able to reverse thrust as quickly as it could move forward) and firing an identical salvo of torpedoes. Caught by a disruptor bolt the shield interpreted as a miss, a disruptor shot struck the main mass driver, disabling it. However the lion’s share of their resources remained stubbornly fixated on scanning, rather than prime themselves for any form of escape. They swept the planet with ground-penetrating scans in search of concealed missiles or other traps. They scanned the space around them, seeking the telltale signs of FTL transits; reinforcements ready to pounce. A thousand electronic eyes prying at the ODPs as the salvo of missiles bore down on them.
Pobbma VII
The GDAN Vigulant Conviction swiftly began to reverse thrust. Contrary to the others, it was confronted by ships rather than ODPs, and this played to their disadvantage. They, like the other two fired their full savlo, dividing it equally between their two attackers. A disruptor beam glanced the rear section of the ship shortly thereafter, destroying the main reactor before the ship could be scuttled. Largely disabled and running on the reserve reactor, they managed to arrest any form of spin or tumble but had little in the way of power to fight back.
Above/Below the system
The two ships stationed above and below the system took the lion’s share of the jamming. Looking down on the system they had a lay of the land as system defenses began to scramble. They couldn’t parse many of the finer details outside of the general outline of the two lines of defensive stations. Their FTL drives were being primed however, as their charade was not guarenteed to last long and the order to withdraw would come with the arrival of Phase 2.
Subspace
The Galactic Admiral scowled at the developments, one by one stations and ships rendered in throughout the system. They were much more fortified than she had anticipated, much more fortified than their dated intel reported. Clearly a great effort had gone into strengthening the system’s defenses since the onset of the war. The presence of the orbital defense platforms around the outer planets. The minefield and outer interdiction line. The mysterious absence of the Wrath of Sallag. All of these unexpected affronts to her plan. Each in isolation was not an insurmountable problem. Though together, they made her doubt the viability of her plans.
The Furrelians were vastly more prepared for this assault than she would have liked… and the more elements of her plan that were hindered or denied… the more of that there would be. Meeting might with might seldom amounted to anything other than a lot of wasted energies for both sides. The Dominion had only around 2,300 active ships. The Furrelians had nearly 6,000. If she was to carry on with her invasion she needed to know she could secure favorable trades.
She resolved that success or failure of the pulse torpedoes was to be the deciding factor. A gamble she had made when mustering her resources for the attack had been stocking every ship with a similar payload of such weapons. If her theory was vindicated, then she had a potent tool with which to inflict grevious damage. Otherwise, an overwhelming majority of her ordinance budget were now largely useless weapons suited mainly for disabling. A grevious mistake which would no doubt be disastorous if she followed through in the attack.
Luss exhaled as the sensor readings came in. Slowly and deliberately like a farseer monk in meditation. Her gamble had paid off… and she’d learned something else valuable as well. Those defensive platforms had difficulty targeting smaller ships. Of all the surprises her enemy had laid for her… the minefield… the second interdiction line… and the suspiciously absent Wrath of Sallag all wild cards uncondusive to her stratagem. But now, she had a surprise of her own to wield, and important intelligence on the weaknesses of the orbital defense stations.
She raised a finger, mulling over the decision just a bit longer. She was informed that the lucidity class ships that had been assigned to postings above and below the solar system’s plane were now making subspace transits. Meaning their jamming network would be going offline.
“Madame Admiral…” Quoe started. “The jammers have departed. We’re on the clock… we are about to pass the abort threshold.”
“Go for stage two, adjust position to 1/10th of an astronomical unit anti-radial from system barycenter and deploy as per your orders, engage random jinking maneuvers as soon as you get there. Reserve squadron one, transit as close as you can and clear out the ODPs.”
Above/Below the Ecliptic:
The ships transited away without much fanfare. Their jobs had finished and the jamming was abandoned in earnest, though they were bound to function as emergency reserves, recycled into the admiral’s strategem if needed.
Pobbma V:
Having charged its FTL drive, this ship also transited. A High powered bolt of disruptor fire; what would have been a killing blow shot past a moment before it could escape.
Pobbma VII:
For a moment the lone sensor cruiser was simply a sitting duck, a hapless pincushion for disruptor fire. Shots tore into the rear section of the ship. Explosions perforated it before the section came apart in its entirety. The crippled ship managed to sortie two of its four defense gunships before the back half gave out to a crescendo of explosions.
A squadron of a dozen Sentinel-class ships transited from subspace on the dark side of the planet, many of them quite near to the remains Lucidity. Moments too late to make the save. Immediately upon making they split up to execute different tasks.
Four of them began rushing to the aid of the destroyed ship at full speed in the eventuality that there were still survivors on board. The entire ship seemed to unfurl at once; aggressive volleys of torpedoes were loosed towards the two destroyers. The vanguard gunships deployed from their hangars while under full burn, forced to briefly turn about then accelerate to match with their mothership. Point defenses unfurled and came to power and the spinal mass drivers roared to life, loosing a half dozen shots each. With 22 torpedo magazines to the comparatively feeble 4 of the Lucidity class; the sentinels were confident (perhaps overly so) in their ability to win the engagement through their initial volleys alone.
The other ships split off to execute their assigned tasks. Four loitered about, spreading out and igniting jamming and close range interdiction. Just a few light seconds… just enough to keep anyone from jumping too close until they were ready. They two had deployed their escort wings and began to target the weapons testing facilities from orbit. The Admiral was quite confident that they were classed as purely military target and took little reparation for kinetic bombardment of the lunar testing sites; with a marked interest in eliminating sensor and communications arrays and preventing Pobbma VII from calling for help.
She didn’t want Pobbma VII to be the center of attention… and couldn’t have anyone in the system get the word out… at least until she was ready.
All the while the ships had sortied several dozen wings of fighters and drones. New generation fighters, more akin to their space borne drones and designed specifically to work in tandem with them. These fighters began making their way to the cloud cities of Pobbma VII. There was a very real possibility that these were civilian facilities and therefore any given strike had to be surgical. The pilots given orders to do no more damage than was necessary; dial back the yield of their weapons if need be. Their targets; communications and sensor relays.
Pobmma VI:
The weapons fired. The Lucidity, on a largely linear course was a sitting duck. The disruptor lance punctured through the ship from stem to stern. A flash and an expanding cloud of cooling gas; like a nebula, and the ship was gone.
For a few moments, silence.
A double-stacked squad of shoguns (48 in total) made a simultaneous transit not far from where the ship had initially arrived. The positions of the enemy defensive emplacements made known as the dying act of the ship’s crew. Immediately upon their transit; a mad scramble to eliminate the largest guns with their powerful ordinance. Some going after the orbital defense stations, some after the battleship stationed in orbit and some for the ground-based positions. Or so it seemed; with the entirety of their ordinance compliment having been replaced in their entirety with immense pulse munitions built to fit their oversized bomb bays.
A Squad of sentinel cruisers transited further out; about a tenth of an astronomical unit; affording them about a minute of light lag. A minimum needed to avoid disruptor lances and unguided orbital munitions. They began deploying longer range interdiction, pulling the larger ships from subspace. Each ship larger than the last. The official roster of the invasion fleet becoming apparent.
24 Sentinel class cruisers and 12 lucidity class cruisers were the first to make the transit along with the larger Maven class cruisers. Then came a wall of transgressor class artillery ships; 72 in total. The volley of FTL transits crescendoed with the largest vessels 6 battleships, 12 battlecruisers, 8 supercarriers and 8 carrier dreadnoughts all assuming an attack formation.
The artillery ships began to seek firing solutions of nearby enemy ships. The heavy direct combat ships also prowling for any pertinent targets not prioritized by the bomber frigates. The carriers and dreadnoughts unfurled the protective shutters. There was the usual deployment of the larger Vanguard gunships which began to assume their defensive posture around their respective ships. Their a majority of their large hangars; usually reserved for planetary invasion skiffs had been refitted with expendable deployment racks.
Drone fighters began to sortie from within in immense numbers. The number of individual contacts quickly soared past a million and kept climbing. The sprawling swarms of drones merged with manned fighter-craft; three dozen or more drones coordinated by a single manned fighter. Hololith nodes deployed from the manned fighters. From them projected a blinding flash which faded to reveal a vast plethora of decoys. Their numbers now seemingly have magnified by another order of magnitude.
Pobbma V
The Orbital Defence Platforms, as to be expected, were large and immobile targets. Of the four platforms, only one had real point-defence capabilities, but those were rather limited. Then the first missiles hit. The ODPs did not have the same luxuries as ships, as they were unmanned. They lacked a large amount of armour, which resulted in underdefended spots. It just so happened to be that one of the missiles, tipped with a nuclear warhead, hit an ODP in one such spot. It penetrated the layer of armour and ended up in one of the three torpedo chambers. Then it detonated, taking the chamber with it. A blinding explosion occurred as the first chamber disintegrated, which was followed by a chain reaction of other explosions: The two other missile chambers exploded. Something similar happened to the other Platforms. The two remaining small ones followed with their destruction, one was hit by a pulse warhead, which caused a core containment loss, followed by an explosion. The other small one was too, hit by a missile, which ignited the main missile chamber. It too exploded in a similar fashion to the first ODP. The large remaining one put up a valiant fight. Destroying some of the incoming missiles, before returning fire at the Ludicity class with its own missiles and disruptors. However, it was hit and disabled by a pulse warhead, which didn’t succeed in taking it out of the fight permanently.
Pobbma VI
Here too, the missile salvo proved to be highly successful. Rather than disabling most, it destroyed all ODPs, but not before they could return some fire with concentrated disruptor and missile fire. One by one, the three platforms were destroyed, giving the Ludicity some time to scan the surface of the planet. It was rather hard to get solid readings, as the planet’s thick atmosphere and clouds blocked most of the outgoing readings. What the ship could find was rather impressive. The entire planet had been turned into a mine, causing large amounts of industrial smog. However, between the industrial buildings in, there were a few strange shapes; Anti-Orbital weapons. Most were rather light, such as AO missile launchers. But there were a few heavy guns, one of these was a heavy disruptor lance. However, even though the Dominion’s ship was directly above the city, few weapons actually opened fire, the only fire originating from an Anti-orbital Disruptor cannon. For a few minutes, this was all the firepower shooting at the Ludicity, but this quickly changed. For a few seconds, an unusual energy reading could be traced from the planet’s surface, the clouds turned from red to green, before the origin of this reared its head. The Disruptor lance had tracked the ship in orbit and had fired its weapon. Similar to the guns on some battleships, this weapon raced towards the ship in orbit.
Pobbma VII
Some of the Vigilant Conviction’s incoming missiles were intercepted, but the ships it was up against were not at all like the Orbital Platforms. For one, they had a functioning point-defence grid. Missile by missile was intercepted, either by the light plasma guns or by incoming micro-missiles fired from the normal tubes. However, even though they succeeded in taking out most of the missiles, some succeeded in striking them. Especially the Pulse warheads proved rather efficient in taking out one of the ships, temporarily disabling its energy grid. The second ship was rocked by some explosions, resulting in a few large holes in its hull. It, however, remained in operation and took revenge at the Vigilant Conviction. A disruptor beam was fired at its main engine block, followed by a few beams at manoeuvring thrusters and at the FTL block. This way, they hoped that it’d be unable to escape.
Pobbma II
Pobbma II’s defences had been turned up to Urgency level one. If anyone even passed the inner interdiction ring, its defensive fleet would instantly act and move to intercept. This tactic still existed, but as the tactics of the Furrelians continued to change, so did the defence methods. Rather than having the entire fleet respond to a single attack, a small portion of the fleet was constantly stationed around the inner part of the inner interdiction ring. This was not without complaints, however. It was expected that only ten per cent would go on patrol. In reality, however, twenty-seven per cent were used on patrol at any given moment, much to the dismay of planetary commanders. In the end, however, they had to give in, as it would give the entire defensive system more time to react, but still, some didn’t accept this change in plans. Still, the planet continued to be heavily defended, as did the shipyard in its orbit.
Sallag System
The Wrath of Sallag’s task force was preparing itself for a jump towards Pobbma. It had gained permission from Sallag spaceport to jump towards the Pobbma system, in order to check up with the fleet there. And, if needed, destroy any Gaussian ships.
“Admiral, coordinates have been filled in, and the task force is waiting for your orders.” Werasik’s second in command said. He was a tall Furrelian, having red-brownish fur.
“Very well then. The charging of our drives should take around thirty minutes, after which we should depart, in order to surprise the dogs.” The admiral responded. The task force had been halved, from a hundred ships to a bit more than fifty.
“Aye sir.” the officer responded, turning towards the communications officer and relaying the orders. Werasik himself prepared for the battle. He did not know the enemy’s numbers, who knew, maybe he ran into a full war fleet. But, he had vowed when he became captain of the Wrath of Sallag, to never give up against the enemy, even if it would cost it his own life.
Luss exhaled as the sensor readings came in. Slowly and deliberately like a farseer monk in meditation. Her gamble had paid off… and she’d learned something else valuable as well. Those defensive platforms had difficulty targeting smaller ships. Of all the surprises her enemy had laid for her… the minefield… the second interdiction line… and the suspiciously absent Wrath of Sallag all wild cards uncondusive to her stratagem. But now, she had a surprise of her own to wield, and important intelligence on the weaknesses of the orbital defense stations.
She raised a finger, mulling over the decision just a bit longer. She was informed that the lucidity class ships that had been assigned to postings above and below the solar system’s plane were now making subspace transits. Meaning their jamming network would be going offline.
“Madame Admiral…” Quoe started. “The jammers have departed. We’re on the clock… we are about to pass the abort threshold.”
“Go for stage two, adjust position to 1/10th of an astronomical unit anti-radial from system barycenter and deploy as per your orders, engage random jinking maneuvers as soon as you get there. Reserve squadron one, transit as close as you can and clear out the ODPs.”
Above/Below the Ecliptic:
The ships transited away without much fanfare. Their jobs had finished and the jamming was abandoned in earnest, though they were bound to function as emergency reserves, recycled into the admiral’s strategem if needed.
Pobbma V:
Having charged its FTL drive, this ship also transited. A High powered bolt of disruptor fire; what would have been a killing blow shot past a moment before it could escape.
Pobbma VII:
For a moment the lone sensor cruiser was simply a sitting duck, a hapless pincushion for disruptor fire. Shots tore into the rear section of the ship. Explosions perforated it before the section came apart in its entirety. The crippled ship managed to sortie two of its four defense gunships before the back half gave out to a crescendo of explosions.
A squadron of a dozen Sentinel-class ships transited from subspace on the dark side of the planet, many of them quite near to the remains Lucidity. Moments too late to make the save. Immediately upon making they split up to execute different tasks.
Four of them began rushing to the aid of the destroyed ship at full speed in the eventuality that there were still survivors on board. The entire ship seemed to unfurl at once; aggressive volleys of torpedoes were loosed towards the two destroyers. The vanguard gunships deployed from their hangars while under full burn, forced to briefly turn about then accelerate to match with their mothership. Point defenses unfurled and came to power and the spinal mass drivers roared to life, loosing a half dozen shots each. With 22 torpedo magazines to the comparatively feeble 4 of the Lucidity class; the sentinels were confident (perhaps overly so) in their ability to win the engagement through their initial volleys alone.
The other ships split off to execute their assigned tasks. Four loitered about, spreading out and igniting jamming and close range interdiction. Just a few light seconds… just enough to keep anyone from jumping too close until they were ready. They two had deployed their escort wings and began to target the weapons testing facilities from orbit. The Admiral was quite confident that they were classed as purely military target and took little reparation for kinetic bombardment of the lunar testing sites; with a marked interest in eliminating sensor and communications arrays and preventing Pobbma VII from calling for help.
She didn’t want Pobbma VII to be the center of attention… and couldn’t have anyone in the system get the word out… at least until she was ready.
All the while the ships had sortied several dozen wings of fighters and drones. New generation fighters, more akin to their space borne drones and designed specifically to work in tandem with them. These fighters began making their way to the cloud cities of Pobbma VII. There was a very real possibility that these were civilian facilities and therefore any given strike had to be surgical. The pilots given orders to do no more damage than was necessary; dial back the yield of their weapons if need be. Their targets; communications and sensor relays.
Pobmma VI:
The weapons fired. The Lucidity, on a largely linear course was a sitting duck. The disruptor lance punctured through the ship from stem to stern. A flash and an expanding cloud of cooling gas; like a nebula, and the ship was gone.
For a few moments, silence.
A double-stacked squad of shoguns (48 in total) made a simultaneous transit not far from where the ship had initially arrived. The positions of the enemy defensive emplacements made known as the dying act of the ship’s crew. Immediately upon their transit; a mad scramble to eliminate the largest guns with their powerful ordinance. Some going after the orbital defense stations, some after the battleship stationed in orbit and some for the ground-based positions. Or so it seemed; with the entirety of their ordinance compliment having been replaced in their entirety with immense pulse munitions built to fit their oversized bomb bays.
A Squad of sentinel cruisers transited further out; about a tenth of an astronomical unit; affording them about a minute of light lag. A minimum needed to avoid disruptor lances and unguided orbital munitions. They began deploying longer range interdiction, pulling the larger ships from subspace. Each ship larger than the last. The official roster of the invasion fleet becoming apparent.
24 Sentinel class cruisers and 12 lucidity class cruisers were the first to make the transit along with the larger Maven class cruisers. Then came a wall of transgressor class artillery ships; 72 in total. The volley of FTL transits crescendoed with the largest vessels 6 battleships, 12 battlecruisers, 8 supercarriers and 8 carrier dreadnoughts all assuming an attack formation.
The artillery ships began to seek firing solutions of nearby enemy ships. The heavy direct combat ships also prowling for any pertinent targets not prioritized by the bomber frigates. The carriers and dreadnoughts unfurled the protective shutters. There was the usual deployment of the larger Vanguard gunships which began to assume their defensive posture around their respective ships. Their a majority of their large hangars; usually reserved for planetary invasion skiffs had been refitted with expendable deployment racks.
Drone fighters began to sortie from within in immense numbers. The number of individual contacts quickly soared past a million and kept climbing. The sprawling swarms of drones merged with manned fighter-craft; three dozen or more drones coordinated by a single manned fighter. Hololith nodes deployed from the manned fighters. From them projected a blinding flash which faded to reveal a vast plethora of decoys. Their numbers now seemingly have magnified by another order of magnitude.
Pobbma System
The system’s defenders were well prepared for a direct attack, but an attack like this, conducted by the Gauss Dominion, was harder to counter. Furrelian system defences were built around the idea that any attack would be an all-at-once attack, so smaller snippets of a force jumping in irregular intervals was the last thing the Furrelians expected, even though their own doctrine was rather similar to the one used by the Gauss Dominion during this attack. The two ships, above and below the system, were simply able to escape, while the Furrelians did notice them, they were too far away for any instant action, much to the dismay of the defenders. Either way, the poles of the star would continue to be monitored for further activity, and if something would appear, the Furrelians wouldn’t take another escape as an answer. Such a thing happened to the ship above Pobbma V too, it escaped, and this time getting solid readings on Pobbma V’s defences. The first planet of the grid had lost its surprises, but not for long. A small detachment of the main defence fleet finally arrived at the planet, way too late to see any combat. The battleship strikeforce, around thirty ships, entered an orbit around the planet, and quickly took up defensive positions. At Pobbma VI, the situation was way grimmer. The small fleet in orbit of the outer planet was drastically outnumbered and in no way capable of striking back at the full invasion fleet. The single battleship tried to keep the Shoguns harassing itself at bay, but with little success. Even though the disruptors opened fire with their malignant green glow, they were unable to prevent the Shoguns from opening fire. One by one, the pulse missiles hit, the point defence tried to destroy as much of the missiles as possible and actually did a decent job in it. However, a decent job was not good enough.
Ironically enough, the first missile to hit, hit the point-defence coordination centre, which instantly knocked out the point defence. Then, the other warheads hit. System by system was disabled. First the hull magnetization, then the weapon cooling systems, then the rest, eventually, the ship remained little more than a spaceborne tin can, its engines and lights disabled. The only systems which remained online were the particulary needed ones. Bridge systems, oxygen filtration and core containment. Something similar happened to the few ODPs, but this time it was fatal. As the majority of the ODPs lacked Point-defence, it was hard to disable the incoming bombs, which proved fatal to all. Explosions followed, most of the platforms exploded as their core containment failed, only one platform was able to return fire, launching all its missiles at the Shoguns before it too failed, and exploded. On the planet, the weapons were a bit more prepared. As the shoguns entered the excuse of an atmosphere, the first weapon systems began to open fire, the Furrelians had proven that they would not lose Pobbma VI without a fight. As more and more information about the invasion became apparent, the Furrelian defensive fleet began to further strategise their defence. This, however, all changed when the main Gaussian fleet left subspace. As a consequence, a large detachment of the main Furrelian defensive fleet, in orbit of Pobbma IV, made its way towards Pobbma VI, in order to, at least try, to engage them. Many other parts of the defensive structure reacted surprised, but in the end, they still had the numerical upper hand in capital ships, but you never could be too sure, or so the saying went. That was proven, once the total fighter numbers came in. More than two million, drastically outnumbering the system’s fighter number and surpassing the number of fighters used by a large Furrelian fleet.
At Pobbma VII, a dozen Sentinels was faced with little more than minor resistance. The two destroyers could not do much against such a force and were drastically underequipped to face such a force. But, they stood their ground. Some of the torpedoes were dodged, while others were intercepted by point-defence. The ones which slipped through caused acceptable damage, still damaging large swats of the hull, but no critical systems. Now came the time for the two ships to return fire, both focussing on different targets. As the destroyer’s original function was to function as a mix between a point-defence boat and a quick support craft, they were fully capable to intercept multiple targets. The combat AI marked targets and opened fire. The one closest to one of the Sentinels which opened fire on both targetted the same Sentinel, in an act of revenge. Deep green bolts of plasma filled the space between the two ships, as it tried to keep on for a bit longer. The ship closest to the original Ludicity fired on the gunships, while slowly acing away for more relative safety. On the planet’s surface, the fighting became more sporadic. The fighters which entered the thick atmosphere, left a cloud collum, only to be greeted by point-defence fire. The two cities closest to the fighters both had a different purpose. With a more limited Point-Defence fire, the eastern one was a civilian port, used to collect the materials from the planet’s clouds. While the western one was purely a military station, holding some experimental weapons. The loss of that city would be catastrophic, and as such, it had more serious firepower. Not only did the point defence rage, but also a single large cannon, an anti-orbital cannon, which opened fire against a few of the Sentinels in orbit.
Sallag System
The Wrath of Sallag was ready to depart. The final checks were done, and once everything was confirmed and checked as alright, the fleet departed towards Pobbma, almost instantly arriving there, close to Pobbma VII. The sixty ships could almost taste the combat, and once it was decided that it would be the best, the Wrath and its accompanying fleet departed to Pobbma V.
Pobbma VI: The bomber frigates pulled away from their strike paths, their truly immense acceleration revealed with their ordinance bays nearly empty. Though even fast attack frigates had no chance of beating missiles in a contest of acceleration they could bide more time for their point defenses to shoot them down. Some of the frigates had held a handful of bombs in reserve, dropping them at the last second as the missiles closed as an AOE attack.
Though they were not all successful. Of the 48 frigates assigned to the first reserve, 16 were destroyed as they fled, most all of them assigned to the objectives on the planet’s surface. At their obscene accelerations; they were caught by pursuing missiles and the clouds of expanding plasma and debris seemed to shrink away within moments. The ships yearned for the safety of the defensive screen created by the fleet.
With a majority of the planet’s defenses disabled, the fleet turned their attention to the approaching enemy ships. This was not the response they had anticipated from the admiral’s plan. Not in the slightest. The immense swarm of fighters, drones and gunships simply lingered around the fleet in a vast parabolic formation spanning several dozen light seconds. An immense shield of active defenses against inbound missiles goading the enemy into a close range engagement.
And with that the attacking fleet began engaging in the usual hallmarks of long range combat. Guided RKKVs fueled by antimatter; a salvo of roughly a hundred in total were loosed twoards the approaching enemy fleet. Pulse torpedoes in immense numbers were launched from the supercarriers. They spread out into several large clusters; tens of thousands each, curving out for multiple attack angles in three dimensional space designed to split the focus of point defenses and concentrate on different elements of the fleet. Each wave accompanied by a concentrated surge of electronic warfare directed at their intended targets to further hamper their defensive capacity.
Pobbma VII: The fighters had little difficulty with the largely civilian point defenses. Drones were lost to disruptor fire, but that was to be expected. With their only objective the communications arrays they had finished their attack runs within moments and returend to orbit. The purely military station on the other hand. Heavy drone losses and several casualties had caused the attacking force to scatter to cloud cover, not anticipating heavier resistance. However in the chaos one of the pilots managed to cry out over comms back to his mothership.
“Dammit! Theres an Anti-Orb on this one! Eupsilon group, take evasive action!”
The cruiser heard the call just in time, tumbling sideways with its reaction thrusters the disruptor bolts merely glanced the ship. A pair of molten gashes venting atmosphere marred its ventral side, but the ship was badly damaged and reeling nonetheless still operational. Its sister ship turned its attention to the gun platform, orienting nose forward and discharging its hardlight beamer while executing evasive maneuvers. Jousting with the anti-orbital gun.
Subspace:
“Multiple FTL transits, we’ve found the Wrath.” The officer chirped as the ship rendered in on her display.
“What’s that fat fuck doing all the way over there…?” She asked… “They might be on to us… or at least think they’re on to us.”
“Should we go for phase 3?” Admiral Quoe asked.
“This is happening faster than I anticipated…” She mouthed to herself, barely above a whisper and inaudible to the crew. “I wanted to draw that thing out of position… but its… already out of position and right where I wanted… guess we just have to keep it there.” She raised her voice. “Tell phase 4 to get in position, have Khanyasa ready her squad and reassign shogun reserve group two to their attack force. Phase 3 to deploy on my mark…”
Pobbma VII:
The ships made their transits extremely low over the gas giant simultaneously, out of view of of the enemy. Eight battlecruisers, a handful of Lucidity cruisers and three dreadnought carriers. Sandwiched between the planet and one of its innermost moons they were concealed from line of sight and Luss had made every effort possible to disable the enemy’s communications through jamming and destruction. Pulling off such a miraculous ruse was no small feat, even for her.
The eight battleships maneuvered into an incredibly tight formation around one of the dreadnoughts, loitering at its aft section and as before an immense cluster of drones and gunships began to swarm out from the carrier’s hangar bays. They fired grapples at hardpoints on the dreadnought carrier; lengths of heavy duty space elevator grade cable between one another. The gunships assumed a fairly standard defensive formation but the drones didn’t dare venture more than a few kilometers from their mothership. Building up an absurdly tight formation like a steep pyramid they hovered almost wingtip to wingtip, then seemingly became locked in place; as precision control slaved their reaction thrusters to their mothership.
Their holographic decoy systems engaged. Rolling sheets of hologram covered the ship, fusing together in a perfect recreation of the dominion’s flagship; the Paragon. The ships, now one combined unit began to accelerate. The combination of the eight battlecruisers and the dreadnought reasonably approxomating both its exaust plume and neutrino output.
The effigy of the dominion’s flagship began to crest the horizon on the far side of the planet. The spinal hardlight beamer appeared to come to power as it lined up a shot with the Wrath of Sallag.
Pobbma VI, Pobbma System
The long-range battle had begun, something the Furrelians had prepared for, which became evident when the carriers launched their own drones and fighters, with the intent of destroying the incoming RKKVs. These drones were made specifically for point-defence purposes, and as such had extremely rapid-firing weapons, which were virtually unusable against large armoured targets, but perfect against large quantities of missiles. For a few seconds, silence, before the order was given to intercept the incoming weapon fire. The First RKKV exploded in a bright flash and a red flurry, which was shortly afterwards followed by a seconds missile, and a third. The white flashes of point-defence fire filled the space in-between the two fleets. Such like that, a majority of the RKKVs were intercepted before they came close to the fleet, but a few slipped through the defensive field, with catastrophic effects as result. The first ships began taking damage, and a few exploded in fireballs of anti-matter. A disaster, and something the Furrelian fleet should’ve prepared for. But now it was already too late; The pulse-tipped skippers came. Once again, the point-defence drones engaged their weapons, and once again, the clusters were one-by-one picked apart. But this time, the warheads proved to be more efficient than expected. The majority of the missiles were picked apart by the small white plasma bolts of the point-defence systems, while others were fired at with small projectiles. In the end, by the time the missiles had passed the field, a small fraction of the original salvo remained, but were still enough missiles to kill the Furrelian fleet a few times over. By now, the final surprise of the Furrelian fleet appeared their own cyber warfare. A few of the purpose-built smaller ships in the fleet, subclasses of normal ships, were able to create a false signature of the fleet, a few light seconds above and in front of the actual fleet.
This too worked in favour of the defenders, but not by much. These defences were engaged too late, and though they succeeded in taking a small part of the incoming warheads away, it wasn’t much. The first warheads hit the debris of the ships destroyed by the RKKVs before they finally hit the survivors. The old readings of the battle of Luasu were correct, the pulse warheads did indeed do their job, but not in the exact same way. The largest part of the Furrelian fleet was unaffected by this, but a large part of the defensive task force was hit, and catastrophically so. Around ten of the ships were hit and disabled, of which one instantly exploded due to core failure, while another was short-circuited and started pushing itself down. Other ships were shortly disabled, had to repower, and pushed onwards, while another part was simply able to shrug it off. This attack had some serious consequences for the Gaussian fleet. Over secured lines, orders were given, and shortly afterwards, the Furrelian response to the attack came. At first, a single blue lance travelled at the speed of light, but it was quickly followed by a second, and a third, until eventually, a dozen or so lances fired at a rather weak mode, as they tried to disable the ships, rather than outright destroy. These lances were fired at the capital ships of the Dominion’s fleet, in order to cause as much chaos as possible by disabling communications.
Pobbma VII
“Stations eighteen and twelve have their anti-ship cannons ready, sixteen is charging theirs and fourteen is doing the same. Twenty is recharging. Weapons are ready to fire at your command, sir.” a junior officer said, a storm was raging outside in the thick clouds of the gas giant. The two floating cities targetted by the Dominion’s bombers might’ve been among the largest on that side of the planet, but certainly not the only ones. Five stations on that side of the planet alone already had anti-orbital weapons, and now that the fleet in orbit began acting more aggressive, it was time to use them.
“Then it is time,” The commander said, turning to a communications system and blaring orders over the intercom.
”Attention stations ten through twenty. Prepare for anti-orbital fire. We will need to take the fleet there out, fire at will.”
And such as that, the first deep green bolts raced upwards, while simultaneously a cold blue bolt came down, and with a single shot, took down station twenty, which was turned into a burning hulk which was slowly losing its integrity and started to collapse.
Open space, next to Pobbma VII
The ships which had departed towards Pobbma V were barely into the water before they instantly went head-deep. The Dominion’s flagship had appeared, a gigantic beast, around the same size as the Union’s own beast. The Paragon had certainly not been expected, and almost instantly as it appeared, the communications began to malfunction. However, as there was only one target, and since the ships had the possibility to go to manual control, the fleet followed emergency organisation. The fleet was divided into groups of around ten ships, each quickly went another way, and turned to face the Paragon. The Wrath, too, moved to face its Gaussian counterpart. Obviously, the sixty ships did not know that it was a few smaller ships camouflaged as the Paragon, but as it was known that that one was the Dominion’s flagship, it gained the highest priority. The first weapons fire that came was invisible to the normal eye, the cyberattack happened. The Furrelians hoped that this would, at least temporarily, lift the communications blocker, but in reality, it was a heavy virus that was sent, which could disable any underdefended systems, and use those keys to climb further into the system, in order to there destroy as much of the critical systems as possible. This attack was followed by a few salvos of missiles before that one was combined with the first disruptor lances. All of these attacks came without any real rhythm, as no communications were possible in order to organise a good attack. Instead, the ships fired at any possible weak points, and the main headlight beamer.
By now, the Wrath of Sallag had turned too, and it itself prepared its own weapon. The main Tachyonic gun would‘ve not been any good against other ships, but it itself carried two dozen tachyon lances, mounted on turrets. These lances were closer in destructible power to the main gun of the Wrath than to the Lances on a battlecruiser, and the first five started charging, each targetting the same part of the holographic ship, the location where the Furrelians thought the core would be.
Pobbma VI: The tachyon lances caught the edge of the expanding interdiction well; slowing to lightspeed. Though the interdiction was not yet fully deployed, this bought several precious minutes for the engaging forces. On these timescales, random maneuvers brought even the largest ships clear of their targetable cross section several times over. Every lance sailed through the formation harmlessly; only catching the occasional fighter or gunship caught in their path, with an immediate and explosive report. The fleet in its entirety began to adjust their velocity, favoring random movements which kept their distance from the enemy and slowly pulled them out of range.
The delay in deploying their electronic countermeasures had come too late to avert the first wave of missiles; largely due to one key factor. The terminal stage of a skipper was unguided; unable to change trajectory even if it wanted. Though this did mean a fair few warheads could be avoided through random maneuvering, destined to sail into the void or proximity detonate to partial effect; countless more were still lethal trajectories.
Despite the apparent ineffectiveness of their guided RKKVs and torpedoes, the fleet seemed more than content to load and fire a second salvo at the engaging forces. Most of these fell victim to the electronic warfare attack, altering their course uselessly above or below the enemy fleet and detonating some distance behind them once they realized they had been spoofed. Countless thousands of missiles, almost the entirety of the second salvo arced above and below the enemy fleet. Apparently they had taken the bait as well…
Pobbma VII: The dominion ships in orbit largely seemed disinterested in meticulously dismantling the remaining orbital defense platforms with fighter strikes. Instead, rather decisively striking at them by returning orbital fire as they were detected. Regardless the presence of so many gun stations; when only a single had been initially detected quickly became a point of contention amongst the fleet’s sensor officers. Three more cruisers had been lost to these attacks, and one of the escorting dreadnought carriers had taken several hits, being forced to roll over and expose its undamaged side to prevent itself from being disabled.
Unbeknownst to the Furrelians, the virus had proturbed an army of slumbering digital giants. Not long after the compromise was detected there was panic throughout the fleet as the cyber defense corps worked furiously to quarantine and destroy the virus. In their desperate bid to maintain the illusion and maintain the jamming field, which the defense corps judged the highest priority the virus had a few moments with which to wreak havoc with their targeting systems. In that moment the system misidentified several civilian orbital cities as military defense platforms. The gunners responded, loosing shots in the confusion. One cruiser had its torpedoes accessed in their tubes and immediately detonated, leading to an instantaneous loss of the ship. The hardlight beamer, which was in fact the beamer of the carrier concealed within the illusion was prime to miss its mark. Off by just a few hundredths of a degree it was bound to pass harmlessly above the enemy fleet.
Subspace:
“They’re craftier than I thought. Once that fleet gets into range, they’re going to make us bleed. Is phase four ready to deploy?” The galactic admiral asked.
“Phase 4 is ready to deploy on your command. Phase 5 is making final preparations for subspace transit.” Admiral Quoe returned.
“They’re still focused on the decoy. Deploy phase 4.”
Near Pobmma VI (WOS Defense fleet):
More subspace transits appeared on the flank of the Sallag and its escorting fleet. Four battleships, a dozen maven class cruisers and almost fifty Shogun frigates. The fleets spaced themselves out into two waves. A brief surge of acceleration as the battleships as well as around charged the escorting fleet with reckless abandon, alternating their weapons systems as they targeted down the escorts, yet avoiding the Wrath herself. Hardlight beamers, torpedoes, RKKVs and mass drivers. All of them fired off as their escorting gunships swarmed out.
The Mavens at the rear of the fleet, and the second wave of Shoguns were making a more sedate approach at the rear of the formation. A tactical plot of the Wrath of Sallag appeared on their screens as they began to compute targeting solutions for the lances. After careful study of the schematics and countless simulations they had derived a series of key points aboard the dreadnought which could be struck by Kayon lances. If correct this would temporarily disable the ship’s defenses without causing any critical damage.
GDAN Infinite Arrow (Modified Shogun class frigate)
The Blades stood in several lines, assembled in the ship’s small hangar bay. Even as the ship wavered slightly due to a maneuver, they were unmoving. Technicians were installing dawnstone power core amplifies into the microfusion generators in the middle of their backs of their power armor, and distributing hacking shivs to everyone involved. Khanyasa Habato, a tall Farrian woman strode up the row, adressing the leaders of each squad.
“Say it again.” She began astutely.
“Breach through the main hangar deck. Up the aft ventilation shaft, through engineering, disable the self destruct and divert power to jump drive.”
“Team 2.”
“Enter through the escape pod deck in section B-19. Through the engineering corridor, take the third left and cut through the floor panel. Capture the auxiliary bridge, pull levers two and five to engage lock down of the ship and vent all compartments.”
“Team 3.”
“Breach through the secondary hangar deck. Down through the garbage chute, cut through the wall near structural member F-44. Set up killbox between the main bridge and barracks facility.”
She turned to her own second in command.
“Breach through the escape pod deck in section A-3. Second Left. First Right. Into the officer’s quarters. Plant charges at structural members C-72, C-74 and C-77. This will cut off power to the auto-turrets at the entrance the main bridge. Back down the hall and storm the main CIC. Set jump coordinates to extraction point. 8552-3372. 9921-0312.”
“Good.” Khanyasa finished. “Rahbakun Parakos Luasu! Rahbakun Parakos Kragleosha Gauss!”
The troops reprised the chant, stomping their armored boots on the floor. Their helmets folded over their heads and the plates of their armor locked together as they made their to the ship’s bomb bays; retrofitted with advanced breaching pods.
Pobbma VI
The disappointment of the leading commander of the fleet, Admiral Karudema, was immeasurable when the lances missed, yet he had known that it would happen, it would’ve been too good if all just hit. After letting out a deep sigh, he shouted new orders over the bridge of his flagship.
“New orders! Transmit this to every friendly over an encrypted line! Urgency level one!” He said, as the bridge’s crew fell silent. The communications officer however prepared the messages, beeps being heard as he opened lines.
“We’re going to move into their interdiction field in order to destroy its origin. Target the interdictors and their flagships, only shoot the smaller ships once they reach the outskirts of our defensive grid. Keep the point-defence running! Do whatever you can to shut them down! May Greyas’ blessing help you gain the victory, Karudema out!”.
…
And just like that, the fleet moved forwards. First slowly, with a few destroyers slowly moving forwards, before fighters, gunships and drones followed put. They quickly accelerated towards the enemy fleet, weapons firing at the interdictors as they moved. Before long, the entire Furrelian fleet moved forwards as a single unit, moving ever closer to the Dominion’s fleet. The missiles which had fallen for the cyber-defence trap were long gone, easily picked apart by automated point-defence. Then, there was an abnormality. The otherwise silent Furrelian fleet suddenly started sending messages to the Dominion’s fleet, courtesy of the electronic warfare ships. There were two kinds of messages; The text ones and the voiced ones. The text-filled messages came in at tens of thousands at a time, each message being nearly identical, Furrelian propaganda intended on demoralising the enemy. Not only were bloody images of killed Dominion soldiers shown, but also images which depicted the Gaussian holy figures being killed, with the most prominent a video, skilfully edited, showing a Furrelian soldier shooting a bronze orb, which exploded. The voiced messages weren’t any better and came in the same quantities as the texted ones. On every radio frequency, the Furrelians knew, messages played. All were loud and either incredibly high pitched extremely low pitched, or both. This way, the Furrelians hoped to cause permanent hearing damage to any soul unfortunate to listen to the messages and to disrupt the Dominion’s communications. The stream of messages would continue for almost ten minutes, and by the end of it, the Furrelian fleet had moved so much forward, that it was now possible for them to efficiently use their heavy disruptors, which they did. A salvo of green streams of plasma was fired at the interdictors. This attack was followed by more irregular fire, medium-ranged combat had begun.
Pobbma VII
The Gaussian orbital strike was disastrous for one of the civilian cities, which had been used as a station to collect helium from the gas clouds. A shot of a Dominion cruiser punctured the main tank, which detonated in a gigantic explosion. The entirety of the city was enveloped in the explosion, and once the fireball had dissipated, a burning hulk was all that was left, its hull blackened and its systems failing. Fires spread across the main promenade, and as there was nobody to respond to it, the fires continued, consuming any survivors in it. This attack had seriously changed the game for the Furrelian defenders, it seemed like the Gauss Dominion had no problems with killing innocent civilians. This was the last straw for the almost a dozen platforms which remained. The final few hidden floating cities made themselves known after opening fire too. The unorganised defensive shots ceased for almost a minute, the commander gave new orders. The Dominion would know these new orders soon enough. After almost a minute of silence, the anti-orbital weapons started again, this time firing in organised salvos, all targetting a single ship. The ‘Paragon’. The salvos were targetted at what the Furrelians thought to be a weak point, the hidden carrier. One by one, salvo after salvo, was fired, without an end in sight.
Open space, near Pobbma VII
The five charged lances of the Wrath of Sallag, the Furrelian flagship, were still targetting the Paragon’s suspected core and were now ready to fire. Final calculations and adjustments were made, the route was cleared of any friendly ships, and the lances fired. The first one left a serious impression on the space around it, as it was bent with it. The tachyon lance emitted its bright aquamarine light, orders of magnitude more powerful than the one on the battlecruiser, and raced towards the holographic Paragon at more than a dozen times the speed of light. The first lance was followed by a second, a third, a fourth and a fifth, all being shot at another compartment of the suspected core, but in reality were all fired at different parts of the two dreadnought carriers, without the Furrelians suspecting that there was even a ship other than the Paragon there. It only took a quick while, but eventually, sensor readings aboard the Wrath of Sallag confirmed the presence of another fleet near her flank, a surprise to a few of the bridge’s crewmembers. But before long, ships were sent to intercept the Dominion fleet. One by one, weapon batteries came online and started targetting the battleships, with a lower priority given to the Mavens. Disruptor beams, fired from the massive dreadnought, were fired at the Dominion’s ships. This was quickly followed by more disruptor fire and a few salvos of missiles. Point-defence was kept operational, and before long, various series of small craft, as well as an army of drones, were launched from the massive hangars which the dreadnought held, creating a larger point-defence screen. The escort fleet of the wrath, by now, had noticed the dominion fleet too, and actions were quickly undertaken to take it down.
Of the two squadrons on the correct side of the dreadnought, one stayed in close formation with it, while the other raced to destroy the Mavens, the disruptors releasing their deep green glow as salvos raced to various of the Mavens.
Pobbma V
A part of the main defensive fleet had been in orbit of the planet, observing what was happening with the Wrath of Sallag. It would’ve been catastrophic if the pride of the Furrelian navy would be destroyed during the second battle of the war, and in order to avoid that from happening, rear-admiral Hinudamio took her chances and ordered her detachment, of around a hundred ships, to reinforce the Wrath, with further orders detailing how the ships would engage the enemy fleet. And just like that, the powerful engines of the strike force set sail for the Wrath, its light corvettes in front, and its heavy ships closely behind it.
Pobbma VI:
The fleet fell largely unresponsive to the attack. Even as every frequency was hogged by furrelian propoganda, video feeds and high pitched tones they simply alternated their method of communication. Only a handful of AI and dedicated communications officers even glimpsed these signals, largely dismissing them and simply diverting their attention to opening alternative communication lines and maintaining fleet coordination. Though a few individuals caught glimpses of the video feed it left them largely confused; as Kragleosha’s true form was not well known to the wider public.
The capital ships could continue to exchange critical information through their quantum entangled links. A handful of point defense beamers were set aside, firing rapid pulses off into the void. Codes which could be easily be intercepted, decrypted and understood, but ones which could be deciphered just as quickly by watching the movements of the formations themselves.
The source of the interdiction field was difficult to parse as several classes of ship were in fact responsible for its generation. Though as the prospect of close combat became inevitable the larger battleships and battlecruisers began to divert all available power to weapons leaving the smaller sentinels the sole targets. Six were destroyed by various means before the gaussians caught on to what their foe was attempting to do. The remaining interdictors fled behind the cover of drones and gunships, or behind larger ships.
Their strategem remained largely defensive, more of their energy focused on shielding the capital ships from incoming blows. Though an assortment of minor damages were wrought amongst the remainder of the ship, most other grievous damages were avoided. This distribution of power came at a cost to their offensive potential. Which outside of the third and final salvo of around a hundred guided RKKVs (now correctly reprogrammed to avoid decoys) was fairly lackluster.
With respect to what had been observed prior, mass driver shots came fairly slowly and hardlight beamers were fired infrequently. They chose to compensate for this by adopting a focused fire strategy; focusing on a few of the most aggressive ships in the enemy fleet and attempting to take them three or four to one.
The missiles fired previously, which had arced over the fleet seemed to behave strangely. A large percentage were destroyed by point defenses. Those that weren’t, still numbering in the hundreds of thousands carried on, traveling away from the enemy fleet on preprogrammed trajectories seemingly to a point in deep space.
Pobbma VII:
As the anti-orbital guns came to life the illusion came apart. The hologram warped, shriveling and warping as though the entire ship was molding like a forgotten piece of fruit; before the illusion disintegrated in its entirety. Drones and fighters scattered like angry hornets protrubed from a crushed nest. The ship’s cables snapped apart as the larger ships began to attempt to scatter away from the blast. But they had been forced to hold their position just a bit too long.
The beam skewered the tailing dreadnought carrier from stem to stern. A series of sequential explosions traveled down the ship, before a final blast erupted out.
The orbital defense platforms carrying the lion’s share of the work managed to destroy a second dreadnought carrier. The ship eventually breaking apart and left drifting on a sub-orbital trajectory. By now, the fleet above Pobbma VII was in complete disarray, and thus they began spinning up their faster than light drives and recovering their plethora of supporting craft.
Before their departure however their commander seemingly desired to leave a parting gift. The surviving ships rather aggressively discharged their entire torpedo loads and jettisoned the magazines into the gas giant. The missiles surged away. Unusually they seemed to be on an incorrect trajectory to strike at the Wrath of Sallag’s escort fleet, seemingly heading out of the system on an angle.
Near Pobbma VII:
As they began to engage with the enemy; they suffered dearly for their suicidal berzerker charge. One battleship promptly fell victim to the Sallag’s disruptor fire. Another fell victim to the fleet. A burning wreck unable to fully arrest its velocity it tumbled within a few dozen kilometers of the ship’s bow before disintegrating. The others were forced into desperate reactive tactics to ensure that the plan could go through, with one turning broadside, firing all of its weaponry and torpedoes in a ferocious blaze of glory, while taking numerous shots intended for the Mavens.
The other switched its mass drivers to flechette rounds and began to concentrate their fire on the drones. The shots were released with 11 of the 12 shots successfully deployed. Only faintly visible to most conventional sensors as a cone-like distortion and a dim lavender-violet beam which pulled on space itself like a plucked string; they would pass clean through their target, only vaugely interacting with it. The 12th ship catching several glancing hits which ultimately resulted in its destruction. Regardless, yet another grave discovery. Every shot was doubled up; there were in fact only six points which they had found and needed to target.
The dominion had one more ace up their sleeve; and now it was time for them to display their own proficiency in cyberwarfare. Their attack was directed at the Furrelian’s drones, hijacking the network used to communicate between drones using it to transmit gaussian transponder signals. This would in theory make every drone think every other drone was a gaussian craft, and thus they would attack one another. (This attack would also be deployed against the fleet at Pobbma VI)
Commodore Xiatol aborard the Infinite Arrow and had taken control of the ship’s thrusters. One of the most skilled astrogators the dominion had to offer; few others were qualified to flight the poviotal ship in the penultimate climax of such a major battle. The frigate class warship had maneuvering characteristics more akin to that of a heavy fighter than a battleship. As they watched the carnage unfold; mentally planning their run. This opening would never repeat itself; there was one chance to make the pass and deploy the boarding pods.
“Clench up those ass cheeks, its gonna be a rough ride.” They shouted over the ship’s PA system, before turning their focus soley onto flying. The flight of Shoguns barreling into the defensive squadron. One by one the escorts broke away. Either destroyed by enemy disruptor fire or peeling off to preform their own bombing runs. Before long Xiatol’s ship was largely naked of protection, with but a handful of fighters and a single pair of frigates protecting them, but Lined up to the enemy dreadnought. At their velocity, they would pass the entire length of the fifty kilometer ship in the span of a few moments.
Subspace:
The upper command staff; safely stowed away in the higher dimension waited with bated breath for the announcement that the boarding teem had successfully deployed. The galactic admiral worked her claws against the stainless steel armrest, unconsciously gripping it. She gestured to the display, shoving aside the video of the Furrelian solider destroying the orb. Even she did not understand much about Kragleosha outside of old historical videos, not even making the correct connection.
Capturing the Wrath of Sallag was their penultimate objective. Even if Khanyasa failed, the mere prospect of its capture would no doubt divert significant attention and resources away from the fifth and final.
“Phase two is sustaining heavy losses. They are requesting permission to withdraw.”
“Granted.” She returned audibly. “Now… we simply have to ensure their sacrifices are not wasted...”
Pobbma VI
Karudema looked upon his tactical display as the interdictors withdrew, reacting frustrated, before turning to his tactical officer. With deep frustration in his voice, he asked a question to the officer.
“What ship with a lance is the closest to the enemy fleet?”
-”That would be the Marude Disema, sir. She’s currently supporting her part of the fleet into combat with close fire support.” The officer responded, loud enough for his voice to be heard over the organised chaos of the bridge.
“Message her captain to change its target to one of their flagships, the rest of her squadron should continue their current orders. Now!” He said, and the officer quickly followed the orders he had received, quickly saluting the admiral, before running towards the communications officer, where he would explain the new orders for the Marude Disema, a large command battleship. A highly-secured order was transmitted towards it.
“Attention, on orders of Admiral Karudema, you are ordered to engage the closest command ship from your position with the dual spinal weapon. Engage at once.”
This message was received on the Furrelian battleship, which instantly moved to carry out its order. One of the two tachyon lances which it carried was charged and just seconds before it was supposed to fire, the Gaussian attack came. A mass-driver round penetrated the magnetic containment field of the tachyon collector, which caused the reaction to fail and the lance not charging anymore; with as consequence the front of the starboard side of the battleship becoming numb, failing all but the most essential systems. This weakness was so apparent, that a few other Dominion ships began firing there, creating gigantic holes in the battlecruiser, before eventually, the entire front of the ship fell apart, a final duo of RKKVs being enough to finish the ship permanently, its core failing and exploding in a familiar yellow explosion.
This, sadly enough, was the fate of many other Furrelian ships on the front line. Four were destroyed in the same style, a compartment was disabled by an EMP strike, a missile destroying a critical part of the energy grid, or a mass-driver round. Which was then exploited by Dominion ships, eventually resulting in the destruction of the ship. By now, the defenders noticed the incoming RKKVs, and were able to intercept most, a few hitting and disabling a few unfortunate ships, while one destroyer was outright destroyed. By now, the Furrelian response once again arrived. And once again, it came in disruptor fire. This time, most of the ships on the front attacked in organised salvos, a duo of ships would pick a Gaussian target, and continue to fire on it. On its peak, there were up to two dozen duo’s of Furrelian ships, firing at Gaussian ships. The missiles which were missed by point-defence initially were simply ignored, they would probably run out of fuel soon.
Pobbma VII
A victory for the defenders of Pobbma VII. The moment the hologram failed, fire was further intensified, but it mattered little as the ships were able to escape, much to the dismay of the floating platforms, but they laid their arms down and began to send emergency crews towards the struck civilian city, only to arrive at a city full of burned corpses. Up to fifty-thousand Furrelians lived in the city, and all were now dead. The few corpses which weren’t instantly petrified were given improvised burials, and before long the emergency crews began to fight the fires which were spreading on every level of the city, nobody giving any attention to the burning magazines which were falling into the planet like shooting stars, falling apart as they fell deeper into the planet.
Open space, closest planet Pobbma VII
The Dominion’s fleet sent to destroy the Wrath of Sallag was now suffering the consequences of trying to attack the ship, and the end was not coming close. The Furrelian fleet surrounding the Wrath was still continuing with its journey towards Pobbma V, where they would rendezvous with the fleet in orbit of that planet, but by now, medium-range communications made it clear that that fleet was moving to the Wrath’s fleet too, which massively decreased the expected time before the two would merge. But, it seemed like the Wrath would not arrive there on time. Most of the spinally mounted weapons of the Mavens had hit their intended targets, only one missing and hitting a disruptor battery instead, destroying it. The six targets were critical parts of the engine system, two control sections of the radiators, and a thrust control system. One by one, these systems started failing, and eventually, the thrust stopped, making the Wrath an armed sitting duck. By now, the Furrelians were once again changing their tactic, this time not by much. The two attack groups pushing against the Dominion’s fleet were taking hits, with a large part of the second group’s forces being destroyed in the suicidal broadside of one of the Dominion’s battleships, before the Sallag opened a part of its disruptor fire towards that direction, targetting the reactor. Shortly afterwards, a third attack squadron had moved towards the correct side of the combat zone, moving forwards from the Sallag’s aft. This third group targeted the Shoguns closing towards the Sallag, and opened fire with its point-defence. By now, some of the Shoguns were so close, that flak fire and some of the shorter-ranged disruptors began shooting at the ones closing into it, while the anti-ship missiles were being charged.
More parts of the defence followed put, but a part of the defence screen was suddenly completely wiped out. Around 20% of the point-defence drones patrolling the Sallag fell victim to the Dominion’s cyberattack, and suddenly started firing at each other. The fighter pilots flying near them could do nothing as plasma guns completely wrecked dozens of drones, while the unaffected simply continued their mission, quickly updating their radars and ignoring the drones in combat with themselves.
Open space, closest planet Pobbma V
The fleet which was located at Pobbma V had gained gigantic amounts of speed as they continued to accelerate, and by now, the first large ships began firing the first parts of their surprise. Inter-system missiles, each battleship carried a duo. Three of these battleships quickly let them loose, from where smaller navigation thrusters pushed it on a good course and their powerful engines instantly pushed them to ridiculous speeds. In-flight sensors adjusted the missiles as needed, and after a while, the missiles finalised their targets and put their final stage in effect, further increasing speed and preparing the warheads for their collision into the hull of an enemy battleship. The Furrelian fleet simply continued their flight towards the Wrath of Sallag, and it would take just a bit longer before they’d arrive.
Pobbma V
The defending fleet gradually began to embolden from their defensive posture. A rare opportunity to fight the Furrelians with equal firepower and numbers; perhaps even a slight advantage. As the opening line of battleships struggled their own warships began to place more of their focus on returning fire with their assortments of weapons and maintaining the focused fire strategem; while attempting to disrupt their foe’s efforts to do the same. Preforming this simply by a complex and seemingly unpredictable series of movements. Two battlecruisers and a battleship joined the casualty list by way of focused fire; and an instigator dreadnought had escaped complete destruction by the skin of its teeth as a squadron of artilleryships managed to cut off the attacking force.
The immense fighter and drone squadrons fielded in the opening moments of the engagement began to go on the offensive, engaging the escorts of the fleet in an effort to win out. Their formations lunged onto the enemy fleet like waves breaking on a beach. Outwardly they appeared to be virtually opaque clouds of craft dozens or even hundreds of kilometers across. In reality the formations were far more sparse and far more organized; their appearance and profiles augmented by holographic decoys. Uncountable missiles began streaking in from the clouds; some going after fighters and drones; others targeting down warships. Driving to saturate point defenses through sheer numbers they targeted weapons emplacements; working to clip turrets and cripple tachyon lances before they could be fired.
Quoe, who had been thrust into managing this battle such that Luss could concentrate on the important matters found this uncharacteristic of her tactics. The Galactic admiral seldom engaged in direct confrontations.
“A bad commander marches their men to their doom. A good commander works to preserve their lives at any cost. A great commander recognizes that in war, sacrifices are necessary.”
WOS Escort Fleet
The remaining two battleships crumpled. One finally gave way moments before an attempted ramming on a similarly-sized furrelian warship. Its exploding carcass missing as it tumbled aimlessly into deep space. The final warship stood in solidarity; absorbing fire on all sides. Her captain turned; seeing interplanetary missiles closing on his flank. He could have turned his guns to face them; fired flechette shells in a bid to save himself. But instead he seemed to recognize the futility of his situation and came to terms with his death. Instead opting to die a hero; letting off a final few shells to clear the drones away.
The missiles impacted; the final hammerblow to finish the ship off and its destruction was spectacular. A blinding flash and all that remained was a cloud of tumbling and half molten armor plates.
The Infinite Arrow was still closing, capitalizing on the disarray the escorting drones had been thrown into. One of her escorts caught a disruptor bolt nose-first and was reduced to a fireball shrinking away behind them. The disruptor turned to the Arrow. The first shot missed. The second tripped the shield; and the third glanced the armor leaving a molten gash along the ship’s dorsal side. As it made its final pass, the ship went into an aggressive roll.
In the mere seconds the ship had to make its pass the breaching pods were released; rectifying their velocity with explosive force and slamming with near perfect precision into their designated points.
There was no time to waste. Before the Arrow had even cleared the aft of the Wrath; the breaching charges fired. A searing explosive flash erupted from the exterior of the pod; followed moments after by vls tubes firing in canisters of trans-spectrum blinding smoke into the immediate area. Then came the sound of heavy footsteps battering the deck plates like automatic weaponsfire. Crescent blades bearing heavy power armor in a mad rocket-assisted sprint down the ship’s corridors; looking to cover as much ground as physically possible before a lockdown could be engaged. They knew of and had rehersed a myriad alternative routes to their objectives; vents and access corridors through which they could circumvent defenses or doors, but the route they had chosen was the most direct.
Their leader withdrew a hardlight blade. Drawing molten gashes across seemingly random points on the walls as she ran; malfunctions began to arise in startling numbers. Namely CCTV cameras and onboard defenses.
Outside the surviving shoguns raced away from the fleet escorting fleet; dropping the last of their ordinance to dissuate missiles and fighters that dared pursuit. Of the 49 ships that had particpated in the attack, only 25 survived. Steep losses even for the recklessley aggressive battle doctrine of the bomber frigates. They slowly began to arc around; and in concert with the surviving Mavens (now taking on heavy fire from the breakaway) began to spin up their drives in preparation for a retreat.
Pobbma V
The last of the ships managed to worm away. One battlecruiser was caught by the final salvo of disruptor fire, the front quarter of the ship sheared off in an explosion. By some miracle; the ship managed to transition into subspace anyway, abandoning its forwardmost section as it did. The following wave of disruptor shots vaporized what was left of the ship.
Deep Space; eastern side of the star system.
The two flights of missiles coasted for a bit, spending the last of their Delta-V on course corrections to bring the missiles onto an inward-bound velocity before their payloads deployed. They peeled open revealing MIRV-style launch bays containing smaller missiles. These shot off in two waves, the first flowering apart on a myriad of trajectories; while the second larger wave stayed clustered together. Their targets; the minefield.
Subspace
The tension in the CIC was so thick, one couldn’t have cut through it with a Hardlight blade. The constant reports of mounting losses; bearing witness to four battleships being torn apart in rapid succession. Until the announcement rang out on the loudspeakers; the boarding party had been successfully deployed. The atmosphere was replaced with premature childlike jubilation, officers clenching their fists with satisfaction. Luss exhaled as she watched the commodore’s ship represented as a tiny triangle streak away from combat on her tactical display.
She paused for a moment. It had been a long while she had met a situation such as this; one which had genuinely pushed her tactical planning and reactive abilities to the limit. A part of her reveled in the challenge of accomplishing such feats.
Pobbma V
The casualties continued to rise, especially at the frontline. Every so often, a ship would vaporise into a slug of orange metal after being hit by a swarm of missiles, disable the ship next to it, and like that disable a duo. Around twelve ships were disabled that way, creating gigantic gaps in the Furrelian defensive lines. Karudema, the Furrelian admiral, noticed this. As quick as a hole came, it was filled up by either a swarm of fighter drones or a ship. But the lines would not hold, especially not at this rate. His manpower was beginning to run short, and the first carrier quickly later ran out of its fighter complement. He needed to do something drastic in order to change the fate of the battle. And without careful consideration that could end in a disaster. Karudema was equipped to handle an enemy fleet, but not the levels of stress he was receiving. So, without much consideration, he gave a new order.
“May Greyas stand by my side…” He mumbled to himself, before clearing his throat and letting his deep voice spread across the bridge of his flagship. “Order an immediate and fleet-wide Malaradit. The target will be their flagship and any other large command ships they have. Do not fire until I have given the order.” He said, much to the surprise of the bridge’s crew. A Malaradit was an extremely risky tactic, in which Furrelian ships would temporarily cease firing their weapons at enemy targets, before releasing everything they have ready at once in a large organised salvo. Normally, this order was only given once there was no other hope, but Karudema seemed to be desperate. The order was carried out across the fleet, and that would be noticeable to the Gaussians. For almost five minutes, no weapons, excluding the point-defence and some of the lighter disruptors, opened fire. It seemed like the fleet had gone into hibernation, but before long, they came back, hard.
“For Greyas we strike deep in the heart of the enemy, and for our people, we fight. On orders of myself, Admiral Karudema, I order the fleet under my command to fire in a Malaradit pattern at the ones who stride against our people. Twelve salvos, one for each companion we have lost. Fire!” The order came, and the weapons followed. In a blinding flash of light, a vast majority of the fleet fired all their weapons at once, targetting the largest ship in the Dominion’s fleet. Even though the Dominion had disabled some of the weapons, a majority remained operational. Thirty seconds passed, and a second salvo came, this timeless destructive as the Tachyon lances did not fire. Still, the magnificent green light of the disruptors filled up space. Attacks like this continued for, exactly, twelve times. The first half was all focused on the Dominion’s flagship before the other six shots were fired at other large ships. But as quickly as it had appeared, it dissipated. The organised salvos fell silent, and it only took a while before the ordinary weapons fire, though less active than before, re-appeared. Some of the weapons were still cooling, which was a great point of concern. The incoming drones were, outside of the standard weapons fire, mostly ignored. Only a small part of their Furrelian counterparts was sent in to engage, which they did. On long-range, some of the gunships began firing their own missiles, before being followed by a small part of the Furrelian drones.
Open space, FDS Wrath of Sallag
Like an asteroid, the breaching pods slammed into the Wrath, penetrating the spaced armour time and time again. Eventually, after dozens of layers of armour, the pods penetrated the outer hull, and their mission began. The narrow halls of the outer parts of the ship gave barely any space to manoeuvre, but the Blades succeeded in escaping the compartment they landed in, which erupted into fire, not even seconds after they had landed. The ship-born Maintenance AI noticed this and quickly moved to depressurise the compartment, and the few next to it. Their doors locked down and the atmosphere was let out, but it was not fast enough to lock the Cresent blades inside of it. By now, the local security detachment knew that something was wrong, and after failing to connect to the local cameras, a state of emergency across decks 43-H through 44-L was announced, and the defences were brought online. The first one of those the blades would see came shortly afterwards, as before they arrived at one of the more important halls, a duo of automated turrets were engaged, opening fire with a by-now familiar green glow, while on the background armoured boots could be heard, the first soldiers of the security department had arrived at the scene, joining in with the turrets.
On the bridge, the reports of the attackers came in, and quickly afterwards the standard procedures for boarding actions were engaged. The section where they had landed, mostly dedicated to the storage of the ship’s Ancerium, had been locked out of any entrance, and its elevators, connected to other parts of the system, had shut down and followed with the doors, locking out too. The last remnant of the Dominion’s fleet sent to destroy the Wrath of Sallag continued to be targeted and the seemingly endless weapons fire continued its task.
Eastern Pobbma System
The missiles did what they were tasked to do, destroying swats of the minefield, some sections had to be taken out mine-by-mine, while some of the more unfortunate sections were destroyed in a chain reaction of explosions. A path was cleared for the Dominion to attack the inner planets, and the shipyards.
Pobbma VI:
Rather swiftly there became one obvious problem with the Malaradit strategem; that there was no obvious command ship. The Carrier-dreadnoughts serving as the next best thing and at 24 kilometers in length were far and above the largest ships in the fleet. Still an obvious choice.
A thousand bolts converged on the ship’s center of mass before any reaction could be coordinated. Explosions tore the craft asunder, working their way from stem to stern as bolts lagging a few moments from light lag continued to pour in. The final few simply sailed straight through the cooling cloud of gas and scattered debris. They then began to notice that there was almost no fire being levied in their direction. Admiral Quoe then gave the order for the battleships to advance into proper CQB, and began to draw out the appropriate trajectories on his tactical map.
A second full salvo. A second carrier destroyed. The dreadnought carriers had begun to reserve their energies, ceasing their suppressive fire. All the while the battleships and battlecruisers doubled down, surging forward into the enemy formation to engage in close quarters battles with the larger battleships while their foe busied themselves with the carrier. The swarms of drones and gunships moved in to assault the enemy drone and fighter formations. As they approached for their engagements the battleships and cruisers went into rolling maneuvers, a strategem designed to enhance the effectiveness of their armor, preventing disruptor shots from easily targeting the same sections of the ship repeatedly.
In this time, two more of the dreadnought carriers had fallen. Only when they got to the fifth did they encounter any resistance. As the shots came down the hardlight shields flashed to life, surrounding almost the whole of the ship at once. Teal blue plates defied the volley of fire; at least in part; working faster than any of the commanders to perceive to regenerate where needed to intercept the volley. At the conclusion, as the blinding flash faded the ship remained. A few shots had managed to work their way past, and the ship was utterly depleted of its energy reserves. Thirty seconds was not enough time to replenish them, and the following volley annihilated the ship in much the same manner as the first four. This pattern proceeding to repeat with the remaining four carriers until the twelve volleys were spent.
Quoe likened the tactic to a martial artist throwing a dozen back kicks in sequence. Insanely powerful, nearly impossible to block. But predictable, and they would leave the enemy vulnerable. The best defense… the best way to assure no more lives and material would be spent was a strong offense.
WOS Escort fleet.
The scattered survivors began to make disorganized transits into subspace. Disruptor fire taking down two more maven class ships before they could make the jump. Now the success of this side of the operation fell soley on Khanyasa’s extended team.
Team 3 were making their way into their positions as they heard the stampede of troops flooding out from the ship’s barracks facilities to counter the boarders. Having drilled their likely routes to the source of conflict they set up killboxes at various choke points. The narrow corridors of the ship would play to their advantage as the plans called for immense barracks facilities but only a small number of enemies could fiesably engage them at a time. The doors began to lock down.
The first bouts of combat began to open up as a tiny spotter drone identified the targets. A war droid raised his shoulder mounted RPG launcher. Around half a dozen rounds were ejected from the system; arcing around the corner on tiny reaction thrusters before bolting forward on its main engine and bursting open into a shower of microflechettes. The first wave promptly perforated in a grizzly manner. They had plenty of rounds to spare; From there it was merely a matter of supression.
It seemed as though it would be easy, but it was not. Their strategem had to account for the fact that in a ship this large there were many routes and they had to cover all of them for as long as possible. ESP drones and laser tripwires were deployed to every corridor to keep tabs on movements such that they could reposition accordingly.
Team 1, with Khanyasa leading the charge arrived at the turrets. A War droid was the first to meet their fire, bolting back behind cover as soon as it was hit. Several holes rimmed in molten slag adorned the machine now lacking an arm. Yet it still clutched a rifle in one hand and stood dutifuly.
Theyd anticipated some unexpected resistance. Minor corruption in the plans or simple upgrades to the ship. Khanyasa readied a grenade, hurling it around a corner. A flash and a burst of technosmoke obscured the corridor. She stepped into the open and raised her rifle as disruptor shots from the blinded turret continued to sail past. Two tacitful shots through the smoke, two explosions from anti-armor rounds and the guns fell silent.
They continued their advance. Lockdown had been engaged, and they weren’t yet in position. Their next obstacle; a bulkhead. She readied her sword, intending to merely carve through it as quickly as possible.
“Alternate route D3! Come on!”
The troops took off, turning left while a handful of her squad went right to the officer’s quarters. They were in fact already on an alternate route. The only reason they had encountered any turrets. This was a further permunation, but one which would ultimately lead them to their objective. Convoluted in routing but momentum was preferrable to efficency. Arriving at an elevator shaft, she began to dispatch the door such that they could descend deeper into the ship.
Team 2; comitted in engineering were deployed into the Ancerium storage. The great dreadnought clearly a glutton for FTL fuel. The engineering crews stood little chance against the blades, barely registering as a nuisance as they continued their stampede twoards the ship’s heart. Dedicated security forces and the interior turrets along their route proved more trouble than they were worth, able to break their momentum even if momentarialy. The presence of automated turrets caused them to engage one of their alternate routes. A conduit which transferred Ancerium from the storage to the ship’s FTL drive and a maininence tunnel ran alongside it, letting out near the main engineering compound where their objective lay.
Space; Eastern side of the system.
More subspace transits rang out with the announcement of the fifth and final phase of the attack. Another attacking force stationed near the hole they had opened. Paltry compared to the fleet at Pobbma VI; only four battleships, eight cruisers and four carriers. Torpedoes were fired into the system and a comparatively humble drone swarm was produced. Sentinels continued to drop in off the rear of the formation and deploy interdiction creating a long, gangly corridor of space now inaccessible to faster than light transits off the rear of the formation. Their point defenses began to fire off seemingly at random low power, identifying the tiniest flecks of debris or micrometeorites and clearing them away.
At the far end of the formation the eight omniscience command ships made their transit. Evidently heavily modified, as their weapons systems had been removed; a minimalistic armored plug seating in the hardpoints. At their rear large geodesic armored tanks had been affixed around the engine rings. One such ship was Luss’ temporary command ship. Of course her avatars were scattered throughout the fleet and back at Assiduous. Two in fact, had fallen victim to the Malaradit strategem. Suffering a painless and instant death as the avatars were reduced to hot gas.
“Exit vector established.” A commander returned. “We are ready to normalize for outbound trajecotry.”
“Alright.” She began, stripping off her decorative robe to reveal a skintight pressure suit underneath and stowing it in a floor compartment. “Strap yourselves in and clench those ass cheeks; this little stunt is gonna exceed our inertial dampeners by quite some margin.”
Several officers snickered as they seated themselves in harnesses. Every control station rotated into a downward position with the crew on their backs.
For a moment there was silence. The engine ignited and the ship jolted forward. Even at full throttle and stripped of its weapons system the eight ships appeared rather sluggish under their standard thrust; as though their drives carried vastly more mass than they would normally. The admiral initiated the tank injectors manually before a relativistic velocity calculator took center stage on her display. When the injectors ignited, streams of deuterium and tritium shot into the exhaust plume of the ship. Wrapped into the magnetic bands of fusion plasma the engine surged into overdrive; like an immense afterburner. The inertial dampener shifted into canceling nearly all of their forward acceleration, but it was woefully underpowered for such immense acceleration and the crews were forced back into their seats.
Pobbma VI
A loud cheer came in on Admiral Karudema’s bridge. Every time the report of a ship that had perished from the Malaradit, the bridge crew would jubilate, and understandably so. They were put against, what they thought to be, a superior force, and came out on top. The mood remained positive for a while until the dozen salvos ended. The majority of the Furrelian ships, by now, had temporarily run out of their disruptor energy reserves, and they needed to reload. This time was used by the Dominion to attack the Furrelians, and the Furrelian response was inefficient. Only a small minority of the ships were able to still fire their main weapons, and only a small part of those was large enough to counter a battleship surging towards them. The first response came in swarms of fighter drones and gunships. These were not sent towards a particular target, instead, the squadron commanders were allowed to pick the targets they wanted to disable themselves. They worked with the Furrelian Priority system. Large targets are to be disabled before the smaller ones, the first compartments you should hit for are the Engines, the Weapons and any radiators which are visible. After that, structural supports are your targets. went the quote, and the commanders of the squadrons did exactly that. On one Dominion battleship, a group of four squadrons each picked their own targets. However, the majority of the drones and fighters were still at the frontlines, and now the Dominion’s counterpart was too. As the two clouds of drones collided, the inside became incredibly hectic. Furrelian drones raced to shoot down their Dominion counterparts, firing disruptors and missiles as they went. Their casualties slowly rose, and it wasn’t too uncommon for drones to get lost by accidental friendly fire. Back at the main fleet, however, the combat was spread out less thick.
Dominion battleships would often find themselves firing at ‘mute’ targets, as they could simply not fire back yet. Yet, once in a while, a Furrelian ship came back into commission and fired at the dominion ship attacking it. In most cases, this response came in missiles, before the disruptors came back into power. Yet, for other ships, it was too late. Their core exploding in a gaseous yellow cloud.
Open space, FDS Wrath of Sallag
The Landing party on the Wrath of Sallag continued to face stiff resistance, but yet gained ground, slowly. Team three had the bad luck of being the first to encounter the security detachment, which was assigned to the deck they were on. It was, however, easily taken care of. The rockets fired from the war droid were efficient in taking care of the group of Furrelians. For one moment they were there, and the next they were a minced pile of meat smeared against the walls. The once bright white walls were turned into a deep red, and the footsteps fell silent. The smaller hallways of the outer compartments worked against whatever favour the Furrelians had, and had been the demise of at least four Furrelians. As team three continued to push further inwards the Wrath, the fewer choices for routes they had. In the end, they were confined to a single hallway, and at the end of it, the door to the main walkway of Deck 43-K. At the end of the hallway were two turrets, and both of them started firing as soon as the Dominion team was detected walking into the hall. On the other side of the locked door, a group of Furrelians had arrived to ruin the days of any that passed the locked door. One of the soldiers had brought a heavy surprise, a heavy disruptor rifle.
Team One had succeeded in disabling the turret and were now allowed to continue. The group which went to the Officer’s quarters would find it almost empty, as there were no officers at the location. A minute after the Blades had arrived, however, this would all change. The Furrelians had sent another security detachment, and opened fire on all those in their way. These security officers were better equipped to handle with the Sabres than those who encountered Team Three. For one, they, just like the Dominion soldiers, wore full body armour, which protected them more than before. They also initially targetted the droids first, before going to trying to kill the actual soldiers. Those at the elevator shaft would find it basically impossible to open, unless they had the time to do so. The doors of the elevators were locked shut, and the elevators themselves were placed at such a height that neither the open shaft nor the cabine could be accessed. This would probably not be the priority for the Gaussian soldiers however, as turrets in the hallway engaged and began firing.
Team Two probably had most of the luck, as they were able to reach the conduit they needed. The Maintenence tunnel was extremely narrow, and only slowly could the blades crawl through it. However, once on the other side, they would not have the same luck as before. The main engineering compound was put under an even stricter lockdown, and even though it would be possible for the Gaussians to enter the compound, it would almost be impossible to reach either the core, FTL drive, or any control centre for those two, as the blast doors, supposedly able to survive an FTL drive failure, were locked down. Locking the two rooms away. And then came the problem of the security detachment, which was among the largest on the ship. Whatever Team Two was about to do, it would be difficult to do so without casualties on either side.
Eastern Pobbma System
The incoming fleet was given no more attention than required, specifically as it was way too small to counter any of the main Furrelian fleets, and it was terribly out of position to fight the fleet at Pobbma VI. The drone swarm was the first thing that alerted the main control at Pobbma II, and it was decided to keep an even closer eye on the Gauss Dominion’s task force. The loss of the mines at that position of space didn’t prove good news either. The incoming missiles were detected, and slowly but surely began to be intercepted by a few scattered point-defence platforms. Only a small part of the small and nimble missiles sent were actually shot down, but the route wasn’t done yet, and there would be plenty more opportunities to strike them. However, the same wasn’t the case for the Omniscience class ships. Those being the largest were picked out for long-range weapons fire. The first came from small weapons platforms, large Disruptors had been attached to asteroids, and were turned into traps. Deeper inside the system, a hidden asteroid base was able to launch some Sublight Anti-Ship missiles, which began racing towards a few of the Ommnisciences.
Eastern Pobbma System
“0.19c.” The display read as the ships continued accelerating. Then a disruptor shot sailed through. The shields didn’t flare as the ship was placing all power into its engine’s accelerators. Striking the starboard hangar bay a payload spilled out. Lead pellets coated in vantablack spilled into the void by the billions, an expanding shrapnel cloud tumbled away from the ship. Yet it was a meager hint as to what could have been had the ships reached their maximum speed. As more shots found their mark along the ship some struck the deuterium drop tank on the rear. The explosion tore the rear of the engine apart, and the force had been reduced to seven.
The galactic admiral saw the ship’s transponder go dark, the holographic diagnostic flick from blue to red. She also saw missiles being caught by interceptors and point defense fire laid down by the sentinels along their vector. She knew in that moment she was in too deep; perhaps she had underestimated their reactive tactics, and there was little hope that the remaining ships would find their mark now that the enemy knew what they carried. Wasting lives on a deception which had been revealed was not something she could afford to do.
“Break off the attack, detach drop tanks and payloads! All fleets, Full abort, full abort, get us the hell out of here!”
The Omniscience class ships detached their drop tanks. Dispensers unfurled from their hangars as they released their full payloads. They were immense industrial cylinders of titanium containing uncountable lead pellets and a small chemical explosive; released and the ships broke from the charge. She had intended to only release them only upon reaching the cusp of lightspeed, rather than the far more meager 20% of lightspeed they had managed in the short time they had. Regardless a slow moving and sparse shrapnel cloud striking the yards was vastly better than none at all.
With that the sentinels began to drop their interdiction and bring their drives to power. The forward fleet which had discharged their missiles did the same; the manned fighters looping back around for an emergency recovery while the drones stayed behind.
Pobbma VI
“Multiple contacts incoming.” Quoe’s lead technician replied… they’re trying to clip our wings.
The last few ships, vulnerable from their lack of power being tag teamed by cruisers and artillery ships or forced into lopsided engagements with dominion battleships orders of magnitude higher in tonnage and firepower. Quoe’s command ship was the one playing victim to the lunge of enemy fighters. Though the larger gunships were ready and in position, having never left their posting moved like a great wall between the flagship and the encroaching fighter swarms. Larger and more robust they were less hindered by a single missile or collision with debris. And on the angles that there weren’t gunships the defending battleship alternated its mass drivers to fire flechette rounds. Showers of tungsten or osmium spears which if fired and timed precisely could shear apart an entire wing of fighters in a single shot. And though they avoided any manned fighters, took little hesitation with shooting down a few of their own drones to handle the thickest parts of the enemy formation.
Only a handful of squadrons managed to slip their guard, managing a strike at the southeastern engine. Though the explosion of the antimatter missile salvo was not particularly spectacular, it seemed to have done enough damage to shut down the engine; and force the shutdown of the undamaged northwestern engine to keep the ship’s center of thrust balanced.
That was when the retreat order came in. Quoe hesitated, the farrian scowling at their monitor, finding a vindictive satisfaction in orchestrating the systematic destruction of the exhausted enemy fleet and avenging the loss of their supercarriers. But such emotionally-charged decision making would only lead to more loss of life. The officers began to order a general withdrawal, with manned fighters and gunships taking priority for recovery. They did continue attacking the enemy ships, but in a manner more tempered that allowed for the charging of FTL droves and the recovery of a fighter. The surviving supercarriers jettisoned their improvised drone launch racks to take on the extra gunships and fighters orphaned from the carriers.
The millions of remaining drones unable to fit and separate from their commanders were programmed with new paramaters. Their self-preservation modifier dialed back making them nigh suicidally aggressive. Now, the only thing they even somewhat respected was the dominions IFF tags and programmed with an order to the shipyard.
Wrath of Sallag
Team 1
Team one reached the desired location, placing charges on some seemingly random walls and detonating them to sever power to the bridge security, only to find more security closing on their positions. With the security system disabled they could fight a tactical withdraw straight to the bridge. As their enemy now bore actual armor they switched ammo types to armor piercing rounds. Miniature shaped charges designed to punch through powered armor were now the weapons of choice. Their intel hadn’t listed proper powered armor but the force felt there was no such thing as being over-prepared for such an operation, and such rounds would service them well against heavy body armor.
Khanyasa had identified that they were attempting to strip off their droid escort and intentionally left them behind. Stalling the security with droids while they pursued the true objective. Some of the droids made blatantly aggressive assaults. One stepped into the open, marching clear of a smokescreen only to catch several disruptor shots. It hinged over, keeping its feet magnetically locked to the floor. It rose back up, like a mummy rising from its sarcophagus riddled glowing orange holes left by disruptors; releasing a few more bursts of fire before succumbing in earnest.
The force now arriving at the final line of defenses surrounding the bridge was much smaller and more mobile. Stripped of a majority of their supporting droids it comprised a dozen individuals with only one or two suviving machines apiece. The defenses should have been offline, but in an effort to be sure a holographic decoy was sent ahead a moment before the main force made their advance.
Team 3
Team 3 had wholly anticipated the heaviest fighting and take the highest casualties. As their main duty was to contain the bulk of the ship’s defenders to the barracks by any means neccessary. In the close corridors the fighting was doomed to eventually devolve into a melee. Yet the squad leader wanted to abate that eventuality for as long as possible. Instead opting to expend their munitions. They too had stocked a sizable amount of AP ammunition for dealing with hard targets, and were keen on laying down rather liberal streams of fire to dispatch the armored guards.
Three droids went down in quick succession, falling to the mercy of the disruptor rifle. This provoked one of the blades to return fire, lunging out from cover shielded only by plates of hardlight he produced a small hardlight tanto blade from his thigh and hurled it at the attacker. Failing this he would lunge down the hallway, following an erratic pattern of somersalts and thruster-assited jumps to close the gap into melee range.
Team 2
The space outside the lead engineering compound was silent one moment and with the introduction of a single flashbang and technosmoke instantly devolved into a chaotic firefight. A few of the war droids carried larger anti-armor mine launchers. Firing off dumbell shaped missiles with small thrusters in all directions and no clear intended forward direction; the devices took a winding and convoluted route through tight corners and any gaps or vents present in the ship. These would be used to assail the defending turrets before a member of the squad ran fourth.
A rarity, this member was a Gare’darian. A veritable titan standing at almost three and a half meters, carrying four immense neon blue blades blades larger than a full grown man. With the cover of his compatriots he charged head on to the bulkhead. They had analyzed the schematics and found no roundabout method to an engineering. The head-on approach was the only option. Luckily they were relatively fresh in terms of equipment and suited to such an obstacle.
Pobbma VI
As the first Gaussian ships started withdrawing from the scene, the first Furrelian ones came back online, though the mood wasn’t as jubilant as some might have hoped. The casualties were high, especially among the fighters. The fighters continued to get more and more casualties, especially from the swarms of tungsten balls, and Dominion fighters and drones. Almost 1/4th of the fighters, gunships, and drones sent in had sustained critical damage, and 1/5th had been destroyed. The handful of squadrons that had been able to strike the command ship’s engine did not enjoy the victory for long, as it didn’t take long for the squadrons sent in to be caught up in the flechette fire, and were too picked apart. Karudema’s flagship, the Nisudole Monit, had regained power too, and immediately began organising a strike against the remaining Dominion ships. Five ships, the Monit included, began launching missiles in more organised salvos, and before long others started joining in. By now, the fighter squadrons which had sustained the most casualties were forced back to base, while the drones were further reinforced. Still, the Furrelian swarm was dangerously outnumbered, so to counter the Dominion’s swarm of droids. A few of the online ships began joining in with their own point-defence and anti-fighter missiles, while a few ships on the rearguard began launching cyberattacks against the wave of fighters. The majority of the attacks would penetrate deep into the system of the drones, before hijacking them and forcing the drones to self-destruct. Other cyberattacks had different goals, with some of the attacks only being targetted at certain drones, in order to send messages containing viruses, comparable to the ones used against the drones, back to the ships launching them, with the goal of hijacking and destroying those ships.
Open space, FDS Wrath of Sallag
Team one
The Armour-Piercing rounds, fired by team one, proved to be a difficult enemy for the Furrelians to counter. As they were hit, two of the soldiers screamed out in pain, falling down onto the ground with a resounding Clang, and remaining silent, face down. Others were just as unlucky, falling prey to the droids. Before even all the war droids were destroyed, the Furrelians had already moved further into the smokescreen and began laying down suppressive fire. The explosion which had cut power to the bridge had worked both in the advantage, and disadvantage for the Blades. The advantage was that the defences en-route to the bridge were disabled, resulting in safe travel towards the bridge. The disadvantage became obvious a few corridors before they arrived at the bridge. The only two access points were locked down, as a result of the explosion which was supposed to cut the energy to the bridge. However, the plan might’ve not worked as expected for one single reason; The bridge section had its own power grid, among others. The bridge had its own of basically everything. It had its own energy grid, oxygen supply, and many, many more. It was also among the hardest areas to enter, as it only had two access point with the rest of the ship. With both of them closed due to the sudden removal of energy to the defences, it would be impossible to enter the bridge. On the other side of the blast doors, however, the Furrelians took the time to prepare themselves for the battle to come, first off by repairing its own energy infrastructure, before getting the defences themselves up too. An emergency barricade was too installed.
Team three
The fighting with team three continued, and it was obvious that there would be no clear winner yet. The unorganised stream of disruptors continued to pour in, while the munitions fired by the Blades began to take their toll on the Furrelians. The blade closing into the Furrelians was met with incoming disruptor fire as he came, while one of the soldiers noticed what the lone Blade was trying to do, and quickly grabbed his own melee weapon, a large bayonet. He barely had the time to attach it to his rifle, and by the time he was finished, the Blade was extremely close. The soldier jumped forwards to meet the Blade, his bayonet extended and ready to stab the lone soldier.
Team two
The arrival of Team two to the engineering compound was faced with an organised resistance, which had taken casualties from the first missiles. The flashbang only affected the few soldiers who didn’t have their helmets on, but for the rest, the visor simply dimmed the light automatically, and they remained in action. The smoke was royally screwing over the organised resistance though, and the majority of the soldiers simply began laying down suppressive fire, to avoid anyone passing through the cloud. The Gare’darian, however, was a drastic change in the field of combat. The giant had impacted the morale of those first meeting him. Still, it didn’t change the fact that he was going straight for the blast door protecting the FTL drive. Officers handed out orders, and a part of the defenders opened fire on the Alien. Seven disruptors, one of those being a heavy repeater rifle, hammered the titan with everything they had. As of that moment, the Gare’darian was the greatest threat to the security of the FTL drive.
Eastern Pobbma system
Luss had probably released the billions of pellets too early, but rather some pellets than none. By the time the Gaussian ships sounded the retreat, they were at around a quater of the way into the Pobbma system. The missiles which were sent in first had all but been picked out of the sky, but the Furrelians didn’t know of the incoming pellets. Howerver, as they spread out further, the fewer were on a trajectory to the shipyards. Still, those ranged in the millions, and it could possibly hamper the yard’s activities for the years to come.
Pobbma System
Across the system, one by one, ships abandoned their posts as the interdiction wells dispersed, withdrawing with blue flashes into subspace. Over the next few minutes all that remained were floating half-melted slabs of grav-compacted armor and the occasional disabled drone or gunship where the fleets had been.
Drone Swarm
The drones carried on, taking the losses to the swarm while barely noticing. Some returned fire, protecting themselves from missiles, attacking fighters that dared stray too close or making lackluster strafing runs as they passed the fleet, but a majority seemed more focused on their primary objective. The hacking attacks proved a frustratingly slow method of controlling the swarm as the drones were completely isolated. Hence meaning any hacker needed to parse the correct access codes for each individual drone one at a time, handshake with the drone only for it to identify unauthorized access and self destruct. If not by command of the enemy but its own volition.
Subspace
The galactic admiral scowled. Her plan had fallen to pieces. At every juncture their intel had been incorrect or incomplete. She frantically identified the shortcomings of the plan. Insufficent sensors to identify the defense platforms on Pobbma VII… the enemy were probably using high level stealth. They’d also failed identify the defenses that had stopped the flak screen from being deployed… though that was more understandable. Concealed and powered down asteroid defenses were a common method used by her own people. Still, such weapons should have been identified and destroyed by the sentinels guarding the corridor. Her failure had possibly just cost them the war. No… every war was won or lost before it even began.
She gripped the armrest of her command chair, kneading it with her claws. Anger came over her like rolling waves, each one harder to resist than the last. The scattered reports of successful retreats and damage reports rolling into the back of her head through her neural lace. As the ships withdrew her mental image of the battle, conjured by a million electronic eyes began to grow warped in time and positioning; with a lack of communication and information. Drawing a deep breath, rationality returned.
She stole a glance at the series of two dozen wedge shaped ships. The only grouping which was still not racked with red pulsing indicators pointing to damages or depleted power systems.
“Order the monitors above and below the ecliptic to redeploy at on my mark. Get me the third reserve squadron, order them to reposition and line up for a pass at the yards.”
“Admiral…” Her first lieutenant began. “That’s suicidal.”
“Maybe. But I assembled these frigate squadrons specifically as rapid response for circumstances that I did not anticipate. The drones and the flak wall will converge on the shipyard at roughly the same time… something I did not anticipate. They’ll be forced to respond to those, and they’ll be lured into a false sense of security thinking that the battle is over.”
Wrath of Sallag
Team 1
“Fuck!” Khanyasa hissed.
“What’s our play?” One of her squadmates asked.
“I’ve got an idea thats just stupid enough to work…”
…
From the perspective of the guards there was a quite grizzly altercation going on further down the hall and around the corner; just out of view, one which had disabled the CCTV in that sector. (In truth they’d just picked up a couple of disruptor rifles and were firing them off wildly.) The combat continued for a minute before a holographic illusion made its way around the corner. A handful of Furrelian medics carrying wounded soliders away. One clutched his bleeding throat. Another had a badly mangled leg; and another didn’t appear to be seriously wounded but was having a mental breakdown, weeping for his mother. As they were ordered to halt by the guards and asked to present ID, Khanyasa hurled a high yield concussion grenade around the corner and into the middle of the barricade to disrupt the formation.
“I’ve got your clearance right here…” The medic returned in an undisguised baritone robotic voice produced by his armor’s external microphone as he reached around seemingly to present an identification in his pocket, but instead returning with a submachine pistol in one hand a plate of neon blue hardlight on the other. Though still externally appearing as a medic hoping it would buy him a few seconds of hesitation from the automated turrets and guards.
Team 2
The Gare’darian growled as he took the first few hits. The armor on his leg gave out, causing him to collapse onto his knee. He felt little pain; offset by a cocktail of painkillers and other drugs. But still knew he was gravely injured and if he continued to take fire, it would be his undoing. His helmet was struck by a blast. Damaged and blinded he tore it off; exposing his face; one side burned by heat and radiation that had bled through the armor. He let out one final bestial roar before crumpling over on his back. His massive swords deactivated and fell to the floor. Rivers of molten metal ran from his armor; which was cratered like the surface of an asteroid with disruptor impacts.
His comerades raced past him; the first of which kicked the cut section of door clean, raising plates of hardlight to block fire. In an effort to maintain their momentum they simply abandoned his seemingly dead form at the door, spilling in and continuing their assault on engineering. A pair of war droids stayed behind a few moments longer, covering the squad’s rear flank before they too retreated through the opening.
Though it wasn’t immediately evident, the Gare’darian took slow, shallow rapsing breaths. Barely clinging to life.
Team 3
The situation outside the barracks was deteriorating rapidly. The lone warrior charged with defending the corridor quickly becoming overwhelmed. Exchanging to the last clip of munitions he had he continued to suppress fire while the war droids; having fully spent theirs went into melee engagements. One managed to grapple a Furrelian, outweighing him two to one; the engagement was woefully one sided as he was flung into the wall by the machine, caving in the plate and causing a plume of steam to erupt from the wall.
He turned his attention to another corridor running parallel only to see the pair of droids intending to cover it had been destroyed and troops were rushing past. He lunged into the fray, blitzing a dozen with his sword in under a second. But before his chain of melee attacks could conclude the warrior caught a disruptor bolt to the shoulder. He fired back, only for his weapon to give an electronic beep that it was out of ammo. A second shot, then a third and his arm dropped from the shoulder socket. Frantically he exchanged his sword for a disruptor which didn’t fire. Seeing this he simply hurled the gun like a shuriken with such inhuman force I bisected his assailant.
He took cover in one of the officer’s quarters as his armor did its best to medicate the stump of his missing arm.
“Damn it!” He shouted, reaching around the corner with his remaining arm to get his sword which was nearly out of reach. Stealing a peek around the corner to see that nobody was coming; at least at the moment. “Can anyone hear me? What’s taking so long?”
He could hear more boots coming, gripping the sword with his one remaining arm he prepared to make a final stand against the enemy.
Pobbma System
The retreat had finally arrived, much to the please of the control on Pobbma II, but they knew the battle wasn’t over yet. The drones could form an issue later on, and there were still ships over the system’s poles. The fleets near the main drone swarm found out, rather early, that the electronic warfare was not working out, so they came up with an alternative; EMP weapons. The Furrelian fleet changed from using their electronic warfare, to the lasers carried by almost every ship, which were primarily used as disabling weapons. One by one, ships started firing these lasers on the swarm, filling up the space between them with a show of gold, only often disrupted by a green bolt racing forwards. But, for time being, the control over at Pobbma II was kept on high alert, as was required of any Furrelian institution which had come under attack. At least 24 hours had to pass before they could go back to normal alert, just in case an enemy fleet, concealed in another system, decided to take a shot at attacking the colony. But, it seemed like the Furrelians had won this battle. The Defence of the system had remained intact, and even though in some sectors there were considerable casualties, it seemed like there would come no second attack. All that remained now was the Wrath of Sallag. A giant which had fallen still, its engines destroyed by a trigger-happy Dominion fleet. If the Wrath survived the battle, it would’ve been a full victory. A single message was sent from the flagship of the Pobbma VI defence fleet to the command at Pobbma II.
“All is clear, we have won in our sector. However, the drones are still here, requesting support.”
…
By this time, the first point-defence platforms on the original trajectory of the fleet of four battleships had begun noticing abnormalities in their sensors. Almost as if a large swarm was approaching, and this time, that was exactly the case.
A swarm of tens of millions of small pellets were heading towards the yards. Just in time, the crews of the larger platforms began transmitting warnings to the yards. By now, the first automated platforms began firing at the shrapnel, rapidly launching hot plasma towards the swarm. The sensors, though a bit lacking in the details of the pellets, gave enough details to organise some firing, and that was enough for those platforms. They fired with hundreds of Point-defence bolts at once, lightening the sky in the system once more. The shipyards, even though still hours away from the conflict zone, had already prepared anti-debris defences, glorified point-defence guns. The defence against the pellets was going alright, but not perfectly. Once in a while, a Point-defence platform got taken down, by the pellets it was supposed to defend against.
Open space, FDS Wrath of Sallag
Team one
Team One had run out of luck. If they had hoped to integrate with suspicious people, they should’ve done their homework better, as what they did only worked against their favour. The grenade thrown into the barricade only caused minimal confusion, as the majority of the troops were well entrenched. The blue weapon fire, something clearly not belonging to the Furrelians, however, was the final straw. The second the first commander noticed it, he shouted an order over the barricade.
“They’re not of us, they’re Gauss! Gun them down!”, and even though some sections of the barricade hesitated opening fire at first, a large section did, making it impossible to enter the bridge area. Its only point of access was where that barricade was, and it was filled with disruptor fire. A maelstrom of tints of green rushed towards the ‘Furrelian Medics’, who by now had become clear to be dominion impostors.
Team two
The Furrelians were, in fact, so paranoid, that even after the Gare’Darian collapsed, they continued to hammer him with disruptor fire. But, by then, the attention was diverted to another target, the Blades passing behind the creature. As the Dominion soldiers passed their fallen comrade, they were continuously bombarded by disruptor fire, but eventually, the attention was put to the war droids…
On the other side of the door, however, all hell broke loose. The automated turrets in the section of the FTL drive had not been disabled, and to give the blades a false sense of hope, they remained inactive until they passed, then it began. Two turrets, both firing at their highest power setting. Almost like a minigun, the turrets spew out deadly plasma, now in the all-familiar green glow. The FTL drive only showed its golden glow behind a glass wall, the blades were so close, but they could not access it. The two operators in the operations room spectated as the guns opened fire. So much for a Faster-than Light drive.
Team Three
For a lone soldier, the blade showed courage. But his courage would be the end for him. Two of the dozen soldiers he had cut down had died, and many others had been injured from either his weapon’s fire or his sword. As the soldier was pushed back into the officer’s quarters, and the Furrelians were not going to lose any more lives to a single soldier, it was decided to simply terminate the soldier and the office with it. One Furrelian officer ran towards the barracks, having the grenade he intended on using in his hand. As he passed the office the blade was in, he pulled the pin and threw it, a bumping sound being heard as it crashed into the ground, a beep followed. The bob was going to explode, no matter what. Before the officer returned to his frontlines, he quickly closed the door of the office, trapping his Dominion counterpart inside.
Bridge proper
Captain Werasik, commander of the FDS Wrath of Sallag was waiting on the bridge. Waiting for more reports regarding the boarding of his ship. He took a deep sigh before the first report came. Not good news.
“Sir! We have just received reports that the FTL drive control room has been breached.”
-”You don’t think…” Werasik reacted surprised, but quickly came up with a response. “Fuck…. Give the Call of the Righteous a notification. Request them to activate interdiction, authorisation of Werasik-D432-A-Tizolit. Any messages requesting the lifting of interdiction must be ignored unless given the correct response to my authorization code. Go!”
A minute passed before finally a warning was to be heard on a console. The ship was now in an interdiction field, it would not be able to leave the system.
“Let’s just hope they haven’t boarded the Righteous, now.” he sighed.
Subpace
The Galactic admiral watched for a few moments as the station engaged their flak cloud. Their drone swarm was being picked part long before it could close the range; their numbers quickly dwindling as the lasers came to power. The final nail in the coffin came when she saw interdiction drop about the Wrath of Sallag. Her worst nightmare, realized. They had failed at every objective and nothing to show for it but a half a million copy-and-paste letters of regret and a fleet of mangled ships limping back to Assiduous for repairs.
“The bomber squadrons are ready to deploy, madame.” Quoe reported.
“Hold them.” She replied. “I know when I’m beaten… no reason to waste more lives.”
The galactic admiral took pause for a second.
“Thats a general retreat order. All ships, set a course for Assiduous on my mark.”
The ships above the system’s poles departed as the fleet out set a solemn departure for home. As they left, she mulled over what went wrong, the chatter of the ship’s crew seemed to fade into the background. The crescent blades team should have jumped the Wrath by now… they had the plans and knew the ship inside and out. Their sentinels should have destroyed the gun which interrupted their run on the yards. She could take solace in the fact she had accounted for the fact… mentally and tactically prepared herself for the idea that everything could have failed such that it did.
Her mind continued to race, thinking of al the possibilites that could transpire from here. She knew the prime minister was banking heavily on her promise success, and without being able to promise that she would lobby for surrender. That was something she couldn’t allow, under any circumstances. And yet, it seemed inevitable.
Her brow furrowed. That was not a battle she would lose.
Team 1
Their diversion had failed. Caught out of cover the group quickly retreated back behind the corner. She winced, looking down a slag-rimmed impact mark on her stomach dripping blood and molten metal. Khanyasa’s had fallen to the weaponsfire. Ducking to cover a warning system indicated that Team 3 had failed to hold their objective, and everyone in that team was reported dead. And after their deception, she somewhat doubted they would accept any surrender.
She looked down, past a medical warning of radiation poisoning and moderate burns which she could barely feel. She set the armor to self destruct. The plating came apart; and she felt releif as she pulled away from the damaged midsection and scrambled behind a corner. A moment later her suit detonated. It was not a grand explosion; but enough to mangle key components such as the reactor, entangled uplink, sensors and medical systems beyond recognition and reconstruction.
She considered walking around the corner again. But on further consideration, realized that would simply get her shot. She had a much better chance of survival if they came to her.
Team 2
The resolve of the broke here as well. Those turrets weren’t present in the schematics. For all practical intents and purposes they may as well have been on an entirely different ship; and the turrets had proceeded to gun down a majority of their droids before they withdrew behind cover. When the reports of the other teams failing at their objectives came through they opted to consider a back up plan; wherein they would self destruct the reactor and take themselves with it. But the ranking officer of the squad had made up his mind, and his verdict was final.
A salvo of mild explosions as their suits scuttled, including the Gare’darian which they had abandoned prior. A few moments later; the half dozen soliders; now wearing nothing but the under suits of their powered armor, stepped through the hole they had made in the engineering bunker’s bulkhead, heads hung and arms raised.
Team 3
With the lack of ESP drones to spy the trap; and the lack of concentration on the part of the sole remaining combatant, the trap worked perfectly. When the explosive detonated; the warrior was flung against the opposite wall of the office. His helmet and leg mangled, and his face badly bloodied; and he was barely alive. His last will was that his armor suffer a similar fate to Khanyasa’s, save for the fact that he was still inside it.
Pobbma system
The battle was over; a Furrelian victory. The final dominion ship had departed, and by now all that remained were the drones, whose numbers were dropping. Even the cloud of debris had been taken care of, and only a single yard had reported damage. It was, all in all, pretty clearly a very humiliating defeat for the Dominion. The defence officer aboard the central space station put down his headphones, sat back, and took a deep breath. The battle had lasted for almost an entire day, and he had not taken a single break. The siege of Pobbma had been broken, and now the time came for repayment. The Wrath of Sallag had regained her own power, and had been able to continue her original journey towards the shipyards at Pobbma II, and many other ships followed the Wrath. The free yards were suddenly filled with ships requiring repairs, and though the repair crews first hesitated, they began working on them.
Wrath of Sallag
As the blades laid down their arms, it became clear that there would be no mercy for them. In total, forty-two members of the Furrelian force had been killed, and their companions were not going to take a beg for mercy as an answer. The leaders and simple soldiers were separated and carried away towards different sections of the ship. Soldiers to the brig, and leaders to the main cargo bay. As the ship regained its engine trust, it rushed towards the main space station, where, the normal soldiers were put off the ship, but not the commanders. Instead, for their ‘crimes’, it was decided to execute the surviving leaders of the three groups. Without even getting the last word, they were carried away to the airlock and thrown out.
Pobbma System
Three days later
The dust had settled, and normal traffic had resumed once again. The debris of the Dominion ships which had been destroyed was slowly being recovered for analyses, but it was unlikely that the crews of the ships were able to get any real data out of it. Within three days, however, the Wrath had been able to be repaired, together with a few other ships. Admiral Werasik was aboard the main station of Pobbma, looking down at the promenade. He had noticed something unusual, fifty minutes ago, a dreadnought had arrived, and he had recognised which one. The Unrelenting mercy, the flagship of the fourth fleet. If it was there, it must’ve meant that the commander of its fleet was there too, and he was right. Next to him, a tall Furrelian came aboard the station. He was wearing an Admiral’s uniform, and before long, Werasik noticed who it was. Risodemi Tarodema, Upper fleet-admiral of the Furrelian Union, and hero of the D’Karian war. It became clear to Werasik what the next event of the war would be. A counter-attack. Otherwise, Tarodema wouldn’t be there.
“…And that’s the plan. Any questions?” The Galactic admiral said sternly. A Hologram of the star system sat on her left, a hologram of the FDS Sallag on her right. A large group of command staff sat in a semicircular ampiteatre with their hoods drawn. For a moment it was silent, just the buzzing of the oscillating magnetic field designed to short-circut microscopic bugs.
“Very well…” She said making an about turn, walking away from the group. “This campaign will be costly. I do not expect this to be a clean and easy victory, but that is a sacrifice that each and every one of us must willing to make. Evolution does not favor the weak and unresponsive, and if our way of life is to survive, we must be prepared to defend ourselves through that most universal of methods. Violence.”
She turned back to face them. Admiral Quoe, her second in command for this operation was seated near the front. He nodded.
“And whether this war is the twilight hours of the Dominion… or we go on to live another hundred trillion years until the last stars burn out and the universe is plunged into darkness; we will be remembered as heroes until its end. Rahbakun Parakos los Dominion! Rahbakun Parakos Kragleosha Gauss!”
“Rahbakun Parakos los Dominion! Rahbakun Parakos Kragleosha Gauss!” Her subordinates shouted back.
“Everyone get to your ships. We depart tonight.”
Everyone Stood, bowed and left the room.
…
The Admiral had gone through a great deal of effort to obfuscate the true nature of her attack and some of the special modifications she had ordered for the fleet. Around a third of the attacking fleet departed Assiduous without much fanfare in a manner that made it seem like a routine fleet rotation with other major systems. Another third of the fleet was departing from the capital of Sinhipsue in the Tausangrool System, while the remaining third came in smaller elements scattered about.
The Galactic Admiral had formally chosen the Shoto, a modifided Instigator class equipped with Kayon lances as her flagship. Though in reality the Galactic Admrial had around a dozen avatars invested in this. Clone Bodies connected via a quantum entangled neural lace in her brainstem made each avatar just a physical body. In reality her conciousness was distributed across numerous biological brains and computer systems, and almost impossible to decapitate. Cutting edge and top secret technology, even by the standards of the dominion; reserved exclusively for her and a select few others.
Still she retained her more humanistic, mortal aspect. Taking a moment to gaze over at the leading sensor officer’s console. The sensor system doing its best to interpet the higher dimensional space; a mass of blueshifted light and vauge sillouetes of nearby ships traveling alongside them. Another avatar, on another ship gazed back. Pushing aside existential questions, she turned back to focus on the coming battle, mentally preparing herself for whatever was to transpire.
…
The Admiral had gone through a great deal of effort to obfuscate the true nature of her attack and some of the special modifications she had ordered for the fleet. Around a third of the attacking fleet departed Assiduous without much fanfare in a manner that made it seem like a routine fleet rotation with other major systems. Another third of the fleet was departing from the capital of Sinhipsue in the Tausangrool System, while the remaining third came in smaller elements scattered about.
The Galactic Admiral had formally chosen the Shoto, a modifided Instigator class equipped with Kayon lances as her flagship. Though in reality the Galactic Admrial had around a dozen avatars invested in this. Clone Bodies connected via a quantum entangled neural lace in her brainstem made each avatar just a physical body. In reality her conciousness was distributed across numerous biological brains and computer systems, and almost impossible to decapitate. Cutting edge and top secret technology, even by the standards of the dominion; reserved exclusively for her and a select few others.
Still she retained her more humanistic, mortal aspect. Taking a moment to gaze over at the leading sensor officer’s console. The sensor system doing its best to interpet the higher dimensional space; a mass of blueshifted light and vauge sillouetes of nearby ships traveling alongside them. Another avatar, on another ship gazed back. Pushing aside existential questions, she turned back to focus on the coming battle, mentally preparing herself for whatever was to transpire.
Pobbma II, Pobbma System
The winter had set in on Pobbma two, its snow-capped peaks cast a shadow over the cities in the valleys of the mountains, a thick layer of snow-covered everything. However, snow or not, the factories continued their operations. The planetary drydocks, each no larger than three kilometres, continued to produce smaller ships. Once in a while, a corvette, destroyer or even heavy cruiser took to the skies, only to touch down later at one of the planet’s spaceports. Others simply disappeared into hidden bases, deep inside the mountains. It had been almost three weeks since the battle of Luasu, and the fleet that had survived the Battle had touched down at the planetary drydocks. Some smoother than others. The D’Karesi, the second ship in command of the invasion, came down especially hard. When it landed, three weeks ago, it was little more than a burning wreck. The jump-drive had miraculously survived the jump towards Pobbma but violently exploded afterwards. Fire crews needed two whole days to remove the threat of a core breach, and four before they were finally able to extinguish all the fires. Its reconstruction became a local drama, as the city next to it received never-ending transports of hull plating, disruptor chambers or energy conduits.
The system’s governor, a tall Furrelian man who went by the name of Honumit Inema, happened to be at the main spaceport of Pobbma two when one of these transports arrived. A supply ship slowly touched down at the spaceport, raising the attention of the ground crew. Like ants, they ran towards the ship. The foreman located the ship’s captain and asked him to sign a series of documents. Meanwhile, cargo-crates were unloaded upon large platforms, which returned towards the main building of the spaceport, where they would be loaded upon convoys for the drydocks. The governor did not come for that, though.
His shuttle got permission for take-off, and slowly came off the ground, it floated for a minute as the pilot made his last calculations, and then flew away. A duo of fighters flew escort, but they withdrew back towards the military spaceport when the shuttle left the atmosphere. For almost five minutes, it silently made its way towards the station in orbit, before it slowed down for an approach. It landed at one of the runways, and the governor left for the briefing room. His identity was verified multiple times before he was finally allowed in. The long metal table was used as a meeting table and had multiple holographic displays installed on it. On its seats were major players in the system’s government. A few admirals and generals, economic specialists, representatives of Pobbma Shipyards and more.
“Give me updates, when will the Wrath of Sallag arrive? Is our defensive grid ready, and are the fleets prepared?” The governor said in a strict tone. One of the admirals answered.
“According to Admiral Werasik, his ship is scheduled to arrive somewhere this evening, Yard 5-21 has been prepared for her arrival, and this station is ready for the incoming troops who are going on shore-leave. So, if you want to get fresh Hinumets from the bar downstairs, you’d better hurry!” The Admiral said, the group chuckled for a bit, before he sat back down, and continued to speak.
“And for your other questions. Yes, the patrol fleet has been having test exercises with the grid the last few days, and are returning back to base today. Reports show that the defensive platforms are fully operational, as with the asteroid-traps. The minefield needs some expansion, but a construction ship is currently preparing to go there, so that has been taken care of. And for your last question; the patrol fleet is completely ready, as with the fleet at the yards. The task force stationed in orbit of Pobbma two is expecting a few reinforcements from Sallag, but are ready to pull-out on a moments notice.”
“Good,” The governor said. “We do not know when they will attack, but it will happen sooner or later, and I do not want to lose this system and her capacities to us being unprepared. May Greyas curse those who dare oppose us!”
“With our flesh and faith in Greyas we go into battle!” the group responded, it was a traditional Furrelian warcry, and it was probably never more appropriate than now.
Pobbma
The fleet loitered in subspace, shunted off from the pobbma system across a higher dimension and only able to traverse to it, to specific points through an elaborate series of calculations. Many of the ships they had been traveling alongside had faded from view, maneuvering to their appropriate positions. All that remained was a mass of blueshifted light and
“All ships take your designated positions… final check. I will send modifications as the need arises; do not deploy until you are given the order.” The admiral ordered.
“All ships signing off… green across the board.” Her comms officer returned.
“Alright. We are go for phase one. I repeat, go for phase one.” The Admiral ordered.
Six ships in total made the transit from Subspace; all of them Lucidity class, and all except for one arrived at their designated positions. The Lucidity bound for Pobbma-VIII had been interdicted and forced from low level subspace just short of its intended position, with the ships also arriving at Pobbma-V and Pobbma VI, with two more arriving far above and below the plane of the solar system at the poles of the star.
Immediately the ships had two priorities. From the moment they arrived they began a campaign jamming transmissions out of the system and attempting to listen in on those coming in. Old transmissions recorded from the days when the Penumbra had been stationed at P-5280 were broadcast over the jamming out to the neighboring systems, slightly modified to reflect current events and with up-to-date timestamps. The other priority was to scan the system for defenses and the positions of the standing fleets, especially pertinent for the ship bound for Pobbma-VIII which began searching for the source of the interdiction.
The only exception was the ship at Pobbma VII which seemed to have an altogether different goal. It had arrived on the far side of the gas giant and utterly unable to see the system in its entirety. As soon as it entered the ship began scanning the gas giant and its nearby moons with the upmost scrutiny; as well as searching for any furrelian satellites or stations that might have direct line of sight to the ship.
The Go’shii studied the feed of information, tabbing through various sensor feeds while analyzing countless more that were being downloaded directly into her brain.
“Where are you, you fat fuck...?” She mumbled to herself.
Pobbma system
The defence office on the orbital station had been busy. The whole day, they had worked on integrating new mines into the computer system. It was a gigantic task, and the Furrelians working on it were finally able to go to bed, as the day-shift took back over. The commander of the defences in Pobbma came to the office with a mug of hot fluid and took a sip of it. However, he almost spat it out as on the holographic map of the system, multiple alarms went off. Six red dots appeared all over the system, and upon closer investigation, showed that they were Gaussian ships. The commander knew that they were under attack and that it would just take a while for the rest of the enemy fleet to arrive.
“Get the command centre on the comms, urgency level one! We are under attack!” The commander shouted, quickly turning towards a console and opening a direct communications line with the second command centre of the system, a station in the outer interdiction ring. They answered the call.
“Incoming Gaussian attack! Weapons free, eliminate all the enemy ships which are already here! This is probably the scouting force, their actual force must show up later!”
“Copy that,” The commander of the outpost responded, he could be heard giving orders in the background, but the communications system was eventually closed. The patrol fleet, divided into small parts around the outer planets and interdiction ring, received the same orders. For the Ludicity which was en-route to Pobbma VIII, that was disastrous, as it jumped directly in between two unmanned defence platforms. Both directly opened fire, firing disruptor beams, bolts and missiles at the ship. This was the fate of many of the other Ludicities, the one above Pobbma V was targeted and fired upon by a series of orbital defence platforms, as was the one at Pobbma VI.
The three remaining Ludicities were each targeted by ships, but the ones around the solar poles were too far away for any instant actions, so they were left alone, for the time being. The cruiser above Pobbma VII did not find the Wrath or Sallag, or any other dreadnought for that fact. Instead, all it could find above Pobbma VII were weapons testing sites and a few smaller colonial cities in the sky. But before it was able to get a good look at those, it fell under attack. As with a majority of the other ships, it was picked apart by an unmanned defensive station.
Sallag System
“Attention Wrath of Sallag, your flight-path has been authorised, and you are allowed to jump as soon as you’ve been granted permission from Sallag Spa.aa…-” The communications array of the FDS Wrath of Sallag transmitted, with a direct connection with the shipyards in Pobbma. The message had suddenly been interrupted with standard background chatting in the middle of the conversation. Something that was rather unusual.
“Pobbma, we have lost connection. Can you repeat that please?” the communications officer said, awaiting a response that would never come.
“Pobbma shipyards, do you receive us?” the officer responded after less than twenty minutes, the captain of the Sallag, Admiral Werasik, immediately understood that something was wrong.
“It might be possible that these are pre-recorded tapes, and are simply intercepting their message.” He said to the communications officer.
“But why would they do that?”
“Maybe they didn’t… It certainly seems unlikely.” He said, thinking for a while before he finally responded. “Unless… They are being invaded, and these messages are being transmitted by the… By Greyas.” he said, quickly turning back to his own console and opening a communications line with the headquarters of the Furrelian Defence Service.
“Pobbma is under attack, I am taking my ship and her accompanying taskforce there to reinforce the defence fleet there!”
Pobbma VIII
The ship transitioned rather violently from Subspace. The ship had scant moments to react before it realized its predicament, beginning a headlong sublight burn to close the gap to the planet. A futile and ill-informed decision made by her captain in the heat of panic. Caught by a series of disruptors the first of which were arrested by the hardlight shields; though the latter absorbed by one of the engine nacelles. Normally the opposite engine would have shut down to prevent a disabled engine from throwing the ship into a spin.
In this instance that failsafe had been absent and the ship quickly began to spiral helplessley out of control. With several thrusters disabled it was unable to come about. It was one of the mines that finally did the ship in. The point defense system tried in vein to acquire a targeting solution under the intense spin, sweeping space in all direction with fading strings of hardlight. Catching the mine all too late the ship was struck in the underbelly; the explosion dealing immense damage to her. For a few more seconds after the impact the ship spun, shedding melted armor panels and scrap before the reactor detonated, scuttling the wreck.
Less than a minute after the initiation first phase, and the Furrelians had already scored a kill.
Pobbma V
The ship promptly made an about turn from the situation, spinning up its FTL drive as it did. However the admiral had a hypothesis she wished to test. In their data from the battle of Luasu they had noted that EMP weaponry had a serious effect on Furrelian warships and after piecing together the battle had apparently caused explosions as well one ship to go completely haywire and crash. Such behavior was not common of their own craft, where such weapons only had a temporary disruptive effect. Luss had hypothesized that their antimatter containment was possibly magnetic based, and that the pulse could theoretically disrupt this system long enough for the antimatter to come into contact with the walls of its container and lead to its destruction.
Hence she had requsitioned a high percentage of these torpedoes for her attacking force. There was still time before phase 2 of the attack began, and given many of the pieces were not in desirable positions; her descision to follow through with the subsequent phases of the attack hinged partially on confirming this hunch. Of the 180 torpedoes typically carried onboard a Lucidity Class, 72 of them carried pulse warheads, with another 72 being conventional skipper warheads and the remaining a mixure of more specialized types such as jammers or MIRVs. The entirety of the torpedo compliment was ungracefully dumped from the rear of the ship before the magazines themselves detached, buying them just a bit more acceleration. One empty magazine caught a disruptor bolt that otherwise would have connected, leaving a hole through the contraption rimmed in plasma. The few follow up shots connected with the rear. This discharged most of their shield’s power reserve but the ship itself remained undamaged.
The torpedoes didn’t have far to go to reach the nearest ODPs. The torpedoes fired their terminal phases early, almost immediately; as the ODPs were assumed to be largely immobile and unable to dodge the unguided terminal warheads in any timely manner. Single stage Orion drives propelled the warheads in for the kill at hyperaccelerated velocities.
Pobbma VI
The situation here played out nearly identical to the ship at Pobbma V. The ship was taken aback, though the ship here did not flip; simply reversing thrust (The Lucidity class was able to reverse thrust as quickly as it could move forward) and firing an identical salvo of torpedoes. Caught by a disruptor bolt the shield interpreted as a miss, a disruptor shot struck the main mass driver, disabling it. However the lion’s share of their resources remained stubbornly fixated on scanning, rather than prime themselves for any form of escape. They swept the planet with ground-penetrating scans in search of concealed missiles or other traps. They scanned the space around them, seeking the telltale signs of FTL transits; reinforcements ready to pounce. A thousand electronic eyes prying at the ODPs as the salvo of missiles bore down on them.
Pobbma VII
The GDAN Vigulant Conviction swiftly began to reverse thrust. Contrary to the others, it was confronted by ships rather than ODPs, and this played to their disadvantage. They, like the other two fired their full savlo, dividing it equally between their two attackers. A disruptor beam glanced the rear section of the ship shortly thereafter, destroying the main reactor before the ship could be scuttled. Largely disabled and running on the reserve reactor, they managed to arrest any form of spin or tumble but had little in the way of power to fight back.
Above/Below the system
The two ships stationed above and below the system took the lion’s share of the jamming. Looking down on the system they had a lay of the land as system defenses began to scramble. They couldn’t parse many of the finer details outside of the general outline of the two lines of defensive stations. Their FTL drives were being primed however, as their charade was not guarenteed to last long and the order to withdraw would come with the arrival of Phase 2.
Subspace
The Galactic Admiral scowled at the developments, one by one stations and ships rendered in throughout the system. They were much more fortified than she had anticipated, much more fortified than their dated intel reported. Clearly a great effort had gone into strengthening the system’s defenses since the onset of the war. The presence of the orbital defense platforms around the outer planets. The minefield and outer interdiction line. The mysterious absence of the Wrath of Sallag. All of these unexpected affronts to her plan. Each in isolation was not an insurmountable problem. Though together, they made her doubt the viability of her plans.
The Furrelians were vastly more prepared for this assault than she would have liked… and the more elements of her plan that were hindered or denied… the more of that there would be. Meeting might with might seldom amounted to anything other than a lot of wasted energies for both sides. The Dominion had only around 2,300 active ships. The Furrelians had nearly 6,000. If she was to carry on with her invasion she needed to know she could secure favorable trades.
She resolved that success or failure of the pulse torpedoes was to be the deciding factor. A gamble she had made when mustering her resources for the attack had been stocking every ship with a similar payload of such weapons. If her theory was vindicated, then she had a potent tool with which to inflict grevious damage. Otherwise, an overwhelming majority of her ordinance budget were now largely useless weapons suited mainly for disabling. A grevious mistake which would no doubt be disastorous if she followed through in the attack.
Luss exhaled as the sensor readings came in. Slowly and deliberately like a farseer monk in meditation. Her gamble had paid off… and she’d learned something else valuable as well. Those defensive platforms had difficulty targeting smaller ships. Of all the surprises her enemy had laid for her… the minefield… the second interdiction line… and the suspiciously absent Wrath of Sallag all wild cards uncondusive to her stratagem. But now, she had a surprise of her own to wield, and important intelligence on the weaknesses of the orbital defense stations.
She raised a finger, mulling over the decision just a bit longer. She was informed that the lucidity class ships that had been assigned to postings above and below the solar system’s plane were now making subspace transits. Meaning their jamming network would be going offline.
“Madame Admiral…” Quoe started. “The jammers have departed. We’re on the clock… we are about to pass the abort threshold.”
“Go for stage two, adjust position to 1/10th of an astronomical unit anti-radial from system barycenter and deploy as per your orders, engage random jinking maneuvers as soon as you get there. Reserve squadron one, transit as close as you can and clear out the ODPs.”
Above/Below the Ecliptic:
The ships transited away without much fanfare. Their jobs had finished and the jamming was abandoned in earnest, though they were bound to function as emergency reserves, recycled into the admiral’s strategem if needed.
Pobbma V:
Having charged its FTL drive, this ship also transited. A High powered bolt of disruptor fire; what would have been a killing blow shot past a moment before it could escape.
Pobbma VII:
For a moment the lone sensor cruiser was simply a sitting duck, a hapless pincushion for disruptor fire. Shots tore into the rear section of the ship. Explosions perforated it before the section came apart in its entirety. The crippled ship managed to sortie two of its four defense gunships before the back half gave out to a crescendo of explosions.
A squadron of a dozen Sentinel-class ships transited from subspace on the dark side of the planet, many of them quite near to the remains Lucidity. Moments too late to make the save. Immediately upon making they split up to execute different tasks.
Four of them began rushing to the aid of the destroyed ship at full speed in the eventuality that there were still survivors on board. The entire ship seemed to unfurl at once; aggressive volleys of torpedoes were loosed towards the two destroyers. The vanguard gunships deployed from their hangars while under full burn, forced to briefly turn about then accelerate to match with their mothership. Point defenses unfurled and came to power and the spinal mass drivers roared to life, loosing a half dozen shots each. With 22 torpedo magazines to the comparatively feeble 4 of the Lucidity class; the sentinels were confident (perhaps overly so) in their ability to win the engagement through their initial volleys alone.
The other ships split off to execute their assigned tasks. Four loitered about, spreading out and igniting jamming and close range interdiction. Just a few light seconds… just enough to keep anyone from jumping too close until they were ready. They two had deployed their escort wings and began to target the weapons testing facilities from orbit. The Admiral was quite confident that they were classed as purely military target and took little reparation for kinetic bombardment of the lunar testing sites; with a marked interest in eliminating sensor and communications arrays and preventing Pobbma VII from calling for help.
She didn’t want Pobbma VII to be the center of attention… and couldn’t have anyone in the system get the word out… at least until she was ready.
All the while the ships had sortied several dozen wings of fighters and drones. New generation fighters, more akin to their space borne drones and designed specifically to work in tandem with them. These fighters began making their way to the cloud cities of Pobbma VII. There was a very real possibility that these were civilian facilities and therefore any given strike had to be surgical. The pilots given orders to do no more damage than was necessary; dial back the yield of their weapons if need be. Their targets; communications and sensor relays.
Pobmma VI:
The weapons fired. The Lucidity, on a largely linear course was a sitting duck. The disruptor lance punctured through the ship from stem to stern. A flash and an expanding cloud of cooling gas; like a nebula, and the ship was gone.
For a few moments, silence.
A double-stacked squad of shoguns (48 in total) made a simultaneous transit not far from where the ship had initially arrived. The positions of the enemy defensive emplacements made known as the dying act of the ship’s crew. Immediately upon their transit; a mad scramble to eliminate the largest guns with their powerful ordinance. Some going after the orbital defense stations, some after the battleship stationed in orbit and some for the ground-based positions. Or so it seemed; with the entirety of their ordinance compliment having been replaced in their entirety with immense pulse munitions built to fit their oversized bomb bays.
A Squad of sentinel cruisers transited further out; about a tenth of an astronomical unit; affording them about a minute of light lag. A minimum needed to avoid disruptor lances and unguided orbital munitions. They began deploying longer range interdiction, pulling the larger ships from subspace. Each ship larger than the last. The official roster of the invasion fleet becoming apparent.
24 Sentinel class cruisers and 12 lucidity class cruisers were the first to make the transit along with the larger Maven class cruisers. Then came a wall of transgressor class artillery ships; 72 in total. The volley of FTL transits crescendoed with the largest vessels 6 battleships, 12 battlecruisers, 8 supercarriers and 8 carrier dreadnoughts all assuming an attack formation.
The artillery ships began to seek firing solutions of nearby enemy ships. The heavy direct combat ships also prowling for any pertinent targets not prioritized by the bomber frigates. The carriers and dreadnoughts unfurled the protective shutters. There was the usual deployment of the larger Vanguard gunships which began to assume their defensive posture around their respective ships. Their a majority of their large hangars; usually reserved for planetary invasion skiffs had been refitted with expendable deployment racks.
Drone fighters began to sortie from within in immense numbers. The number of individual contacts quickly soared past a million and kept climbing. The sprawling swarms of drones merged with manned fighter-craft; three dozen or more drones coordinated by a single manned fighter. Hololith nodes deployed from the manned fighters. From them projected a blinding flash which faded to reveal a vast plethora of decoys. Their numbers now seemingly have magnified by another order of magnitude.
Pobbma V
The Orbital Defence Platforms, as to be expected, were large and immobile targets. Of the four platforms, only one had real point-defence capabilities, but those were rather limited. Then the first missiles hit. The ODPs did not have the same luxuries as ships, as they were unmanned. They lacked a large amount of armour, which resulted in underdefended spots. It just so happened to be that one of the missiles, tipped with a nuclear warhead, hit an ODP in one such spot. It penetrated the layer of armour and ended up in one of the three torpedo chambers. Then it detonated, taking the chamber with it. A blinding explosion occurred as the first chamber disintegrated, which was followed by a chain reaction of other explosions: The two other missile chambers exploded. Something similar happened to the other Platforms. The two remaining small ones followed with their destruction, one was hit by a pulse warhead, which caused a core containment loss, followed by an explosion. The other small one was too, hit by a missile, which ignited the main missile chamber. It too exploded in a similar fashion to the first ODP. The large remaining one put up a valiant fight. Destroying some of the incoming missiles, before returning fire at the Ludicity class with its own missiles and disruptors. However, it was hit and disabled by a pulse warhead, which didn’t succeed in taking it out of the fight permanently.
Pobbma VI
Here too, the missile salvo proved to be highly successful. Rather than disabling most, it destroyed all ODPs, but not before they could return some fire with concentrated disruptor and missile fire. One by one, the three platforms were destroyed, giving the Ludicity some time to scan the surface of the planet. It was rather hard to get solid readings, as the planet’s thick atmosphere and clouds blocked most of the outgoing readings. What the ship could find was rather impressive. The entire planet had been turned into a mine, causing large amounts of industrial smog. However, between the industrial buildings in, there were a few strange shapes; Anti-Orbital weapons. Most were rather light, such as AO missile launchers. But there were a few heavy guns, one of these was a heavy disruptor lance. However, even though the Dominion’s ship was directly above the city, few weapons actually opened fire, the only fire originating from an Anti-orbital Disruptor cannon. For a few minutes, this was all the firepower shooting at the Ludicity, but this quickly changed. For a few seconds, an unusual energy reading could be traced from the planet’s surface, the clouds turned from red to green, before the origin of this reared its head. The Disruptor lance had tracked the ship in orbit and had fired its weapon. Similar to the guns on some battleships, this weapon raced towards the ship in orbit.
Pobbma VII
Some of the Vigilant Conviction’s incoming missiles were intercepted, but the ships it was up against were not at all like the Orbital Platforms. For one, they had a functioning point-defence grid. Missile by missile was intercepted, either by the light plasma guns or by incoming micro-missiles fired from the normal tubes. However, even though they succeeded in taking out most of the missiles, some succeeded in striking them. Especially the Pulse warheads proved rather efficient in taking out one of the ships, temporarily disabling its energy grid. The second ship was rocked by some explosions, resulting in a few large holes in its hull. It, however, remained in operation and took revenge at the Vigilant Conviction. A disruptor beam was fired at its main engine block, followed by a few beams at manoeuvring thrusters and at the FTL block. This way, they hoped that it’d be unable to escape.
Pobbma II
Pobbma II’s defences had been turned up to Urgency level one. If anyone even passed the inner interdiction ring, its defensive fleet would instantly act and move to intercept. This tactic still existed, but as the tactics of the Furrelians continued to change, so did the defence methods. Rather than having the entire fleet respond to a single attack, a small portion of the fleet was constantly stationed around the inner part of the inner interdiction ring. This was not without complaints, however. It was expected that only ten per cent would go on patrol. In reality, however, twenty-seven per cent were used on patrol at any given moment, much to the dismay of planetary commanders. In the end, however, they had to give in, as it would give the entire defensive system more time to react, but still, some didn’t accept this change in plans. Still, the planet continued to be heavily defended, as did the shipyard in its orbit.
Sallag System
The Wrath of Sallag’s task force was preparing itself for a jump towards Pobbma. It had gained permission from Sallag spaceport to jump towards the Pobbma system, in order to check up with the fleet there. And, if needed, destroy any Gaussian ships.
“Admiral, coordinates have been filled in, and the task force is waiting for your orders.” Werasik’s second in command said. He was a tall Furrelian, having red-brownish fur.
“Very well then. The charging of our drives should take around thirty minutes, after which we should depart, in order to surprise the dogs.” The admiral responded. The task force had been halved, from a hundred ships to a bit more than fifty.
“Aye sir.” the officer responded, turning towards the communications officer and relaying the orders. Werasik himself prepared for the battle. He did not know the enemy’s numbers, who knew, maybe he ran into a full war fleet. But, he had vowed when he became captain of the Wrath of Sallag, to never give up against the enemy, even if it would cost it his own life.
Luss exhaled as the sensor readings came in. Slowly and deliberately like a farseer monk in meditation. Her gamble had paid off… and she’d learned something else valuable as well. Those defensive platforms had difficulty targeting smaller ships. Of all the surprises her enemy had laid for her… the minefield… the second interdiction line… and the suspiciously absent Wrath of Sallag all wild cards uncondusive to her stratagem. But now, she had a surprise of her own to wield, and important intelligence on the weaknesses of the orbital defense stations.
She raised a finger, mulling over the decision just a bit longer. She was informed that the lucidity class ships that had been assigned to postings above and below the solar system’s plane were now making subspace transits. Meaning their jamming network would be going offline.
“Madame Admiral…” Quoe started. “The jammers have departed. We’re on the clock… we are about to pass the abort threshold.”
“Go for stage two, adjust position to 1/10th of an astronomical unit anti-radial from system barycenter and deploy as per your orders, engage random jinking maneuvers as soon as you get there. Reserve squadron one, transit as close as you can and clear out the ODPs.”
Above/Below the Ecliptic:
The ships transited away without much fanfare. Their jobs had finished and the jamming was abandoned in earnest, though they were bound to function as emergency reserves, recycled into the admiral’s strategem if needed.
Pobbma V:
Having charged its FTL drive, this ship also transited. A High powered bolt of disruptor fire; what would have been a killing blow shot past a moment before it could escape.
Pobbma VII:
For a moment the lone sensor cruiser was simply a sitting duck, a hapless pincushion for disruptor fire. Shots tore into the rear section of the ship. Explosions perforated it before the section came apart in its entirety. The crippled ship managed to sortie two of its four defense gunships before the back half gave out to a crescendo of explosions.
A squadron of a dozen Sentinel-class ships transited from subspace on the dark side of the planet, many of them quite near to the remains Lucidity. Moments too late to make the save. Immediately upon making they split up to execute different tasks.
Four of them began rushing to the aid of the destroyed ship at full speed in the eventuality that there were still survivors on board. The entire ship seemed to unfurl at once; aggressive volleys of torpedoes were loosed towards the two destroyers. The vanguard gunships deployed from their hangars while under full burn, forced to briefly turn about then accelerate to match with their mothership. Point defenses unfurled and came to power and the spinal mass drivers roared to life, loosing a half dozen shots each. With 22 torpedo magazines to the comparatively feeble 4 of the Lucidity class; the sentinels were confident (perhaps overly so) in their ability to win the engagement through their initial volleys alone.
The other ships split off to execute their assigned tasks. Four loitered about, spreading out and igniting jamming and close range interdiction. Just a few light seconds… just enough to keep anyone from jumping too close until they were ready. They two had deployed their escort wings and began to target the weapons testing facilities from orbit. The Admiral was quite confident that they were classed as purely military target and took little reparation for kinetic bombardment of the lunar testing sites; with a marked interest in eliminating sensor and communications arrays and preventing Pobbma VII from calling for help.
She didn’t want Pobbma VII to be the center of attention… and couldn’t have anyone in the system get the word out… at least until she was ready.
All the while the ships had sortied several dozen wings of fighters and drones. New generation fighters, more akin to their space borne drones and designed specifically to work in tandem with them. These fighters began making their way to the cloud cities of Pobbma VII. There was a very real possibility that these were civilian facilities and therefore any given strike had to be surgical. The pilots given orders to do no more damage than was necessary; dial back the yield of their weapons if need be. Their targets; communications and sensor relays.
Pobmma VI:
The weapons fired. The Lucidity, on a largely linear course was a sitting duck. The disruptor lance punctured through the ship from stem to stern. A flash and an expanding cloud of cooling gas; like a nebula, and the ship was gone.
For a few moments, silence.
A double-stacked squad of shoguns (48 in total) made a simultaneous transit not far from where the ship had initially arrived. The positions of the enemy defensive emplacements made known as the dying act of the ship’s crew. Immediately upon their transit; a mad scramble to eliminate the largest guns with their powerful ordinance. Some going after the orbital defense stations, some after the battleship stationed in orbit and some for the ground-based positions. Or so it seemed; with the entirety of their ordinance compliment having been replaced in their entirety with immense pulse munitions built to fit their oversized bomb bays.
A Squad of sentinel cruisers transited further out; about a tenth of an astronomical unit; affording them about a minute of light lag. A minimum needed to avoid disruptor lances and unguided orbital munitions. They began deploying longer range interdiction, pulling the larger ships from subspace. Each ship larger than the last. The official roster of the invasion fleet becoming apparent.
24 Sentinel class cruisers and 12 lucidity class cruisers were the first to make the transit along with the larger Maven class cruisers. Then came a wall of transgressor class artillery ships; 72 in total. The volley of FTL transits crescendoed with the largest vessels 6 battleships, 12 battlecruisers, 8 supercarriers and 8 carrier dreadnoughts all assuming an attack formation.
The artillery ships began to seek firing solutions of nearby enemy ships. The heavy direct combat ships also prowling for any pertinent targets not prioritized by the bomber frigates. The carriers and dreadnoughts unfurled the protective shutters. There was the usual deployment of the larger Vanguard gunships which began to assume their defensive posture around their respective ships. Their a majority of their large hangars; usually reserved for planetary invasion skiffs had been refitted with expendable deployment racks.
Drone fighters began to sortie from within in immense numbers. The number of individual contacts quickly soared past a million and kept climbing. The sprawling swarms of drones merged with manned fighter-craft; three dozen or more drones coordinated by a single manned fighter. Hololith nodes deployed from the manned fighters. From them projected a blinding flash which faded to reveal a vast plethora of decoys. Their numbers now seemingly have magnified by another order of magnitude.
Pobbma System
The system’s defenders were well prepared for a direct attack, but an attack like this, conducted by the Gauss Dominion, was harder to counter. Furrelian system defences were built around the idea that any attack would be an all-at-once attack, so smaller snippets of a force jumping in irregular intervals was the last thing the Furrelians expected, even though their own doctrine was rather similar to the one used by the Gauss Dominion during this attack. The two ships, above and below the system, were simply able to escape, while the Furrelians did notice them, they were too far away for any instant action, much to the dismay of the defenders. Either way, the poles of the star would continue to be monitored for further activity, and if something would appear, the Furrelians wouldn’t take another escape as an answer. Such a thing happened to the ship above Pobbma V too, it escaped, and this time getting solid readings on Pobbma V’s defences. The first planet of the grid had lost its surprises, but not for long. A small detachment of the main defence fleet finally arrived at the planet, way too late to see any combat. The battleship strikeforce, around thirty ships, entered an orbit around the planet, and quickly took up defensive positions. At Pobbma VI, the situation was way grimmer. The small fleet in orbit of the outer planet was drastically outnumbered and in no way capable of striking back at the full invasion fleet. The single battleship tried to keep the Shoguns harassing itself at bay, but with little success. Even though the disruptors opened fire with their malignant green glow, they were unable to prevent the Shoguns from opening fire. One by one, the pulse missiles hit, the point defence tried to destroy as much of the missiles as possible and actually did a decent job in it. However, a decent job was not good enough.
Ironically enough, the first missile to hit, hit the point-defence coordination centre, which instantly knocked out the point defence. Then, the other warheads hit. System by system was disabled. First the hull magnetization, then the weapon cooling systems, then the rest, eventually, the ship remained little more than a spaceborne tin can, its engines and lights disabled. The only systems which remained online were the particulary needed ones. Bridge systems, oxygen filtration and core containment. Something similar happened to the few ODPs, but this time it was fatal. As the majority of the ODPs lacked Point-defence, it was hard to disable the incoming bombs, which proved fatal to all. Explosions followed, most of the platforms exploded as their core containment failed, only one platform was able to return fire, launching all its missiles at the Shoguns before it too failed, and exploded. On the planet, the weapons were a bit more prepared. As the shoguns entered the excuse of an atmosphere, the first weapon systems began to open fire, the Furrelians had proven that they would not lose Pobbma VI without a fight. As more and more information about the invasion became apparent, the Furrelian defensive fleet began to further strategise their defence. This, however, all changed when the main Gaussian fleet left subspace. As a consequence, a large detachment of the main Furrelian defensive fleet, in orbit of Pobbma IV, made its way towards Pobbma VI, in order to, at least try, to engage them. Many other parts of the defensive structure reacted surprised, but in the end, they still had the numerical upper hand in capital ships, but you never could be too sure, or so the saying went. That was proven, once the total fighter numbers came in. More than two million, drastically outnumbering the system’s fighter number and surpassing the number of fighters used by a large Furrelian fleet.
At Pobbma VII, a dozen Sentinels was faced with little more than minor resistance. The two destroyers could not do much against such a force and were drastically underequipped to face such a force. But, they stood their ground. Some of the torpedoes were dodged, while others were intercepted by point-defence. The ones which slipped through caused acceptable damage, still damaging large swats of the hull, but no critical systems. Now came the time for the two ships to return fire, both focussing on different targets. As the destroyer’s original function was to function as a mix between a point-defence boat and a quick support craft, they were fully capable to intercept multiple targets. The combat AI marked targets and opened fire. The one closest to one of the Sentinels which opened fire on both targetted the same Sentinel, in an act of revenge. Deep green bolts of plasma filled the space between the two ships, as it tried to keep on for a bit longer. The ship closest to the original Ludicity fired on the gunships, while slowly acing away for more relative safety. On the planet’s surface, the fighting became more sporadic. The fighters which entered the thick atmosphere, left a cloud collum, only to be greeted by point-defence fire. The two cities closest to the fighters both had a different purpose. With a more limited Point-Defence fire, the eastern one was a civilian port, used to collect the materials from the planet’s clouds. While the western one was purely a military station, holding some experimental weapons. The loss of that city would be catastrophic, and as such, it had more serious firepower. Not only did the point defence rage, but also a single large cannon, an anti-orbital cannon, which opened fire against a few of the Sentinels in orbit.
Sallag System
The Wrath of Sallag was ready to depart. The final checks were done, and once everything was confirmed and checked as alright, the fleet departed towards Pobbma, almost instantly arriving there, close to Pobbma VII. The sixty ships could almost taste the combat, and once it was decided that it would be the best, the Wrath and its accompanying fleet departed to Pobbma V.
Pobbma VI: The bomber frigates pulled away from their strike paths, their truly immense acceleration revealed with their ordinance bays nearly empty. Though even fast attack frigates had no chance of beating missiles in a contest of acceleration they could bide more time for their point defenses to shoot them down. Some of the frigates had held a handful of bombs in reserve, dropping them at the last second as the missiles closed as an AOE attack.
Though they were not all successful. Of the 48 frigates assigned to the first reserve, 16 were destroyed as they fled, most all of them assigned to the objectives on the planet’s surface. At their obscene accelerations; they were caught by pursuing missiles and the clouds of expanding plasma and debris seemed to shrink away within moments. The ships yearned for the safety of the defensive screen created by the fleet.
With a majority of the planet’s defenses disabled, the fleet turned their attention to the approaching enemy ships. This was not the response they had anticipated from the admiral’s plan. Not in the slightest. The immense swarm of fighters, drones and gunships simply lingered around the fleet in a vast parabolic formation spanning several dozen light seconds. An immense shield of active defenses against inbound missiles goading the enemy into a close range engagement.
And with that the attacking fleet began engaging in the usual hallmarks of long range combat. Guided RKKVs fueled by antimatter; a salvo of roughly a hundred in total were loosed twoards the approaching enemy fleet. Pulse torpedoes in immense numbers were launched from the supercarriers. They spread out into several large clusters; tens of thousands each, curving out for multiple attack angles in three dimensional space designed to split the focus of point defenses and concentrate on different elements of the fleet. Each wave accompanied by a concentrated surge of electronic warfare directed at their intended targets to further hamper their defensive capacity.
Pobbma VII: The fighters had little difficulty with the largely civilian point defenses. Drones were lost to disruptor fire, but that was to be expected. With their only objective the communications arrays they had finished their attack runs within moments and returend to orbit. The purely military station on the other hand. Heavy drone losses and several casualties had caused the attacking force to scatter to cloud cover, not anticipating heavier resistance. However in the chaos one of the pilots managed to cry out over comms back to his mothership.
“Dammit! Theres an Anti-Orb on this one! Eupsilon group, take evasive action!”
The cruiser heard the call just in time, tumbling sideways with its reaction thrusters the disruptor bolts merely glanced the ship. A pair of molten gashes venting atmosphere marred its ventral side, but the ship was badly damaged and reeling nonetheless still operational. Its sister ship turned its attention to the gun platform, orienting nose forward and discharging its hardlight beamer while executing evasive maneuvers. Jousting with the anti-orbital gun.
Subspace:
“Multiple FTL transits, we’ve found the Wrath.” The officer chirped as the ship rendered in on her display.
“What’s that fat fuck doing all the way over there…?” She asked… “They might be on to us… or at least think they’re on to us.”
“Should we go for phase 3?” Admiral Quoe asked.
“This is happening faster than I anticipated…” She mouthed to herself, barely above a whisper and inaudible to the crew. “I wanted to draw that thing out of position… but its… already out of position and right where I wanted… guess we just have to keep it there.” She raised her voice. “Tell phase 4 to get in position, have Khanyasa ready her squad and reassign shogun reserve group two to their attack force. Phase 3 to deploy on my mark…”
Pobbma VII:
The ships made their transits extremely low over the gas giant simultaneously, out of view of of the enemy. Eight battlecruisers, a handful of Lucidity cruisers and three dreadnought carriers. Sandwiched between the planet and one of its innermost moons they were concealed from line of sight and Luss had made every effort possible to disable the enemy’s communications through jamming and destruction. Pulling off such a miraculous ruse was no small feat, even for her.
The eight battleships maneuvered into an incredibly tight formation around one of the dreadnoughts, loitering at its aft section and as before an immense cluster of drones and gunships began to swarm out from the carrier’s hangar bays. They fired grapples at hardpoints on the dreadnought carrier; lengths of heavy duty space elevator grade cable between one another. The gunships assumed a fairly standard defensive formation but the drones didn’t dare venture more than a few kilometers from their mothership. Building up an absurdly tight formation like a steep pyramid they hovered almost wingtip to wingtip, then seemingly became locked in place; as precision control slaved their reaction thrusters to their mothership.
Their holographic decoy systems engaged. Rolling sheets of hologram covered the ship, fusing together in a perfect recreation of the dominion’s flagship; the Paragon. The ships, now one combined unit began to accelerate. The combination of the eight battlecruisers and the dreadnought reasonably approxomating both its exaust plume and neutrino output.
The effigy of the dominion’s flagship began to crest the horizon on the far side of the planet. The spinal hardlight beamer appeared to come to power as it lined up a shot with the Wrath of Sallag.
Pobbma VI, Pobbma System
The long-range battle had begun, something the Furrelians had prepared for, which became evident when the carriers launched their own drones and fighters, with the intent of destroying the incoming RKKVs. These drones were made specifically for point-defence purposes, and as such had extremely rapid-firing weapons, which were virtually unusable against large armoured targets, but perfect against large quantities of missiles. For a few seconds, silence, before the order was given to intercept the incoming weapon fire. The First RKKV exploded in a bright flash and a red flurry, which was shortly afterwards followed by a seconds missile, and a third. The white flashes of point-defence fire filled the space in-between the two fleets. Such like that, a majority of the RKKVs were intercepted before they came close to the fleet, but a few slipped through the defensive field, with catastrophic effects as result. The first ships began taking damage, and a few exploded in fireballs of anti-matter. A disaster, and something the Furrelian fleet should’ve prepared for. But now it was already too late; The pulse-tipped skippers came. Once again, the point-defence drones engaged their weapons, and once again, the clusters were one-by-one picked apart. But this time, the warheads proved to be more efficient than expected. The majority of the missiles were picked apart by the small white plasma bolts of the point-defence systems, while others were fired at with small projectiles. In the end, by the time the missiles had passed the field, a small fraction of the original salvo remained, but were still enough missiles to kill the Furrelian fleet a few times over. By now, the final surprise of the Furrelian fleet appeared their own cyber warfare. A few of the purpose-built smaller ships in the fleet, subclasses of normal ships, were able to create a false signature of the fleet, a few light seconds above and in front of the actual fleet.
This too worked in favour of the defenders, but not by much. These defences were engaged too late, and though they succeeded in taking a small part of the incoming warheads away, it wasn’t much. The first warheads hit the debris of the ships destroyed by the RKKVs before they finally hit the survivors. The old readings of the battle of Luasu were correct, the pulse warheads did indeed do their job, but not in the exact same way. The largest part of the Furrelian fleet was unaffected by this, but a large part of the defensive task force was hit, and catastrophically so. Around ten of the ships were hit and disabled, of which one instantly exploded due to core failure, while another was short-circuited and started pushing itself down. Other ships were shortly disabled, had to repower, and pushed onwards, while another part was simply able to shrug it off. This attack had some serious consequences for the Gaussian fleet. Over secured lines, orders were given, and shortly afterwards, the Furrelian response to the attack came. At first, a single blue lance travelled at the speed of light, but it was quickly followed by a second, and a third, until eventually, a dozen or so lances fired at a rather weak mode, as they tried to disable the ships, rather than outright destroy. These lances were fired at the capital ships of the Dominion’s fleet, in order to cause as much chaos as possible by disabling communications.
Pobbma VII
“Stations eighteen and twelve have their anti-ship cannons ready, sixteen is charging theirs and fourteen is doing the same. Twenty is recharging. Weapons are ready to fire at your command, sir.” a junior officer said, a storm was raging outside in the thick clouds of the gas giant. The two floating cities targetted by the Dominion’s bombers might’ve been among the largest on that side of the planet, but certainly not the only ones. Five stations on that side of the planet alone already had anti-orbital weapons, and now that the fleet in orbit began acting more aggressive, it was time to use them.
“Then it is time,” The commander said, turning to a communications system and blaring orders over the intercom.
”Attention stations ten through twenty. Prepare for anti-orbital fire. We will need to take the fleet there out, fire at will.”
And such as that, the first deep green bolts raced upwards, while simultaneously a cold blue bolt came down, and with a single shot, took down station twenty, which was turned into a burning hulk which was slowly losing its integrity and started to collapse.
Open space, next to Pobbma VII
The ships which had departed towards Pobbma V were barely into the water before they instantly went head-deep. The Dominion’s flagship had appeared, a gigantic beast, around the same size as the Union’s own beast. The Paragon had certainly not been expected, and almost instantly as it appeared, the communications began to malfunction. However, as there was only one target, and since the ships had the possibility to go to manual control, the fleet followed emergency organisation. The fleet was divided into groups of around ten ships, each quickly went another way, and turned to face the Paragon. The Wrath, too, moved to face its Gaussian counterpart. Obviously, the sixty ships did not know that it was a few smaller ships camouflaged as the Paragon, but as it was known that that one was the Dominion’s flagship, it gained the highest priority. The first weapons fire that came was invisible to the normal eye, the cyberattack happened. The Furrelians hoped that this would, at least temporarily, lift the communications blocker, but in reality, it was a heavy virus that was sent, which could disable any underdefended systems, and use those keys to climb further into the system, in order to there destroy as much of the critical systems as possible. This attack was followed by a few salvos of missiles before that one was combined with the first disruptor lances. All of these attacks came without any real rhythm, as no communications were possible in order to organise a good attack. Instead, the ships fired at any possible weak points, and the main headlight beamer.
By now, the Wrath of Sallag had turned too, and it itself prepared its own weapon. The main Tachyonic gun would‘ve not been any good against other ships, but it itself carried two dozen tachyon lances, mounted on turrets. These lances were closer in destructible power to the main gun of the Wrath than to the Lances on a battlecruiser, and the first five started charging, each targetting the same part of the holographic ship, the location where the Furrelians thought the core would be.
Pobbma VI: The tachyon lances caught the edge of the expanding interdiction well; slowing to lightspeed. Though the interdiction was not yet fully deployed, this bought several precious minutes for the engaging forces. On these timescales, random maneuvers brought even the largest ships clear of their targetable cross section several times over. Every lance sailed through the formation harmlessly; only catching the occasional fighter or gunship caught in their path, with an immediate and explosive report. The fleet in its entirety began to adjust their velocity, favoring random movements which kept their distance from the enemy and slowly pulled them out of range.
The delay in deploying their electronic countermeasures had come too late to avert the first wave of missiles; largely due to one key factor. The terminal stage of a skipper was unguided; unable to change trajectory even if it wanted. Though this did mean a fair few warheads could be avoided through random maneuvering, destined to sail into the void or proximity detonate to partial effect; countless more were still lethal trajectories.
Despite the apparent ineffectiveness of their guided RKKVs and torpedoes, the fleet seemed more than content to load and fire a second salvo at the engaging forces. Most of these fell victim to the electronic warfare attack, altering their course uselessly above or below the enemy fleet and detonating some distance behind them once they realized they had been spoofed. Countless thousands of missiles, almost the entirety of the second salvo arced above and below the enemy fleet. Apparently they had taken the bait as well…
Pobbma VII: The dominion ships in orbit largely seemed disinterested in meticulously dismantling the remaining orbital defense platforms with fighter strikes. Instead, rather decisively striking at them by returning orbital fire as they were detected. Regardless the presence of so many gun stations; when only a single had been initially detected quickly became a point of contention amongst the fleet’s sensor officers. Three more cruisers had been lost to these attacks, and one of the escorting dreadnought carriers had taken several hits, being forced to roll over and expose its undamaged side to prevent itself from being disabled.
Unbeknownst to the Furrelians, the virus had proturbed an army of slumbering digital giants. Not long after the compromise was detected there was panic throughout the fleet as the cyber defense corps worked furiously to quarantine and destroy the virus. In their desperate bid to maintain the illusion and maintain the jamming field, which the defense corps judged the highest priority the virus had a few moments with which to wreak havoc with their targeting systems. In that moment the system misidentified several civilian orbital cities as military defense platforms. The gunners responded, loosing shots in the confusion. One cruiser had its torpedoes accessed in their tubes and immediately detonated, leading to an instantaneous loss of the ship. The hardlight beamer, which was in fact the beamer of the carrier concealed within the illusion was prime to miss its mark. Off by just a few hundredths of a degree it was bound to pass harmlessly above the enemy fleet.
Subspace:
“They’re craftier than I thought. Once that fleet gets into range, they’re going to make us bleed. Is phase four ready to deploy?” The galactic admiral asked.
“Phase 4 is ready to deploy on your command. Phase 5 is making final preparations for subspace transit.” Admiral Quoe returned.
“They’re still focused on the decoy. Deploy phase 4.”
Near Pobmma VI (WOS Defense fleet):
More subspace transits appeared on the flank of the Sallag and its escorting fleet. Four battleships, a dozen maven class cruisers and almost fifty Shogun frigates. The fleets spaced themselves out into two waves. A brief surge of acceleration as the battleships as well as around charged the escorting fleet with reckless abandon, alternating their weapons systems as they targeted down the escorts, yet avoiding the Wrath herself. Hardlight beamers, torpedoes, RKKVs and mass drivers. All of them fired off as their escorting gunships swarmed out.
The Mavens at the rear of the fleet, and the second wave of Shoguns were making a more sedate approach at the rear of the formation. A tactical plot of the Wrath of Sallag appeared on their screens as they began to compute targeting solutions for the lances. After careful study of the schematics and countless simulations they had derived a series of key points aboard the dreadnought which could be struck by Kayon lances. If correct this would temporarily disable the ship’s defenses without causing any critical damage.
GDAN Infinite Arrow (Modified Shogun class frigate)
The Blades stood in several lines, assembled in the ship’s small hangar bay. Even as the ship wavered slightly due to a maneuver, they were unmoving. Technicians were installing dawnstone power core amplifies into the microfusion generators in the middle of their backs of their power armor, and distributing hacking shivs to everyone involved. Khanyasa Habato, a tall Farrian woman strode up the row, adressing the leaders of each squad.
“Say it again.” She began astutely.
“Breach through the main hangar deck. Up the aft ventilation shaft, through engineering, disable the self destruct and divert power to jump drive.”
“Team 2.”
“Enter through the escape pod deck in section B-19. Through the engineering corridor, take the third left and cut through the floor panel. Capture the auxiliary bridge, pull levers two and five to engage lock down of the ship and vent all compartments.”
“Team 3.”
“Breach through the secondary hangar deck. Down through the garbage chute, cut through the wall near structural member F-44. Set up killbox between the main bridge and barracks facility.”
She turned to her own second in command.
“Breach through the escape pod deck in section A-3. Second Left. First Right. Into the officer’s quarters. Plant charges at structural members C-72, C-74 and C-77. This will cut off power to the auto-turrets at the entrance the main bridge. Back down the hall and storm the main CIC. Set jump coordinates to extraction point. 8552-3372. 9921-0312.”
“Good.” Khanyasa finished. “Rahbakun Parakos Luasu! Rahbakun Parakos Kragleosha Gauss!”
The troops reprised the chant, stomping their armored boots on the floor. Their helmets folded over their heads and the plates of their armor locked together as they made their to the ship’s bomb bays; retrofitted with advanced breaching pods.
Pobbma VI
The disappointment of the leading commander of the fleet, Admiral Karudema, was immeasurable when the lances missed, yet he had known that it would happen, it would’ve been too good if all just hit. After letting out a deep sigh, he shouted new orders over the bridge of his flagship.
“New orders! Transmit this to every friendly over an encrypted line! Urgency level one!” He said, as the bridge’s crew fell silent. The communications officer however prepared the messages, beeps being heard as he opened lines.
“We’re going to move into their interdiction field in order to destroy its origin. Target the interdictors and their flagships, only shoot the smaller ships once they reach the outskirts of our defensive grid. Keep the point-defence running! Do whatever you can to shut them down! May Greyas’ blessing help you gain the victory, Karudema out!”.
…
And just like that, the fleet moved forwards. First slowly, with a few destroyers slowly moving forwards, before fighters, gunships and drones followed put. They quickly accelerated towards the enemy fleet, weapons firing at the interdictors as they moved. Before long, the entire Furrelian fleet moved forwards as a single unit, moving ever closer to the Dominion’s fleet. The missiles which had fallen for the cyber-defence trap were long gone, easily picked apart by automated point-defence. Then, there was an abnormality. The otherwise silent Furrelian fleet suddenly started sending messages to the Dominion’s fleet, courtesy of the electronic warfare ships. There were two kinds of messages; The text ones and the voiced ones. The text-filled messages came in at tens of thousands at a time, each message being nearly identical, Furrelian propaganda intended on demoralising the enemy. Not only were bloody images of killed Dominion soldiers shown, but also images which depicted the Gaussian holy figures being killed, with the most prominent a video, skilfully edited, showing a Furrelian soldier shooting a bronze orb, which exploded. The voiced messages weren’t any better and came in the same quantities as the texted ones. On every radio frequency, the Furrelians knew, messages played. All were loud and either incredibly high pitched extremely low pitched, or both. This way, the Furrelians hoped to cause permanent hearing damage to any soul unfortunate to listen to the messages and to disrupt the Dominion’s communications. The stream of messages would continue for almost ten minutes, and by the end of it, the Furrelian fleet had moved so much forward, that it was now possible for them to efficiently use their heavy disruptors, which they did. A salvo of green streams of plasma was fired at the interdictors. This attack was followed by more irregular fire, medium-ranged combat had begun.
Pobbma VII
The Gaussian orbital strike was disastrous for one of the civilian cities, which had been used as a station to collect helium from the gas clouds. A shot of a Dominion cruiser punctured the main tank, which detonated in a gigantic explosion. The entirety of the city was enveloped in the explosion, and once the fireball had dissipated, a burning hulk was all that was left, its hull blackened and its systems failing. Fires spread across the main promenade, and as there was nobody to respond to it, the fires continued, consuming any survivors in it. This attack had seriously changed the game for the Furrelian defenders, it seemed like the Gauss Dominion had no problems with killing innocent civilians. This was the last straw for the almost a dozen platforms which remained. The final few hidden floating cities made themselves known after opening fire too. The unorganised defensive shots ceased for almost a minute, the commander gave new orders. The Dominion would know these new orders soon enough. After almost a minute of silence, the anti-orbital weapons started again, this time firing in organised salvos, all targetting a single ship. The ‘Paragon’. The salvos were targetted at what the Furrelians thought to be a weak point, the hidden carrier. One by one, salvo after salvo, was fired, without an end in sight.
Open space, near Pobbma VII
The five charged lances of the Wrath of Sallag, the Furrelian flagship, were still targetting the Paragon’s suspected core and were now ready to fire. Final calculations and adjustments were made, the route was cleared of any friendly ships, and the lances fired. The first one left a serious impression on the space around it, as it was bent with it. The tachyon lance emitted its bright aquamarine light, orders of magnitude more powerful than the one on the battlecruiser, and raced towards the holographic Paragon at more than a dozen times the speed of light. The first lance was followed by a second, a third, a fourth and a fifth, all being shot at another compartment of the suspected core, but in reality were all fired at different parts of the two dreadnought carriers, without the Furrelians suspecting that there was even a ship other than the Paragon there. It only took a quick while, but eventually, sensor readings aboard the Wrath of Sallag confirmed the presence of another fleet near her flank, a surprise to a few of the bridge’s crewmembers. But before long, ships were sent to intercept the Dominion fleet. One by one, weapon batteries came online and started targetting the battleships, with a lower priority given to the Mavens. Disruptor beams, fired from the massive dreadnought, were fired at the Dominion’s ships. This was quickly followed by more disruptor fire and a few salvos of missiles. Point-defence was kept operational, and before long, various series of small craft, as well as an army of drones, were launched from the massive hangars which the dreadnought held, creating a larger point-defence screen. The escort fleet of the wrath, by now, had noticed the dominion fleet too, and actions were quickly undertaken to take it down.
Of the two squadrons on the correct side of the dreadnought, one stayed in close formation with it, while the other raced to destroy the Mavens, the disruptors releasing their deep green glow as salvos raced to various of the Mavens.
Pobbma V
A part of the main defensive fleet had been in orbit of the planet, observing what was happening with the Wrath of Sallag. It would’ve been catastrophic if the pride of the Furrelian navy would be destroyed during the second battle of the war, and in order to avoid that from happening, rear-admiral Hinudamio took her chances and ordered her detachment, of around a hundred ships, to reinforce the Wrath, with further orders detailing how the ships would engage the enemy fleet. And just like that, the powerful engines of the strike force set sail for the Wrath, its light corvettes in front, and its heavy ships closely behind it.
Pobbma VI:
The fleet fell largely unresponsive to the attack. Even as every frequency was hogged by furrelian propoganda, video feeds and high pitched tones they simply alternated their method of communication. Only a handful of AI and dedicated communications officers even glimpsed these signals, largely dismissing them and simply diverting their attention to opening alternative communication lines and maintaining fleet coordination. Though a few individuals caught glimpses of the video feed it left them largely confused; as Kragleosha’s true form was not well known to the wider public.
The capital ships could continue to exchange critical information through their quantum entangled links. A handful of point defense beamers were set aside, firing rapid pulses off into the void. Codes which could be easily be intercepted, decrypted and understood, but ones which could be deciphered just as quickly by watching the movements of the formations themselves.
The source of the interdiction field was difficult to parse as several classes of ship were in fact responsible for its generation. Though as the prospect of close combat became inevitable the larger battleships and battlecruisers began to divert all available power to weapons leaving the smaller sentinels the sole targets. Six were destroyed by various means before the gaussians caught on to what their foe was attempting to do. The remaining interdictors fled behind the cover of drones and gunships, or behind larger ships.
Their strategem remained largely defensive, more of their energy focused on shielding the capital ships from incoming blows. Though an assortment of minor damages were wrought amongst the remainder of the ship, most other grievous damages were avoided. This distribution of power came at a cost to their offensive potential. Which outside of the third and final salvo of around a hundred guided RKKVs (now correctly reprogrammed to avoid decoys) was fairly lackluster.
With respect to what had been observed prior, mass driver shots came fairly slowly and hardlight beamers were fired infrequently. They chose to compensate for this by adopting a focused fire strategy; focusing on a few of the most aggressive ships in the enemy fleet and attempting to take them three or four to one.
The missiles fired previously, which had arced over the fleet seemed to behave strangely. A large percentage were destroyed by point defenses. Those that weren’t, still numbering in the hundreds of thousands carried on, traveling away from the enemy fleet on preprogrammed trajectories seemingly to a point in deep space.
Pobbma VII:
As the anti-orbital guns came to life the illusion came apart. The hologram warped, shriveling and warping as though the entire ship was molding like a forgotten piece of fruit; before the illusion disintegrated in its entirety. Drones and fighters scattered like angry hornets protrubed from a crushed nest. The ship’s cables snapped apart as the larger ships began to attempt to scatter away from the blast. But they had been forced to hold their position just a bit too long.
The beam skewered the tailing dreadnought carrier from stem to stern. A series of sequential explosions traveled down the ship, before a final blast erupted out.
The orbital defense platforms carrying the lion’s share of the work managed to destroy a second dreadnought carrier. The ship eventually breaking apart and left drifting on a sub-orbital trajectory. By now, the fleet above Pobbma VII was in complete disarray, and thus they began spinning up their faster than light drives and recovering their plethora of supporting craft.
Before their departure however their commander seemingly desired to leave a parting gift. The surviving ships rather aggressively discharged their entire torpedo loads and jettisoned the magazines into the gas giant. The missiles surged away. Unusually they seemed to be on an incorrect trajectory to strike at the Wrath of Sallag’s escort fleet, seemingly heading out of the system on an angle.
Near Pobbma VII:
As they began to engage with the enemy; they suffered dearly for their suicidal berzerker charge. One battleship promptly fell victim to the Sallag’s disruptor fire. Another fell victim to the fleet. A burning wreck unable to fully arrest its velocity it tumbled within a few dozen kilometers of the ship’s bow before disintegrating. The others were forced into desperate reactive tactics to ensure that the plan could go through, with one turning broadside, firing all of its weaponry and torpedoes in a ferocious blaze of glory, while taking numerous shots intended for the Mavens.
The other switched its mass drivers to flechette rounds and began to concentrate their fire on the drones. The shots were released with 11 of the 12 shots successfully deployed. Only faintly visible to most conventional sensors as a cone-like distortion and a dim lavender-violet beam which pulled on space itself like a plucked string; they would pass clean through their target, only vaugely interacting with it. The 12th ship catching several glancing hits which ultimately resulted in its destruction. Regardless, yet another grave discovery. Every shot was doubled up; there were in fact only six points which they had found and needed to target.
The dominion had one more ace up their sleeve; and now it was time for them to display their own proficiency in cyberwarfare. Their attack was directed at the Furrelian’s drones, hijacking the network used to communicate between drones using it to transmit gaussian transponder signals. This would in theory make every drone think every other drone was a gaussian craft, and thus they would attack one another. (This attack would also be deployed against the fleet at Pobbma VI)
Commodore Xiatol aborard the Infinite Arrow and had taken control of the ship’s thrusters. One of the most skilled astrogators the dominion had to offer; few others were qualified to flight the poviotal ship in the penultimate climax of such a major battle. The frigate class warship had maneuvering characteristics more akin to that of a heavy fighter than a battleship. As they watched the carnage unfold; mentally planning their run. This opening would never repeat itself; there was one chance to make the pass and deploy the boarding pods.
“Clench up those ass cheeks, its gonna be a rough ride.” They shouted over the ship’s PA system, before turning their focus soley onto flying. The flight of Shoguns barreling into the defensive squadron. One by one the escorts broke away. Either destroyed by enemy disruptor fire or peeling off to preform their own bombing runs. Before long Xiatol’s ship was largely naked of protection, with but a handful of fighters and a single pair of frigates protecting them, but Lined up to the enemy dreadnought. At their velocity, they would pass the entire length of the fifty kilometer ship in the span of a few moments.
Subspace:
The upper command staff; safely stowed away in the higher dimension waited with bated breath for the announcement that the boarding teem had successfully deployed. The galactic admiral worked her claws against the stainless steel armrest, unconsciously gripping it. She gestured to the display, shoving aside the video of the Furrelian solider destroying the orb. Even she did not understand much about Kragleosha outside of old historical videos, not even making the correct connection.
Capturing the Wrath of Sallag was their penultimate objective. Even if Khanyasa failed, the mere prospect of its capture would no doubt divert significant attention and resources away from the fifth and final.
“Phase two is sustaining heavy losses. They are requesting permission to withdraw.”
“Granted.” She returned audibly. “Now… we simply have to ensure their sacrifices are not wasted...”
Pobbma VI
Karudema looked upon his tactical display as the interdictors withdrew, reacting frustrated, before turning to his tactical officer. With deep frustration in his voice, he asked a question to the officer.
“What ship with a lance is the closest to the enemy fleet?”
-”That would be the Marude Disema, sir. She’s currently supporting her part of the fleet into combat with close fire support.” The officer responded, loud enough for his voice to be heard over the organised chaos of the bridge.
“Message her captain to change its target to one of their flagships, the rest of her squadron should continue their current orders. Now!” He said, and the officer quickly followed the orders he had received, quickly saluting the admiral, before running towards the communications officer, where he would explain the new orders for the Marude Disema, a large command battleship. A highly-secured order was transmitted towards it.
“Attention, on orders of Admiral Karudema, you are ordered to engage the closest command ship from your position with the dual spinal weapon. Engage at once.”
This message was received on the Furrelian battleship, which instantly moved to carry out its order. One of the two tachyon lances which it carried was charged and just seconds before it was supposed to fire, the Gaussian attack came. A mass-driver round penetrated the magnetic containment field of the tachyon collector, which caused the reaction to fail and the lance not charging anymore; with as consequence the front of the starboard side of the battleship becoming numb, failing all but the most essential systems. This weakness was so apparent, that a few other Dominion ships began firing there, creating gigantic holes in the battlecruiser, before eventually, the entire front of the ship fell apart, a final duo of RKKVs being enough to finish the ship permanently, its core failing and exploding in a familiar yellow explosion.
This, sadly enough, was the fate of many other Furrelian ships on the front line. Four were destroyed in the same style, a compartment was disabled by an EMP strike, a missile destroying a critical part of the energy grid, or a mass-driver round. Which was then exploited by Dominion ships, eventually resulting in the destruction of the ship. By now, the defenders noticed the incoming RKKVs, and were able to intercept most, a few hitting and disabling a few unfortunate ships, while one destroyer was outright destroyed. By now, the Furrelian response once again arrived. And once again, it came in disruptor fire. This time, most of the ships on the front attacked in organised salvos, a duo of ships would pick a Gaussian target, and continue to fire on it. On its peak, there were up to two dozen duo’s of Furrelian ships, firing at Gaussian ships. The missiles which were missed by point-defence initially were simply ignored, they would probably run out of fuel soon.
Pobbma VII
A victory for the defenders of Pobbma VII. The moment the hologram failed, fire was further intensified, but it mattered little as the ships were able to escape, much to the dismay of the floating platforms, but they laid their arms down and began to send emergency crews towards the struck civilian city, only to arrive at a city full of burned corpses. Up to fifty-thousand Furrelians lived in the city, and all were now dead. The few corpses which weren’t instantly petrified were given improvised burials, and before long the emergency crews began to fight the fires which were spreading on every level of the city, nobody giving any attention to the burning magazines which were falling into the planet like shooting stars, falling apart as they fell deeper into the planet.
Open space, closest planet Pobbma VII
The Dominion’s fleet sent to destroy the Wrath of Sallag was now suffering the consequences of trying to attack the ship, and the end was not coming close. The Furrelian fleet surrounding the Wrath was still continuing with its journey towards Pobbma V, where they would rendezvous with the fleet in orbit of that planet, but by now, medium-range communications made it clear that that fleet was moving to the Wrath’s fleet too, which massively decreased the expected time before the two would merge. But, it seemed like the Wrath would not arrive there on time. Most of the spinally mounted weapons of the Mavens had hit their intended targets, only one missing and hitting a disruptor battery instead, destroying it. The six targets were critical parts of the engine system, two control sections of the radiators, and a thrust control system. One by one, these systems started failing, and eventually, the thrust stopped, making the Wrath an armed sitting duck. By now, the Furrelians were once again changing their tactic, this time not by much. The two attack groups pushing against the Dominion’s fleet were taking hits, with a large part of the second group’s forces being destroyed in the suicidal broadside of one of the Dominion’s battleships, before the Sallag opened a part of its disruptor fire towards that direction, targetting the reactor. Shortly afterwards, a third attack squadron had moved towards the correct side of the combat zone, moving forwards from the Sallag’s aft. This third group targeted the Shoguns closing towards the Sallag, and opened fire with its point-defence. By now, some of the Shoguns were so close, that flak fire and some of the shorter-ranged disruptors began shooting at the ones closing into it, while the anti-ship missiles were being charged.
More parts of the defence followed put, but a part of the defence screen was suddenly completely wiped out. Around 20% of the point-defence drones patrolling the Sallag fell victim to the Dominion’s cyberattack, and suddenly started firing at each other. The fighter pilots flying near them could do nothing as plasma guns completely wrecked dozens of drones, while the unaffected simply continued their mission, quickly updating their radars and ignoring the drones in combat with themselves.
Open space, closest planet Pobbma V
The fleet which was located at Pobbma V had gained gigantic amounts of speed as they continued to accelerate, and by now, the first large ships began firing the first parts of their surprise. Inter-system missiles, each battleship carried a duo. Three of these battleships quickly let them loose, from where smaller navigation thrusters pushed it on a good course and their powerful engines instantly pushed them to ridiculous speeds. In-flight sensors adjusted the missiles as needed, and after a while, the missiles finalised their targets and put their final stage in effect, further increasing speed and preparing the warheads for their collision into the hull of an enemy battleship. The Furrelian fleet simply continued their flight towards the Wrath of Sallag, and it would take just a bit longer before they’d arrive.
Pobbma V
The defending fleet gradually began to embolden from their defensive posture. A rare opportunity to fight the Furrelians with equal firepower and numbers; perhaps even a slight advantage. As the opening line of battleships struggled their own warships began to place more of their focus on returning fire with their assortments of weapons and maintaining the focused fire strategem; while attempting to disrupt their foe’s efforts to do the same. Preforming this simply by a complex and seemingly unpredictable series of movements. Two battlecruisers and a battleship joined the casualty list by way of focused fire; and an instigator dreadnought had escaped complete destruction by the skin of its teeth as a squadron of artilleryships managed to cut off the attacking force.
The immense fighter and drone squadrons fielded in the opening moments of the engagement began to go on the offensive, engaging the escorts of the fleet in an effort to win out. Their formations lunged onto the enemy fleet like waves breaking on a beach. Outwardly they appeared to be virtually opaque clouds of craft dozens or even hundreds of kilometers across. In reality the formations were far more sparse and far more organized; their appearance and profiles augmented by holographic decoys. Uncountable missiles began streaking in from the clouds; some going after fighters and drones; others targeting down warships. Driving to saturate point defenses through sheer numbers they targeted weapons emplacements; working to clip turrets and cripple tachyon lances before they could be fired.
Quoe, who had been thrust into managing this battle such that Luss could concentrate on the important matters found this uncharacteristic of her tactics. The Galactic admiral seldom engaged in direct confrontations.
“A bad commander marches their men to their doom. A good commander works to preserve their lives at any cost. A great commander recognizes that in war, sacrifices are necessary.”
WOS Escort Fleet
The remaining two battleships crumpled. One finally gave way moments before an attempted ramming on a similarly-sized furrelian warship. Its exploding carcass missing as it tumbled aimlessly into deep space. The final warship stood in solidarity; absorbing fire on all sides. Her captain turned; seeing interplanetary missiles closing on his flank. He could have turned his guns to face them; fired flechette shells in a bid to save himself. But instead he seemed to recognize the futility of his situation and came to terms with his death. Instead opting to die a hero; letting off a final few shells to clear the drones away.
The missiles impacted; the final hammerblow to finish the ship off and its destruction was spectacular. A blinding flash and all that remained was a cloud of tumbling and half molten armor plates.
The Infinite Arrow was still closing, capitalizing on the disarray the escorting drones had been thrown into. One of her escorts caught a disruptor bolt nose-first and was reduced to a fireball shrinking away behind them. The disruptor turned to the Arrow. The first shot missed. The second tripped the shield; and the third glanced the armor leaving a molten gash along the ship’s dorsal side. As it made its final pass, the ship went into an aggressive roll.
In the mere seconds the ship had to make its pass the breaching pods were released; rectifying their velocity with explosive force and slamming with near perfect precision into their designated points.
There was no time to waste. Before the Arrow had even cleared the aft of the Wrath; the breaching charges fired. A searing explosive flash erupted from the exterior of the pod; followed moments after by vls tubes firing in canisters of trans-spectrum blinding smoke into the immediate area. Then came the sound of heavy footsteps battering the deck plates like automatic weaponsfire. Crescent blades bearing heavy power armor in a mad rocket-assisted sprint down the ship’s corridors; looking to cover as much ground as physically possible before a lockdown could be engaged. They knew of and had rehersed a myriad alternative routes to their objectives; vents and access corridors through which they could circumvent defenses or doors, but the route they had chosen was the most direct.
Their leader withdrew a hardlight blade. Drawing molten gashes across seemingly random points on the walls as she ran; malfunctions began to arise in startling numbers. Namely CCTV cameras and onboard defenses.
Outside the surviving shoguns raced away from the fleet escorting fleet; dropping the last of their ordinance to dissuate missiles and fighters that dared pursuit. Of the 49 ships that had particpated in the attack, only 25 survived. Steep losses even for the recklessley aggressive battle doctrine of the bomber frigates. They slowly began to arc around; and in concert with the surviving Mavens (now taking on heavy fire from the breakaway) began to spin up their drives in preparation for a retreat.
Pobbma V
The last of the ships managed to worm away. One battlecruiser was caught by the final salvo of disruptor fire, the front quarter of the ship sheared off in an explosion. By some miracle; the ship managed to transition into subspace anyway, abandoning its forwardmost section as it did. The following wave of disruptor shots vaporized what was left of the ship.
Deep Space; eastern side of the star system.
The two flights of missiles coasted for a bit, spending the last of their Delta-V on course corrections to bring the missiles onto an inward-bound velocity before their payloads deployed. They peeled open revealing MIRV-style launch bays containing smaller missiles. These shot off in two waves, the first flowering apart on a myriad of trajectories; while the second larger wave stayed clustered together. Their targets; the minefield.
Subspace
The tension in the CIC was so thick, one couldn’t have cut through it with a Hardlight blade. The constant reports of mounting losses; bearing witness to four battleships being torn apart in rapid succession. Until the announcement rang out on the loudspeakers; the boarding party had been successfully deployed. The atmosphere was replaced with premature childlike jubilation, officers clenching their fists with satisfaction. Luss exhaled as she watched the commodore’s ship represented as a tiny triangle streak away from combat on her tactical display.
She paused for a moment. It had been a long while she had met a situation such as this; one which had genuinely pushed her tactical planning and reactive abilities to the limit. A part of her reveled in the challenge of accomplishing such feats.
Pobbma V
The casualties continued to rise, especially at the frontline. Every so often, a ship would vaporise into a slug of orange metal after being hit by a swarm of missiles, disable the ship next to it, and like that disable a duo. Around twelve ships were disabled that way, creating gigantic gaps in the Furrelian defensive lines. Karudema, the Furrelian admiral, noticed this. As quick as a hole came, it was filled up by either a swarm of fighter drones or a ship. But the lines would not hold, especially not at this rate. His manpower was beginning to run short, and the first carrier quickly later ran out of its fighter complement. He needed to do something drastic in order to change the fate of the battle. And without careful consideration that could end in a disaster. Karudema was equipped to handle an enemy fleet, but not the levels of stress he was receiving. So, without much consideration, he gave a new order.
“May Greyas stand by my side…” He mumbled to himself, before clearing his throat and letting his deep voice spread across the bridge of his flagship. “Order an immediate and fleet-wide Malaradit. The target will be their flagship and any other large command ships they have. Do not fire until I have given the order.” He said, much to the surprise of the bridge’s crew. A Malaradit was an extremely risky tactic, in which Furrelian ships would temporarily cease firing their weapons at enemy targets, before releasing everything they have ready at once in a large organised salvo. Normally, this order was only given once there was no other hope, but Karudema seemed to be desperate. The order was carried out across the fleet, and that would be noticeable to the Gaussians. For almost five minutes, no weapons, excluding the point-defence and some of the lighter disruptors, opened fire. It seemed like the fleet had gone into hibernation, but before long, they came back, hard.
“For Greyas we strike deep in the heart of the enemy, and for our people, we fight. On orders of myself, Admiral Karudema, I order the fleet under my command to fire in a Malaradit pattern at the ones who stride against our people. Twelve salvos, one for each companion we have lost. Fire!” The order came, and the weapons followed. In a blinding flash of light, a vast majority of the fleet fired all their weapons at once, targetting the largest ship in the Dominion’s fleet. Even though the Dominion had disabled some of the weapons, a majority remained operational. Thirty seconds passed, and a second salvo came, this timeless destructive as the Tachyon lances did not fire. Still, the magnificent green light of the disruptors filled up space. Attacks like this continued for, exactly, twelve times. The first half was all focused on the Dominion’s flagship before the other six shots were fired at other large ships. But as quickly as it had appeared, it dissipated. The organised salvos fell silent, and it only took a while before the ordinary weapons fire, though less active than before, re-appeared. Some of the weapons were still cooling, which was a great point of concern. The incoming drones were, outside of the standard weapons fire, mostly ignored. Only a small part of their Furrelian counterparts was sent in to engage, which they did. On long-range, some of the gunships began firing their own missiles, before being followed by a small part of the Furrelian drones.
Open space, FDS Wrath of Sallag
Like an asteroid, the breaching pods slammed into the Wrath, penetrating the spaced armour time and time again. Eventually, after dozens of layers of armour, the pods penetrated the outer hull, and their mission began. The narrow halls of the outer parts of the ship gave barely any space to manoeuvre, but the Blades succeeded in escaping the compartment they landed in, which erupted into fire, not even seconds after they had landed. The ship-born Maintenance AI noticed this and quickly moved to depressurise the compartment, and the few next to it. Their doors locked down and the atmosphere was let out, but it was not fast enough to lock the Cresent blades inside of it. By now, the local security detachment knew that something was wrong, and after failing to connect to the local cameras, a state of emergency across decks 43-H through 44-L was announced, and the defences were brought online. The first one of those the blades would see came shortly afterwards, as before they arrived at one of the more important halls, a duo of automated turrets were engaged, opening fire with a by-now familiar green glow, while on the background armoured boots could be heard, the first soldiers of the security department had arrived at the scene, joining in with the turrets.
On the bridge, the reports of the attackers came in, and quickly afterwards the standard procedures for boarding actions were engaged. The section where they had landed, mostly dedicated to the storage of the ship’s Ancerium, had been locked out of any entrance, and its elevators, connected to other parts of the system, had shut down and followed with the doors, locking out too. The last remnant of the Dominion’s fleet sent to destroy the Wrath of Sallag continued to be targeted and the seemingly endless weapons fire continued its task.
Eastern Pobbma System
The missiles did what they were tasked to do, destroying swats of the minefield, some sections had to be taken out mine-by-mine, while some of the more unfortunate sections were destroyed in a chain reaction of explosions. A path was cleared for the Dominion to attack the inner planets, and the shipyards.
Pobbma VI:
Rather swiftly there became one obvious problem with the Malaradit strategem; that there was no obvious command ship. The Carrier-dreadnoughts serving as the next best thing and at 24 kilometers in length were far and above the largest ships in the fleet. Still an obvious choice.
A thousand bolts converged on the ship’s center of mass before any reaction could be coordinated. Explosions tore the craft asunder, working their way from stem to stern as bolts lagging a few moments from light lag continued to pour in. The final few simply sailed straight through the cooling cloud of gas and scattered debris. They then began to notice that there was almost no fire being levied in their direction. Admiral Quoe then gave the order for the battleships to advance into proper CQB, and began to draw out the appropriate trajectories on his tactical map.
A second full salvo. A second carrier destroyed. The dreadnought carriers had begun to reserve their energies, ceasing their suppressive fire. All the while the battleships and battlecruisers doubled down, surging forward into the enemy formation to engage in close quarters battles with the larger battleships while their foe busied themselves with the carrier. The swarms of drones and gunships moved in to assault the enemy drone and fighter formations. As they approached for their engagements the battleships and cruisers went into rolling maneuvers, a strategem designed to enhance the effectiveness of their armor, preventing disruptor shots from easily targeting the same sections of the ship repeatedly.
In this time, two more of the dreadnought carriers had fallen. Only when they got to the fifth did they encounter any resistance. As the shots came down the hardlight shields flashed to life, surrounding almost the whole of the ship at once. Teal blue plates defied the volley of fire; at least in part; working faster than any of the commanders to perceive to regenerate where needed to intercept the volley. At the conclusion, as the blinding flash faded the ship remained. A few shots had managed to work their way past, and the ship was utterly depleted of its energy reserves. Thirty seconds was not enough time to replenish them, and the following volley annihilated the ship in much the same manner as the first four. This pattern proceeding to repeat with the remaining four carriers until the twelve volleys were spent.
Quoe likened the tactic to a martial artist throwing a dozen back kicks in sequence. Insanely powerful, nearly impossible to block. But predictable, and they would leave the enemy vulnerable. The best defense… the best way to assure no more lives and material would be spent was a strong offense.
WOS Escort fleet.
The scattered survivors began to make disorganized transits into subspace. Disruptor fire taking down two more maven class ships before they could make the jump. Now the success of this side of the operation fell soley on Khanyasa’s extended team.
Team 3 were making their way into their positions as they heard the stampede of troops flooding out from the ship’s barracks facilities to counter the boarders. Having drilled their likely routes to the source of conflict they set up killboxes at various choke points. The narrow corridors of the ship would play to their advantage as the plans called for immense barracks facilities but only a small number of enemies could fiesably engage them at a time. The doors began to lock down.
The first bouts of combat began to open up as a tiny spotter drone identified the targets. A war droid raised his shoulder mounted RPG launcher. Around half a dozen rounds were ejected from the system; arcing around the corner on tiny reaction thrusters before bolting forward on its main engine and bursting open into a shower of microflechettes. The first wave promptly perforated in a grizzly manner. They had plenty of rounds to spare; From there it was merely a matter of supression.
It seemed as though it would be easy, but it was not. Their strategem had to account for the fact that in a ship this large there were many routes and they had to cover all of them for as long as possible. ESP drones and laser tripwires were deployed to every corridor to keep tabs on movements such that they could reposition accordingly.
Team 1, with Khanyasa leading the charge arrived at the turrets. A War droid was the first to meet their fire, bolting back behind cover as soon as it was hit. Several holes rimmed in molten slag adorned the machine now lacking an arm. Yet it still clutched a rifle in one hand and stood dutifuly.
Theyd anticipated some unexpected resistance. Minor corruption in the plans or simple upgrades to the ship. Khanyasa readied a grenade, hurling it around a corner. A flash and a burst of technosmoke obscured the corridor. She stepped into the open and raised her rifle as disruptor shots from the blinded turret continued to sail past. Two tacitful shots through the smoke, two explosions from anti-armor rounds and the guns fell silent.
They continued their advance. Lockdown had been engaged, and they weren’t yet in position. Their next obstacle; a bulkhead. She readied her sword, intending to merely carve through it as quickly as possible.
“Alternate route D3! Come on!”
The troops took off, turning left while a handful of her squad went right to the officer’s quarters. They were in fact already on an alternate route. The only reason they had encountered any turrets. This was a further permunation, but one which would ultimately lead them to their objective. Convoluted in routing but momentum was preferrable to efficency. Arriving at an elevator shaft, she began to dispatch the door such that they could descend deeper into the ship.
Team 2; comitted in engineering were deployed into the Ancerium storage. The great dreadnought clearly a glutton for FTL fuel. The engineering crews stood little chance against the blades, barely registering as a nuisance as they continued their stampede twoards the ship’s heart. Dedicated security forces and the interior turrets along their route proved more trouble than they were worth, able to break their momentum even if momentarialy. The presence of automated turrets caused them to engage one of their alternate routes. A conduit which transferred Ancerium from the storage to the ship’s FTL drive and a maininence tunnel ran alongside it, letting out near the main engineering compound where their objective lay.
Space; Eastern side of the system.
More subspace transits rang out with the announcement of the fifth and final phase of the attack. Another attacking force stationed near the hole they had opened. Paltry compared to the fleet at Pobbma VI; only four battleships, eight cruisers and four carriers. Torpedoes were fired into the system and a comparatively humble drone swarm was produced. Sentinels continued to drop in off the rear of the formation and deploy interdiction creating a long, gangly corridor of space now inaccessible to faster than light transits off the rear of the formation. Their point defenses began to fire off seemingly at random low power, identifying the tiniest flecks of debris or micrometeorites and clearing them away.
At the far end of the formation the eight omniscience command ships made their transit. Evidently heavily modified, as their weapons systems had been removed; a minimalistic armored plug seating in the hardpoints. At their rear large geodesic armored tanks had been affixed around the engine rings. One such ship was Luss’ temporary command ship. Of course her avatars were scattered throughout the fleet and back at Assiduous. Two in fact, had fallen victim to the Malaradit strategem. Suffering a painless and instant death as the avatars were reduced to hot gas.
“Exit vector established.” A commander returned. “We are ready to normalize for outbound trajecotry.”
“Alright.” She began, stripping off her decorative robe to reveal a skintight pressure suit underneath and stowing it in a floor compartment. “Strap yourselves in and clench those ass cheeks; this little stunt is gonna exceed our inertial dampeners by quite some margin.”
Several officers snickered as they seated themselves in harnesses. Every control station rotated into a downward position with the crew on their backs.
For a moment there was silence. The engine ignited and the ship jolted forward. Even at full throttle and stripped of its weapons system the eight ships appeared rather sluggish under their standard thrust; as though their drives carried vastly more mass than they would normally. The admiral initiated the tank injectors manually before a relativistic velocity calculator took center stage on her display. When the injectors ignited, streams of deuterium and tritium shot into the exhaust plume of the ship. Wrapped into the magnetic bands of fusion plasma the engine surged into overdrive; like an immense afterburner. The inertial dampener shifted into canceling nearly all of their forward acceleration, but it was woefully underpowered for such immense acceleration and the crews were forced back into their seats.
Pobbma VI
A loud cheer came in on Admiral Karudema’s bridge. Every time the report of a ship that had perished from the Malaradit, the bridge crew would jubilate, and understandably so. They were put against, what they thought to be, a superior force, and came out on top. The mood remained positive for a while until the dozen salvos ended. The majority of the Furrelian ships, by now, had temporarily run out of their disruptor energy reserves, and they needed to reload. This time was used by the Dominion to attack the Furrelians, and the Furrelian response was inefficient. Only a small minority of the ships were able to still fire their main weapons, and only a small part of those was large enough to counter a battleship surging towards them. The first response came in swarms of fighter drones and gunships. These were not sent towards a particular target, instead, the squadron commanders were allowed to pick the targets they wanted to disable themselves. They worked with the Furrelian Priority system. Large targets are to be disabled before the smaller ones, the first compartments you should hit for are the Engines, the Weapons and any radiators which are visible. After that, structural supports are your targets. went the quote, and the commanders of the squadrons did exactly that. On one Dominion battleship, a group of four squadrons each picked their own targets. However, the majority of the drones and fighters were still at the frontlines, and now the Dominion’s counterpart was too. As the two clouds of drones collided, the inside became incredibly hectic. Furrelian drones raced to shoot down their Dominion counterparts, firing disruptors and missiles as they went. Their casualties slowly rose, and it wasn’t too uncommon for drones to get lost by accidental friendly fire. Back at the main fleet, however, the combat was spread out less thick.
Dominion battleships would often find themselves firing at ‘mute’ targets, as they could simply not fire back yet. Yet, once in a while, a Furrelian ship came back into commission and fired at the dominion ship attacking it. In most cases, this response came in missiles, before the disruptors came back into power. Yet, for other ships, it was too late. Their core exploding in a gaseous yellow cloud.
Open space, FDS Wrath of Sallag
The Landing party on the Wrath of Sallag continued to face stiff resistance, but yet gained ground, slowly. Team three had the bad luck of being the first to encounter the security detachment, which was assigned to the deck they were on. It was, however, easily taken care of. The rockets fired from the war droid were efficient in taking care of the group of Furrelians. For one moment they were there, and the next they were a minced pile of meat smeared against the walls. The once bright white walls were turned into a deep red, and the footsteps fell silent. The smaller hallways of the outer compartments worked against whatever favour the Furrelians had, and had been the demise of at least four Furrelians. As team three continued to push further inwards the Wrath, the fewer choices for routes they had. In the end, they were confined to a single hallway, and at the end of it, the door to the main walkway of Deck 43-K. At the end of the hallway were two turrets, and both of them started firing as soon as the Dominion team was detected walking into the hall. On the other side of the locked door, a group of Furrelians had arrived to ruin the days of any that passed the locked door. One of the soldiers had brought a heavy surprise, a heavy disruptor rifle.
Team One had succeeded in disabling the turret and were now allowed to continue. The group which went to the Officer’s quarters would find it almost empty, as there were no officers at the location. A minute after the Blades had arrived, however, this would all change. The Furrelians had sent another security detachment, and opened fire on all those in their way. These security officers were better equipped to handle with the Sabres than those who encountered Team Three. For one, they, just like the Dominion soldiers, wore full body armour, which protected them more than before. They also initially targetted the droids first, before going to trying to kill the actual soldiers. Those at the elevator shaft would find it basically impossible to open, unless they had the time to do so. The doors of the elevators were locked shut, and the elevators themselves were placed at such a height that neither the open shaft nor the cabine could be accessed. This would probably not be the priority for the Gaussian soldiers however, as turrets in the hallway engaged and began firing.
Team Two probably had most of the luck, as they were able to reach the conduit they needed. The Maintenence tunnel was extremely narrow, and only slowly could the blades crawl through it. However, once on the other side, they would not have the same luck as before. The main engineering compound was put under an even stricter lockdown, and even though it would be possible for the Gaussians to enter the compound, it would almost be impossible to reach either the core, FTL drive, or any control centre for those two, as the blast doors, supposedly able to survive an FTL drive failure, were locked down. Locking the two rooms away. And then came the problem of the security detachment, which was among the largest on the ship. Whatever Team Two was about to do, it would be difficult to do so without casualties on either side.
Eastern Pobbma System
The incoming fleet was given no more attention than required, specifically as it was way too small to counter any of the main Furrelian fleets, and it was terribly out of position to fight the fleet at Pobbma VI. The drone swarm was the first thing that alerted the main control at Pobbma II, and it was decided to keep an even closer eye on the Gauss Dominion’s task force. The loss of the mines at that position of space didn’t prove good news either. The incoming missiles were detected, and slowly but surely began to be intercepted by a few scattered point-defence platforms. Only a small part of the small and nimble missiles sent were actually shot down, but the route wasn’t done yet, and there would be plenty more opportunities to strike them. However, the same wasn’t the case for the Omniscience class ships. Those being the largest were picked out for long-range weapons fire. The first came from small weapons platforms, large Disruptors had been attached to asteroids, and were turned into traps. Deeper inside the system, a hidden asteroid base was able to launch some Sublight Anti-Ship missiles, which began racing towards a few of the Ommnisciences.
Eastern Pobbma System
“0.19c.” The display read as the ships continued accelerating. Then a disruptor shot sailed through. The shields didn’t flare as the ship was placing all power into its engine’s accelerators. Striking the starboard hangar bay a payload spilled out. Lead pellets coated in vantablack spilled into the void by the billions, an expanding shrapnel cloud tumbled away from the ship. Yet it was a meager hint as to what could have been had the ships reached their maximum speed. As more shots found their mark along the ship some struck the deuterium drop tank on the rear. The explosion tore the rear of the engine apart, and the force had been reduced to seven.
The galactic admiral saw the ship’s transponder go dark, the holographic diagnostic flick from blue to red. She also saw missiles being caught by interceptors and point defense fire laid down by the sentinels along their vector. She knew in that moment she was in too deep; perhaps she had underestimated their reactive tactics, and there was little hope that the remaining ships would find their mark now that the enemy knew what they carried. Wasting lives on a deception which had been revealed was not something she could afford to do.
“Break off the attack, detach drop tanks and payloads! All fleets, Full abort, full abort, get us the hell out of here!”
The Omniscience class ships detached their drop tanks. Dispensers unfurled from their hangars as they released their full payloads. They were immense industrial cylinders of titanium containing uncountable lead pellets and a small chemical explosive; released and the ships broke from the charge. She had intended to only release them only upon reaching the cusp of lightspeed, rather than the far more meager 20% of lightspeed they had managed in the short time they had. Regardless a slow moving and sparse shrapnel cloud striking the yards was vastly better than none at all.
With that the sentinels began to drop their interdiction and bring their drives to power. The forward fleet which had discharged their missiles did the same; the manned fighters looping back around for an emergency recovery while the drones stayed behind.
Pobbma VI
“Multiple contacts incoming.” Quoe’s lead technician replied… they’re trying to clip our wings.
The last few ships, vulnerable from their lack of power being tag teamed by cruisers and artillery ships or forced into lopsided engagements with dominion battleships orders of magnitude higher in tonnage and firepower. Quoe’s command ship was the one playing victim to the lunge of enemy fighters. Though the larger gunships were ready and in position, having never left their posting moved like a great wall between the flagship and the encroaching fighter swarms. Larger and more robust they were less hindered by a single missile or collision with debris. And on the angles that there weren’t gunships the defending battleship alternated its mass drivers to fire flechette rounds. Showers of tungsten or osmium spears which if fired and timed precisely could shear apart an entire wing of fighters in a single shot. And though they avoided any manned fighters, took little hesitation with shooting down a few of their own drones to handle the thickest parts of the enemy formation.
Only a handful of squadrons managed to slip their guard, managing a strike at the southeastern engine. Though the explosion of the antimatter missile salvo was not particularly spectacular, it seemed to have done enough damage to shut down the engine; and force the shutdown of the undamaged northwestern engine to keep the ship’s center of thrust balanced.
That was when the retreat order came in. Quoe hesitated, the farrian scowling at their monitor, finding a vindictive satisfaction in orchestrating the systematic destruction of the exhausted enemy fleet and avenging the loss of their supercarriers. But such emotionally-charged decision making would only lead to more loss of life. The officers began to order a general withdrawal, with manned fighters and gunships taking priority for recovery. They did continue attacking the enemy ships, but in a manner more tempered that allowed for the charging of FTL droves and the recovery of a fighter. The surviving supercarriers jettisoned their improvised drone launch racks to take on the extra gunships and fighters orphaned from the carriers.
The millions of remaining drones unable to fit and separate from their commanders were programmed with new paramaters. Their self-preservation modifier dialed back making them nigh suicidally aggressive. Now, the only thing they even somewhat respected was the dominions IFF tags and programmed with an order to the shipyard.
Wrath of Sallag
Team 1
Team one reached the desired location, placing charges on some seemingly random walls and detonating them to sever power to the bridge security, only to find more security closing on their positions. With the security system disabled they could fight a tactical withdraw straight to the bridge. As their enemy now bore actual armor they switched ammo types to armor piercing rounds. Miniature shaped charges designed to punch through powered armor were now the weapons of choice. Their intel hadn’t listed proper powered armor but the force felt there was no such thing as being over-prepared for such an operation, and such rounds would service them well against heavy body armor.
Khanyasa had identified that they were attempting to strip off their droid escort and intentionally left them behind. Stalling the security with droids while they pursued the true objective. Some of the droids made blatantly aggressive assaults. One stepped into the open, marching clear of a smokescreen only to catch several disruptor shots. It hinged over, keeping its feet magnetically locked to the floor. It rose back up, like a mummy rising from its sarcophagus riddled glowing orange holes left by disruptors; releasing a few more bursts of fire before succumbing in earnest.
The force now arriving at the final line of defenses surrounding the bridge was much smaller and more mobile. Stripped of a majority of their supporting droids it comprised a dozen individuals with only one or two suviving machines apiece. The defenses should have been offline, but in an effort to be sure a holographic decoy was sent ahead a moment before the main force made their advance.
Team 3
Team 3 had wholly anticipated the heaviest fighting and take the highest casualties. As their main duty was to contain the bulk of the ship’s defenders to the barracks by any means neccessary. In the close corridors the fighting was doomed to eventually devolve into a melee. Yet the squad leader wanted to abate that eventuality for as long as possible. Instead opting to expend their munitions. They too had stocked a sizable amount of AP ammunition for dealing with hard targets, and were keen on laying down rather liberal streams of fire to dispatch the armored guards.
Three droids went down in quick succession, falling to the mercy of the disruptor rifle. This provoked one of the blades to return fire, lunging out from cover shielded only by plates of hardlight he produced a small hardlight tanto blade from his thigh and hurled it at the attacker. Failing this he would lunge down the hallway, following an erratic pattern of somersalts and thruster-assited jumps to close the gap into melee range.
Team 2
The space outside the lead engineering compound was silent one moment and with the introduction of a single flashbang and technosmoke instantly devolved into a chaotic firefight. A few of the war droids carried larger anti-armor mine launchers. Firing off dumbell shaped missiles with small thrusters in all directions and no clear intended forward direction; the devices took a winding and convoluted route through tight corners and any gaps or vents present in the ship. These would be used to assail the defending turrets before a member of the squad ran fourth.
A rarity, this member was a Gare’darian. A veritable titan standing at almost three and a half meters, carrying four immense neon blue blades blades larger than a full grown man. With the cover of his compatriots he charged head on to the bulkhead. They had analyzed the schematics and found no roundabout method to an engineering. The head-on approach was the only option. Luckily they were relatively fresh in terms of equipment and suited to such an obstacle.
Pobbma VI
As the first Gaussian ships started withdrawing from the scene, the first Furrelian ones came back online, though the mood wasn’t as jubilant as some might have hoped. The casualties were high, especially among the fighters. The fighters continued to get more and more casualties, especially from the swarms of tungsten balls, and Dominion fighters and drones. Almost 1/4th of the fighters, gunships, and drones sent in had sustained critical damage, and 1/5th had been destroyed. The handful of squadrons that had been able to strike the command ship’s engine did not enjoy the victory for long, as it didn’t take long for the squadrons sent in to be caught up in the flechette fire, and were too picked apart. Karudema’s flagship, the Nisudole Monit, had regained power too, and immediately began organising a strike against the remaining Dominion ships. Five ships, the Monit included, began launching missiles in more organised salvos, and before long others started joining in. By now, the fighter squadrons which had sustained the most casualties were forced back to base, while the drones were further reinforced. Still, the Furrelian swarm was dangerously outnumbered, so to counter the Dominion’s swarm of droids. A few of the online ships began joining in with their own point-defence and anti-fighter missiles, while a few ships on the rearguard began launching cyberattacks against the wave of fighters. The majority of the attacks would penetrate deep into the system of the drones, before hijacking them and forcing the drones to self-destruct. Other cyberattacks had different goals, with some of the attacks only being targetted at certain drones, in order to send messages containing viruses, comparable to the ones used against the drones, back to the ships launching them, with the goal of hijacking and destroying those ships.
Open space, FDS Wrath of Sallag
Team one
The Armour-Piercing rounds, fired by team one, proved to be a difficult enemy for the Furrelians to counter. As they were hit, two of the soldiers screamed out in pain, falling down onto the ground with a resounding Clang, and remaining silent, face down. Others were just as unlucky, falling prey to the droids. Before even all the war droids were destroyed, the Furrelians had already moved further into the smokescreen and began laying down suppressive fire. The explosion which had cut power to the bridge had worked both in the advantage, and disadvantage for the Blades. The advantage was that the defences en-route to the bridge were disabled, resulting in safe travel towards the bridge. The disadvantage became obvious a few corridors before they arrived at the bridge. The only two access points were locked down, as a result of the explosion which was supposed to cut the energy to the bridge. However, the plan might’ve not worked as expected for one single reason; The bridge section had its own power grid, among others. The bridge had its own of basically everything. It had its own energy grid, oxygen supply, and many, many more. It was also among the hardest areas to enter, as it only had two access point with the rest of the ship. With both of them closed due to the sudden removal of energy to the defences, it would be impossible to enter the bridge. On the other side of the blast doors, however, the Furrelians took the time to prepare themselves for the battle to come, first off by repairing its own energy infrastructure, before getting the defences themselves up too. An emergency barricade was too installed.
Team three
The fighting with team three continued, and it was obvious that there would be no clear winner yet. The unorganised stream of disruptors continued to pour in, while the munitions fired by the Blades began to take their toll on the Furrelians. The blade closing into the Furrelians was met with incoming disruptor fire as he came, while one of the soldiers noticed what the lone Blade was trying to do, and quickly grabbed his own melee weapon, a large bayonet. He barely had the time to attach it to his rifle, and by the time he was finished, the Blade was extremely close. The soldier jumped forwards to meet the Blade, his bayonet extended and ready to stab the lone soldier.
Team two
The arrival of Team two to the engineering compound was faced with an organised resistance, which had taken casualties from the first missiles. The flashbang only affected the few soldiers who didn’t have their helmets on, but for the rest, the visor simply dimmed the light automatically, and they remained in action. The smoke was royally screwing over the organised resistance though, and the majority of the soldiers simply began laying down suppressive fire, to avoid anyone passing through the cloud. The Gare’darian, however, was a drastic change in the field of combat. The giant had impacted the morale of those first meeting him. Still, it didn’t change the fact that he was going straight for the blast door protecting the FTL drive. Officers handed out orders, and a part of the defenders opened fire on the Alien. Seven disruptors, one of those being a heavy repeater rifle, hammered the titan with everything they had. As of that moment, the Gare’darian was the greatest threat to the security of the FTL drive.
Eastern Pobbma system
Luss had probably released the billions of pellets too early, but rather some pellets than none. By the time the Gaussian ships sounded the retreat, they were at around a quater of the way into the Pobbma system. The missiles which were sent in first had all but been picked out of the sky, but the Furrelians didn’t know of the incoming pellets. Howerver, as they spread out further, the fewer were on a trajectory to the shipyards. Still, those ranged in the millions, and it could possibly hamper the yard’s activities for the years to come.
Pobbma System
Across the system, one by one, ships abandoned their posts as the interdiction wells dispersed, withdrawing with blue flashes into subspace. Over the next few minutes all that remained were floating half-melted slabs of grav-compacted armor and the occasional disabled drone or gunship where the fleets had been.
Drone Swarm
The drones carried on, taking the losses to the swarm while barely noticing. Some returned fire, protecting themselves from missiles, attacking fighters that dared stray too close or making lackluster strafing runs as they passed the fleet, but a majority seemed more focused on their primary objective. The hacking attacks proved a frustratingly slow method of controlling the swarm as the drones were completely isolated. Hence meaning any hacker needed to parse the correct access codes for each individual drone one at a time, handshake with the drone only for it to identify unauthorized access and self destruct. If not by command of the enemy but its own volition.
Subspace
The galactic admiral scowled. Her plan had fallen to pieces. At every juncture their intel had been incorrect or incomplete. She frantically identified the shortcomings of the plan. Insufficent sensors to identify the defense platforms on Pobbma VII… the enemy were probably using high level stealth. They’d also failed identify the defenses that had stopped the flak screen from being deployed… though that was more understandable. Concealed and powered down asteroid defenses were a common method used by her own people. Still, such weapons should have been identified and destroyed by the sentinels guarding the corridor. Her failure had possibly just cost them the war. No… every war was won or lost before it even began.
She gripped the armrest of her command chair, kneading it with her claws. Anger came over her like rolling waves, each one harder to resist than the last. The scattered reports of successful retreats and damage reports rolling into the back of her head through her neural lace. As the ships withdrew her mental image of the battle, conjured by a million electronic eyes began to grow warped in time and positioning; with a lack of communication and information. Drawing a deep breath, rationality returned.
She stole a glance at the series of two dozen wedge shaped ships. The only grouping which was still not racked with red pulsing indicators pointing to damages or depleted power systems.
“Order the monitors above and below the ecliptic to redeploy at on my mark. Get me the third reserve squadron, order them to reposition and line up for a pass at the yards.”
“Admiral…” Her first lieutenant began. “That’s suicidal.”
“Maybe. But I assembled these frigate squadrons specifically as rapid response for circumstances that I did not anticipate. The drones and the flak wall will converge on the shipyard at roughly the same time… something I did not anticipate. They’ll be forced to respond to those, and they’ll be lured into a false sense of security thinking that the battle is over.”
Wrath of Sallag
Team 1
“Fuck!” Khanyasa hissed.
“What’s our play?” One of her squadmates asked.
“I’ve got an idea thats just stupid enough to work…”
…
From the perspective of the guards there was a quite grizzly altercation going on further down the hall and around the corner; just out of view, one which had disabled the CCTV in that sector. (In truth they’d just picked up a couple of disruptor rifles and were firing them off wildly.) The combat continued for a minute before a holographic illusion made its way around the corner. A handful of Furrelian medics carrying wounded soliders away. One clutched his bleeding throat. Another had a badly mangled leg; and another didn’t appear to be seriously wounded but was having a mental breakdown, weeping for his mother. As they were ordered to halt by the guards and asked to present ID, Khanyasa hurled a high yield concussion grenade around the corner and into the middle of the barricade to disrupt the formation.
“I’ve got your clearance right here…” The medic returned in an undisguised baritone robotic voice produced by his armor’s external microphone as he reached around seemingly to present an identification in his pocket, but instead returning with a submachine pistol in one hand a plate of neon blue hardlight on the other. Though still externally appearing as a medic hoping it would buy him a few seconds of hesitation from the automated turrets and guards.
Team 2
The Gare’darian growled as he took the first few hits. The armor on his leg gave out, causing him to collapse onto his knee. He felt little pain; offset by a cocktail of painkillers and other drugs. But still knew he was gravely injured and if he continued to take fire, it would be his undoing. His helmet was struck by a blast. Damaged and blinded he tore it off; exposing his face; one side burned by heat and radiation that had bled through the armor. He let out one final bestial roar before crumpling over on his back. His massive swords deactivated and fell to the floor. Rivers of molten metal ran from his armor; which was cratered like the surface of an asteroid with disruptor impacts.
His comerades raced past him; the first of which kicked the cut section of door clean, raising plates of hardlight to block fire. In an effort to maintain their momentum they simply abandoned his seemingly dead form at the door, spilling in and continuing their assault on engineering. A pair of war droids stayed behind a few moments longer, covering the squad’s rear flank before they too retreated through the opening.
Though it wasn’t immediately evident, the Gare’darian took slow, shallow rapsing breaths. Barely clinging to life.
Team 3
The situation outside the barracks was deteriorating rapidly. The lone warrior charged with defending the corridor quickly becoming overwhelmed. Exchanging to the last clip of munitions he had he continued to suppress fire while the war droids; having fully spent theirs went into melee engagements. One managed to grapple a Furrelian, outweighing him two to one; the engagement was woefully one sided as he was flung into the wall by the machine, caving in the plate and causing a plume of steam to erupt from the wall.
He turned his attention to another corridor running parallel only to see the pair of droids intending to cover it had been destroyed and troops were rushing past. He lunged into the fray, blitzing a dozen with his sword in under a second. But before his chain of melee attacks could conclude the warrior caught a disruptor bolt to the shoulder. He fired back, only for his weapon to give an electronic beep that it was out of ammo. A second shot, then a third and his arm dropped from the shoulder socket. Frantically he exchanged his sword for a disruptor which didn’t fire. Seeing this he simply hurled the gun like a shuriken with such inhuman force I bisected his assailant.
He took cover in one of the officer’s quarters as his armor did its best to medicate the stump of his missing arm.
“Damn it!” He shouted, reaching around the corner with his remaining arm to get his sword which was nearly out of reach. Stealing a peek around the corner to see that nobody was coming; at least at the moment. “Can anyone hear me? What’s taking so long?”
He could hear more boots coming, gripping the sword with his one remaining arm he prepared to make a final stand against the enemy.
Pobbma System
The retreat had finally arrived, much to the please of the control on Pobbma II, but they knew the battle wasn’t over yet. The drones could form an issue later on, and there were still ships over the system’s poles. The fleets near the main drone swarm found out, rather early, that the electronic warfare was not working out, so they came up with an alternative; EMP weapons. The Furrelian fleet changed from using their electronic warfare, to the lasers carried by almost every ship, which were primarily used as disabling weapons. One by one, ships started firing these lasers on the swarm, filling up the space between them with a show of gold, only often disrupted by a green bolt racing forwards. But, for time being, the control over at Pobbma II was kept on high alert, as was required of any Furrelian institution which had come under attack. At least 24 hours had to pass before they could go back to normal alert, just in case an enemy fleet, concealed in another system, decided to take a shot at attacking the colony. But, it seemed like the Furrelians had won this battle. The Defence of the system had remained intact, and even though in some sectors there were considerable casualties, it seemed like there would come no second attack. All that remained now was the Wrath of Sallag. A giant which had fallen still, its engines destroyed by a trigger-happy Dominion fleet. If the Wrath survived the battle, it would’ve been a full victory. A single message was sent from the flagship of the Pobbma VI defence fleet to the command at Pobbma II.
“All is clear, we have won in our sector. However, the drones are still here, requesting support.”
…
By this time, the first point-defence platforms on the original trajectory of the fleet of four battleships had begun noticing abnormalities in their sensors. Almost as if a large swarm was approaching, and this time, that was exactly the case.
A swarm of tens of millions of small pellets were heading towards the yards. Just in time, the crews of the larger platforms began transmitting warnings to the yards. By now, the first automated platforms began firing at the shrapnel, rapidly launching hot plasma towards the swarm. The sensors, though a bit lacking in the details of the pellets, gave enough details to organise some firing, and that was enough for those platforms. They fired with hundreds of Point-defence bolts at once, lightening the sky in the system once more. The shipyards, even though still hours away from the conflict zone, had already prepared anti-debris defences, glorified point-defence guns. The defence against the pellets was going alright, but not perfectly. Once in a while, a Point-defence platform got taken down, by the pellets it was supposed to defend against.
Open space, FDS Wrath of Sallag
Team one
Team One had run out of luck. If they had hoped to integrate with suspicious people, they should’ve done their homework better, as what they did only worked against their favour. The grenade thrown into the barricade only caused minimal confusion, as the majority of the troops were well entrenched. The blue weapon fire, something clearly not belonging to the Furrelians, however, was the final straw. The second the first commander noticed it, he shouted an order over the barricade.
“They’re not of us, they’re Gauss! Gun them down!”, and even though some sections of the barricade hesitated opening fire at first, a large section did, making it impossible to enter the bridge area. Its only point of access was where that barricade was, and it was filled with disruptor fire. A maelstrom of tints of green rushed towards the ‘Furrelian Medics’, who by now had become clear to be dominion impostors.
Team two
The Furrelians were, in fact, so paranoid, that even after the Gare’Darian collapsed, they continued to hammer him with disruptor fire. But, by then, the attention was diverted to another target, the Blades passing behind the creature. As the Dominion soldiers passed their fallen comrade, they were continuously bombarded by disruptor fire, but eventually, the attention was put to the war droids…
On the other side of the door, however, all hell broke loose. The automated turrets in the section of the FTL drive had not been disabled, and to give the blades a false sense of hope, they remained inactive until they passed, then it began. Two turrets, both firing at their highest power setting. Almost like a minigun, the turrets spew out deadly plasma, now in the all-familiar green glow. The FTL drive only showed its golden glow behind a glass wall, the blades were so close, but they could not access it. The two operators in the operations room spectated as the guns opened fire. So much for a Faster-than Light drive.
Team Three
For a lone soldier, the blade showed courage. But his courage would be the end for him. Two of the dozen soldiers he had cut down had died, and many others had been injured from either his weapon’s fire or his sword. As the soldier was pushed back into the officer’s quarters, and the Furrelians were not going to lose any more lives to a single soldier, it was decided to simply terminate the soldier and the office with it. One Furrelian officer ran towards the barracks, having the grenade he intended on using in his hand. As he passed the office the blade was in, he pulled the pin and threw it, a bumping sound being heard as it crashed into the ground, a beep followed. The bob was going to explode, no matter what. Before the officer returned to his frontlines, he quickly closed the door of the office, trapping his Dominion counterpart inside.
Bridge proper
Captain Werasik, commander of the FDS Wrath of Sallag was waiting on the bridge. Waiting for more reports regarding the boarding of his ship. He took a deep sigh before the first report came. Not good news.
“Sir! We have just received reports that the FTL drive control room has been breached.”
-”You don’t think…” Werasik reacted surprised, but quickly came up with a response. “Fuck…. Give the Call of the Righteous a notification. Request them to activate interdiction, authorisation of Werasik-D432-A-Tizolit. Any messages requesting the lifting of interdiction must be ignored unless given the correct response to my authorization code. Go!”
A minute passed before finally a warning was to be heard on a console. The ship was now in an interdiction field, it would not be able to leave the system.
“Let’s just hope they haven’t boarded the Righteous, now.” he sighed.
Subpace
The Galactic admiral watched for a few moments as the station engaged their flak cloud. Their drone swarm was being picked part long before it could close the range; their numbers quickly dwindling as the lasers came to power. The final nail in the coffin came when she saw interdiction drop about the Wrath of Sallag. Her worst nightmare, realized. They had failed at every objective and nothing to show for it but a half a million copy-and-paste letters of regret and a fleet of mangled ships limping back to Assiduous for repairs.
“The bomber squadrons are ready to deploy, madame.” Quoe reported.
“Hold them.” She replied. “I know when I’m beaten… no reason to waste more lives.”
The galactic admiral took pause for a second.
“Thats a general retreat order. All ships, set a course for Assiduous on my mark.”
The ships above the system’s poles departed as the fleet out set a solemn departure for home. As they left, she mulled over what went wrong, the chatter of the ship’s crew seemed to fade into the background. The crescent blades team should have jumped the Wrath by now… they had the plans and knew the ship inside and out. Their sentinels should have destroyed the gun which interrupted their run on the yards. She could take solace in the fact she had accounted for the fact… mentally and tactically prepared herself for the idea that everything could have failed such that it did.
Her mind continued to race, thinking of al the possibilites that could transpire from here. She knew the prime minister was banking heavily on her promise success, and without being able to promise that she would lobby for surrender. That was something she couldn’t allow, under any circumstances. And yet, it seemed inevitable.
Her brow furrowed. That was not a battle she would lose.
Team 1
Their diversion had failed. Caught out of cover the group quickly retreated back behind the corner. She winced, looking down a slag-rimmed impact mark on her stomach dripping blood and molten metal. Khanyasa’s had fallen to the weaponsfire. Ducking to cover a warning system indicated that Team 3 had failed to hold their objective, and everyone in that team was reported dead. And after their deception, she somewhat doubted they would accept any surrender.
She looked down, past a medical warning of radiation poisoning and moderate burns which she could barely feel. She set the armor to self destruct. The plating came apart; and she felt releif as she pulled away from the damaged midsection and scrambled behind a corner. A moment later her suit detonated. It was not a grand explosion; but enough to mangle key components such as the reactor, entangled uplink, sensors and medical systems beyond recognition and reconstruction.
She considered walking around the corner again. But on further consideration, realized that would simply get her shot. She had a much better chance of survival if they came to her.
Team 2
The resolve of the broke here as well. Those turrets weren’t present in the schematics. For all practical intents and purposes they may as well have been on an entirely different ship; and the turrets had proceeded to gun down a majority of their droids before they withdrew behind cover. When the reports of the other teams failing at their objectives came through they opted to consider a back up plan; wherein they would self destruct the reactor and take themselves with it. But the ranking officer of the squad had made up his mind, and his verdict was final.
A salvo of mild explosions as their suits scuttled, including the Gare’darian which they had abandoned prior. A few moments later; the half dozen soliders; now wearing nothing but the under suits of their powered armor, stepped through the hole they had made in the engineering bunker’s bulkhead, heads hung and arms raised.
Team 3
With the lack of ESP drones to spy the trap; and the lack of concentration on the part of the sole remaining combatant, the trap worked perfectly. When the explosive detonated; the warrior was flung against the opposite wall of the office. His helmet and leg mangled, and his face badly bloodied; and he was barely alive. His last will was that his armor suffer a similar fate to Khanyasa’s, save for the fact that he was still inside it.
Pobbma system
The battle was over; a Furrelian victory. The final dominion ship had departed, and by now all that remained were the drones, whose numbers were dropping. Even the cloud of debris had been taken care of, and only a single yard had reported damage. It was, all in all, pretty clearly a very humiliating defeat for the Dominion. The defence officer aboard the central space station put down his headphones, sat back, and took a deep breath. The battle had lasted for almost an entire day, and he had not taken a single break. The siege of Pobbma had been broken, and now the time came for repayment. The Wrath of Sallag had regained her own power, and had been able to continue her original journey towards the shipyards at Pobbma II, and many other ships followed the Wrath. The free yards were suddenly filled with ships requiring repairs, and though the repair crews first hesitated, they began working on them.
Wrath of Sallag
As the blades laid down their arms, it became clear that there would be no mercy for them. In total, forty-two members of the Furrelian force had been killed, and their companions were not going to take a beg for mercy as an answer. The leaders and simple soldiers were separated and carried away towards different sections of the ship. Soldiers to the brig, and leaders to the main cargo bay. As the ship regained its engine trust, it rushed towards the main space station, where, the normal soldiers were put off the ship, but not the commanders. Instead, for their ‘crimes’, it was decided to execute the surviving leaders of the three groups. Without even getting the last word, they were carried away to the airlock and thrown out.
Pobbma System
Three days later
The dust had settled, and normal traffic had resumed once again. The debris of the Dominion ships which had been destroyed was slowly being recovered for analyses, but it was unlikely that the crews of the ships were able to get any real data out of it. Within three days, however, the Wrath had been able to be repaired, together with a few other ships. Admiral Werasik was aboard the main station of Pobbma, looking down at the promenade. He had noticed something unusual, fifty minutes ago, a dreadnought had arrived, and he had recognised which one. The Unrelenting mercy, the flagship of the fourth fleet. If it was there, it must’ve meant that the commander of its fleet was there too, and he was right. Next to him, a tall Furrelian came aboard the station. He was wearing an Admiral’s uniform, and before long, Werasik noticed who it was. Risodemi Tarodema, Upper fleet-admiral of the Furrelian Union, and hero of the D’Karian war. It became clear to Werasik what the next event of the war would be. A counter-attack. Otherwise, Tarodema wouldn’t be there.