Post by CanisDirus on Feb 27, 2022 21:16:03 GMT
It had been fifteen days since the agreement with the Zetyans had concluded regarding the start of joint operations in the Invilis Corridor. Officially, this time was being taken for a variety of logistical and administrative purposes, establishing the various details between both nations required to smoothly operate such differently organized forces. In reality however, much of this, at least on the Isoterran end, was merely a front for their real preparations.
In fact, much of the Isoterran logistics had been sorted out within the first day or two, with assets being earmarked and research done, with some extra time being taken to get intelligence and some operational details from the Zetyans. While this was going on however, the Isoterrans had been preparing on the PR front, starting by carefully flooding the local Ancnet with anti-Sadashi memes, stoking speciesist fears concerning their natural psionics and unconventional biology. This was followed by a variety of news articles, pushed through a myriad web of small Ancnet news websites, many of which created for this purpose, using dogwhistle tactics to build on the speciesist fears under a legitimate facade of the Sadashi's commerce raiding against the Zetyans. Icing on the cake was then provided by a few small press releases from the Isoterran government itself, criticizing the Sadashi raiding as harming the local economy and contributing to unrest in the Invilis Corridor. With now two full weeks of propaganda disseminated and still continuing, the local views of the Sadashi remnants were now starting to fall, which made them more vulnerable to the next part of the Isoterran's plan. This involved careful penetration testing of the remnants' cyber defenses via the Ancnet, gathering what information they could in preparation for the direct action that they were about to take with the Zetyans.
With the background preparation out of the way, it was finally time to actually deal with the Sadashi. In truth, the Isoterrans cared little about them, and under any other circumstances, would have likely dismissed them as another small and distant nation that barely warranted attention. However, this small and distant nation provided the perfect opportunity to advance their regional propaganda, do some research into local psionics, and strengthen their relationship with the Zetyans. Which is why an oversized naval group of thirty Isoterran warships, mainly containing a mix of battleships, battlecruisers, and their attendant frigates, now sat within a designated mustering system owned by the ratlike aliens with which the Isoterrans were going to be working on this operation.
Rear Admiral Dido stood at parade rest within the CIC of the naval group's flagship, a dreadnought which had been somewhat euphemistically nicknamed Grey Curator, watching the tactical feed with some impatience, which currently displayed her assets and the surrounding system, waiting for the signal that it was time to jump into the target system.
On the Zetyan end, a large majority of their time spent in those 15 days were dedicated to planning and setup of the attack phase, letting the Isoterrans handle one end while they tackled another. The logistics on that front weren't the hard part-a few bribes, barterings and 'borrowing's ensured the attacking forces were ready within about 5 days-but it was instead the plannings regarding their cetacean foes had taken up the vast majority of their time.
Many in Zettish politics postuled that the reason the Sadashi Remnants hadn't been wiped off the map was because they were 'good target practice' or 'a good testbed' or some other reason that gave them some use. In truth, the real reason why the Sadashi hadn't been wiped out yet was because they were just so slippery. They were hardly a speck on most maps, and their opponents had a much more powerful and expansive military, yet they always seemed to be one step ahead of their six-eyed foes, having become very adept at the art of guerilla warfare in space. They had plenty of knowledge of most Zettish raiding doctrine, and their own forces were fine-tuned to be as good of a counter as they could be against them in kind.
But this time, their opponents weren't raiding. No, the great game of space tag had finally grown stale.
First, a large force of pirates were to be used as fall guys. They were likely already en route, baited or bribed into heading towards one of the two major systems of the Sadashi. Their purpose was simple; go in, soften stuff up, die. As they couldn't predict exactly what enemy forces would be in the system, Zetyan planners planned to use them as a sort of recon as well; a few pirate ships had hidden cameras stuck on them, so the main fleet could verify just how heavily defended the system was.
The second part would come when the main Zetyan fleet arrived, and it had the two forces linking up and FTL'ing to a location just behind where Remnant forces were determined to be, deploying radio silencers and some interdiction before any word could get out of the real threat so as to maintain the illusion of a piracy raid. The close ranges they would be warping into would ensure a majority of shots would hit, and thus entail quick elimination, or at the very least extensive and critical damages across the entire enemy fleet.
Finally, a few more pirates were to be baited in and used as minefield clearers, and infrastructure was to be destroyed though the Zetyans had largely seen this part as more of a cleanup phase than anything.
Shortsighted, perhaps, but the plan seemed fruitful enough beyond that.
As the Rear Admiral waited, a Zetyan sloop jumped into the system. They sent along a radio message and a request to establish a data-link, saying "<<The cat has entered the bag. The river is encroaching. Awaiting details.>>"
As for the 'cat's, well, were they in for the nastiest rides of their lives...
----------
In the Sadashi system of Moloch, a diaspora of scrap seemed to erupt from nowhere, a few holes in reality ripping open to reveal a host of Freeboot ships, brought either by rumors of treasure, a fight, or both. Exactly 75 ships had come to bargain, each one of varying size and unique from the rest in it's own, special way. Almost like snowflakes, if they were giant hulks of scrap metal held together by shitty welds and liable to break at a moment's notice.
The ships soon stopped movement, seemingly confused for a moment. Where was the fight? Where was the treasure?? Who are these other gu-
Ah.
They all soon caught sight of a large conspicuous station, a grand, helical bone-weaved structure that glistened in the rays of a blue sun, rivers and lakes of glowing pink awash on it's surface. Even a pirate could've concluded exactly who that belonged to, and soon concluded that whatever beef they had with each other could wait, as they began to rocket exponentially over to that great citadel so tantalizingly close.
As they continued, though, something felt...
amiss.
Why were there so many asteroids? And, why hadn't anyone come to fight them yet? Weren't these their sworn opponents? They'd die to kill a Zetyan, so why werent-?
-
The Sadashi commander watched the scrapheap approach their Helic, 'eyes' narrowed and focused as it watched them proceed into a deathtrap. They were larger than it'd expected, much larger, and while it had faith in those forces and traps waiting cloaked in the marrow belts it had already ordered the station to send out a tier-2 reinforcements signal-medium threat, high priority. They were stupid, sure-any Devil dumb enough to go into their core regions would have to be, let alone raid one of their maiden worlds-but their sheer numbers by themselves posed a massive threat in the first place, and the thought of stragglers left behind from an ambush filled it with unease, no matter how backwards they were.
Personal feelings, however, could wait. Especially since their quarry had just fully entered the pincer.
-
And suddenly, just as they were beginning to pass within firing range, the world around that pirate fleet erupted in fire.
Psionic missiles suddenly burst out from various marrow asteroids, splitting into triplets as they careened into various ships, while others suddenly flung themselves full force at their opponents, almost like self-propelled mass driver rounds. All around the entourage, 50 Sadashi ships exited their stealth formes, belting pulse after pulse after psionic pulse at their quarry nonstop, the largest of them shooting off an EMP at the largest pirate ships and temporarily rendering them immobile. A further 25 remained at range, shooting off psionic missiles in bursts and collectively projecting a large shield onto the Sadashi forces in the pincer, while also giving a psionic bolster to their allies to boost their firepower and speeds to potent levels.
Their opponents found themselves being decimated, naturally, yet surprisingly they found purchase with their resistance. A few of the smaller ships suffered critical damages, and others in the pincer found themselves taking hits by nature of sheer volume of fire most of the pirate ships put out, coupled with the close combat ranges they were engaged in.
This worried the Helic Commander. Lost/damaged ships were no small feat to fix and redeploy, and who knew if these troglodytes were only a preliminary.
As it watched the chaos unfold, it reached out with it's mind, communing with other station crew in what felt like an instant to check for any inbound FTL signatures, or barring that anything indicating such. It hoped that reinforcements signal they sent out would be received by allies...
Invilis Corridor-South of Calypso space
Ginko lightly tapped her foot against the organic plating of the floor,creating sparks as her talons grinded against them. Her diner plate sized eyes watched the sensor feeds eagerly,waiting for something to come up
"Hmph,no lithoids here either. It seems they've learned their lesson afterall" she boasted,the pair of tendrils she used for arms undulating with excitement
"We are not here for them. You should worry about the other ones" Came a voice from behind her,heralding the arrival of Kriqno into the chamber. The alien heaved its much larger form forwards atop a mass of tentacular appendages.
"The other ones? Are you referring to the six eyes? You beat them in battle,last I recall" The pair of squid like fins at the top of her body began to wriggle,her mind taken back to the captivating story that introduced her to said event
"I did,yes. But unlike your geologic adversaries,I fear they are far from done with us." The larger lithorian accentuated his claim with their arms,clutching their fingers into a balled fist
"What makes you think that?" Ginko asked,her boneless mantle tilting to the side
"They're relentless you see,our victory over them was little more than an inconvenience. Their deals with this 'Isoterran Empire' shows that. Besides,Naz'kids agreements with the sadashi make conflict almost inevitable. It's why we are patrolling so close to their space"
"Yes,I did hear that the two had.....history"
"Correct,which gives us a common hatred. Better yet,our association has yet to become common knowledge,we should capitalize on that"
Suddenly,the fins on Ginko's head began to vibrate,Kriqno too soon feeling the peculiar sensation. The progeny of their lord Ka'thog grew restless aswell out in the void,sensing the psionic ping sent out by the Sadashi captain,a call for reinforcements
"This is Kriqno of the Collective,status report! What's happening out there?! Give us a visual for Ka'thogs sake!" He replied,sending a secure psionic ping back to their alien allies,nevertheless beginning the process of spooling the FTL drives on their bio vessels in the case that a response failed to come
The clash between the pirate and Sadashi forces was silently observed by Dido, watching a compilation of videofeeds from the cameras that the Zetyans had so thoughtfully hidden on the cannon fodders' ships. Accompanying him, unseen but present nonetheless, was his digital operations officer, who was carefully combing through the feeds, noting order of battle, positioning, and other key details regarding both the pirate and Sadashi forces. As the pirates sprang the Remnants' trap, he tapped a holo-haptic button, before speaking "All ships, charge DT drives and prepare to jump to the target system." This command was confirmed on a nearby display, showing overviews of his thirty warships, including the fact that they were now charging drives.
A few minutes past, and he noted with satisfaction that despite being surrounded now, the pirates were still managing to make the enemy work for their advantage through sheer tenacity and volume of fire, wearing down the smaller ships of the Sadashi formation. He had to hand it to them, despite being ambushed by a superior enemy, they were doing better than many in their position. But now it was time for them to join the unwitting pirates, before the enemy got too much of an upper hand and was able to regroup. First he sent a message to the Zetyan corvette nearby that was providing the broadcast stream. "It is time, let us finish the job that the pirates have started, before the Sadashi get too comfortable." Quickly following this was an order for his ships to jump and enter combat on arrival.
As ordered, the Isoterran fleet activated their charged-up drives, disappearing from the system. A 'short', or rather a short-relative-to-most-distances-in-space interval behind the Sadashi forces making up the out-system part of the pincer, the oversized Isoterran naval group arrived. Nearly immediately, shields were raised and they opened fire, sending a colorful stream of force gun bolts, plasma beams, antiship missiles, and disintegrator beams at the Sadashi in a colorful lightshow of green, red-pink, purple, and white. This was augmented by the activation of jamming and other ECM, while specific interdiction was activated, utilizing the intelligence they and the Zetyans had gathered prior to this whole operation to target the Sadashi FTL and prevent escape, while allowing the pirates, Zetyans, and Isoterrans to come and go as they pleased.
"<<Roger. All ships, bag is in the river. Bag is in the river. Coordinates sent, prepare jump, prepare jump, prepare jump...>>"
The sloop sent the confirmation broadcast to the Zetyan forces elsewhere, sounding practically giddy as it jumped in turn towards Moloch, leaving the staging system a barren, peaceful place once again.
-
Meanwhile, at Moloch, the pirates now staggered and died where they stood, their combat-effective ships reduced to less than 13 and decreasing by the minute. The Sadashi ships had incurred no more damages, at least, for now, and it seemed they were alone-noone else had come by to help so far.
The Helic commander was pleased, and internally let off a sigh of relief. It had been expecting worse from them due to their numbers, even if they were pirates, but now it made a resolution to temper it's expectations, as it began to compose it's message to the-
A hurried thought reached it through the mindweb. FTL signatures. A lot of them. It caused it to go into shock, for but a moment, before it too was rushing to verify those claims. How true they were, how agonizingly true.
Soon, a panicked message coupled with a visual thoughtpic rushed out to the Lithorian battlegroup, racing along the psionic wavelength as fast as that Helic could possibly have made it.
"[The Devils come for us, and they bring their imps! Send us help! SEND US---!]"
-
The Sadashi ships soon found themselves being torn apart like their former prey, a hail of color and light digging into their forces like the claws of a hawk. Several of the lighter ships were destroyed immediately, and the Isoterran alpha strike incurred damages across the entirety of the main fleet almost immediately. The support group was plenty active, however, and as the main fleet began firing back at the Isoterrans they bolstered their shields and weapons, as more psionic missiles dashed towards them from afar. It seemed that they still had a shot.
And then the Zetyans arrived.
They were split into two groups of 25, each immediately ensuing fire upon their quarry upon exiting their wormholes. The support group was forced to rescind their psionic shields as they soon found themselves being hammered by a sizeable force on their rear, and the main fleet now found itself in the middle of a pincer as they took fire from both sides. A cruel irony, to be on the receiving end of your own trick.
Oddly enough, however, they avoided firing on the Sadashi battleship. As the Zetyans began to take fire from their foes, attention drawn from the Isoterrans, it would seem rather unsound; why not focus on the biggest, most dangerous target? The reason, however, soon revealed itself, as the leading battleship soon exited warp.
It's appearance was strange, alien compared to the other Zettish ships. It looked like a normal Zetyan battleship, except all of it's weapons were replaced with strange mounts holding glowing prismatic crystals. The normal exhaust jet every other ship had was replaced with what looked like flashing green-red tails, and it's spinal was just a void with seemingly nothing in it, as bright green-red lines pulsed across the ship like veins. An evident prototype, and judging by the situation one that they eagerly wanted to test.
As it entered the fray, it began aiming that spinal hole towards the battleship with the leisure of a sunday driver. It's 'weapons' lay still, as all those bright, flashy colors on the ship seemed to drain away, and the hole seemed to brighten up just a little.
And then, there was a bright flash from that hole in the front. Another, directly on the Sadashi battleship, it's psionic shields dematerializing in an instant. Laserlike streaks of raw magic energy began screaming out towards the Sadashi, as the battleship lay strangely dormant.
And then there was no battleship at all.
Every trap in a general radius of the skirmish was activated with a panic unlike any other, missile after missile roaring from empty keratin-calciod shells as a halo of purple streaks erupted around the squabbling bunch. The majority were focused on that prototype, as a few of the closest ones were picked off by some of the prototype's conventional PD. Some of the least damaged Sadashi ships began to focus on it as well, though for now they remained on their own as their brethren were forced to content with the pincer.
An action bred of panic, but to the Sadashi anything was needed now. Never before had the Devils fielded something capable of destroying ships in what seemed like an instant, and this thing now presented itself as that which needed destroying here and now. The Helic began practically spamming distress signals, muted by the jamming of the Isoterrans.
The sloop from earlier remained at the edges of the system, broadcasting data and helping coordinate between the two forces. So far, everything had gone according to plan, and better than expected. For once, the Sadashi were the ones on the ropes-and they were being hit with some of their tricks, to boot.
But alas!, for yet again there was an ace hidden far within the sleeve. And neither Zetyan nor Isoterran were aware of their saviors...
The lithorians scrambled to analyze the brief glimpse sent to them by the sadashi. From what they could quickly discern, the sadashi surrounded a number of unknown vessels,with a force of isoterrans pressuring them from one side. There were seemingly no vermin in sight,yet the presence of their associates meant the six eyes couldn't be far.
Quickly, Kriqno took control of the fleet, priming weapons and naturally decided to arrive behind the sadashi force, opposite of the Isoterran threat. Warp bubbles sheathed the main vessels and their smaller counterparts as they departed towards the battle.
"Should we give them a warning? They may choose to retreat" Ginko assessed,working on checking and double checking their systems.
"No,they want to ambush without notice,so shall we. It is about time we stepped up our game and showed who really controls the Corridor." he said,turning to Ginko with a blank aura in his eye
"No mercy" he followed
The molluscoid merely nodded, growing rather anxious as they finally closed in on their destination.
Suddenly,the lithorian fleet arrived behind the Zetyan one,sandwiching them just as the sadashi were. Gargantuan bioships bared their teeth and talons as they recognized their previous foe,feeling just the faintest drop of malice towards their vessels, whom they perceived as rival warbeasts
The two lithorians were admittedly shocked by two things. First was the Zetyan fleet standing between them and their allies,seeing as they were absent from the data sent to them. The second was the fact they were able to appear at all. The area was full of gravitational waves resembling interdiction, yet their FTL seemed somehow unaffected. This shock was brief however, conditioning kicking in to get them back in their A game
"Activate our meson accelerator" he said plainly, pointing to the largest ship in the zetyan fleet, the weird battleship that seemed to have just opened fire judging by the emissions around its spinal
"B-but that's not standard-"
"DAMN THE PROCEDURE.DO AS I SAY AND WE MIGHT JUST WIN THIS. I WANT RKKVs OUT NOW" he screeched, earning a quick nod from Ginko
The austral spawn moved with haste,the largest gun on their battle platform turning silently through the void of space,steadily pointing towards the irregular vessel that the Sadashi were prioritizing. The pion weapon briefly glowed with green light as a bolt of the particles leapt from its barell,hurling towards the hull of its target.
The battleships were next,unveiling small launchers on their undersides which began discharging unusually large missiles, at least by lithorian standards. They quickly accelerated to relativistic speeds, detonating shrapnel packs dotting their frames and creating an expanding cone of debris moving towards their enemies. Soon their launch mechanisms detached aswell,leaving only raw kinetic penetrators to speed towards their quarry.
The carriers opened their whale like mouths,charging up their Alcubierre catapults before launching a payload through the Sadashi force,and at the Isoterrans. The things promptly burst once between the Sadashi and Isoterran forces, revealing small fighters armed with nothing but ECM packs and some interceptors meant to protect them. Their purpose for now was simple, to throw off their enemy's sensors and targeting to save their allies from as much punishment as possible
Lastly,the frigates and destroyers joined the fray,letting loose volleys of their nucleonic cannons into the zetyan mass. This was accompanied by groups of Cassaba Howitzers and NEFPs, designed to detonate outside Zetyan PD range based on their battle data from the previous encounter. Clearly they were not messing around anymore, this was do or die, and these vermin had to perish
To finish off,the lithorian fleet engaged its blanket interdiction,seeking to ensure their enemies could not rely on FTL weaponry or maneuvers for this
"Apologies for running late. We suggest you wipe that filth between your ranks and focus on the Six Eyes,once they're gone we can deal with the others" he said sternly,projecting this message to as many Sadashi as he could,not knowing if their chain of command was still intact.
Like puzzle pieces coming together, Dido watched the Zetyan forces jump in to complete the pincer around the Sadashi, nodding in approval as their prototype dreadnought destroyed the Sadashi capital ship. He found the effect its main weapon had interested, making a mental note to ask the Zetyans about what exactly it did after the battle. Then he heard the alert of incoming FTL signatures, watching on his tactical display as fifty new ships came out of jump in-system of the Zetyan fleet. Recce systems quickly identified their disgusting organic hulls as Lithorian, making the Rear Admiral look on in scorn, annoyed that they would interfere in their operation.
"All ships, put interdiction to total, and punch through that Sadashi line. Battleships, launch fighters against the Lithorian craft" he ordered with a growl, slamming his fist down on the edge of the holographic table he had been looking at.
On the monolithic hulls of the four battleships, a relatively small door opened on each face and began continuously releasing a cloud of SF-87 strikefighters. The swarm of two thousand surged out towards the incoming Lithorian fighter-intercepter group, utilizing counter jamming to try to cancel out their ECM, while providing a massive group of extra eyes for the fleet. Space lit up with purple and green as they began firing their plasma cannon and force guns at the enemy.
Meanwhile, the warships of the Isoterran squadron continued bombarding the Sadashi. It had taken some time, but now the dreadnought and four battleships had finished charging their spinals. From the axial guns of the five, beams of black with red lightning within lanced out towards the largest nearby Sadashi ships, carrying antilife energy. This was accompanied by a storm of thirty-six 30-meter-wide relativistic shells sent from the semi-spinal guns of the six battlecruisers, which were aimed for the next six largest of the Sadashi ships after those targeted by the antilife beams.
The pattern of the Isoterran interdiction changed, as it was switched from specific targeting to blanket, preventing anything from coming or going into FTL on the battlefield.
And as the Lithorians arrived, so too were the Zetyans taken by surprise, knocked from the comfort zone of their average sunday genocide with the cacophony of FTL alerts and incoming projectiles. Their enemy's efforts soon saw purchase, as the calibrated Casaba/NEFP swarm soon began punching holes in ships across the fleet alongside their more standard nucleonic cannonry. Their ECM craft also helped matters, as the designated support ships of the fleet began scrambling to get things to a relative normal before that apparent giant debris ball got too close for the PD and shields to help them.
The Sadashi also made some headway despite their sandwiched state, as the ships began flinging psionic pulses at any applicable target. The psychic missiles not directed towards the Prototype managed to impact their targets without issue; despite everything they had learned from their hated foe, the Zetyans never quite figured out how to properly stop psionics.
They soon began retaliating, seemingly realizing an error of cockiness as their shield systems increased in intensity. While for now they could only offer scattered fire to their enemies, as the ECM waxed and waned, they revealed that they too had their own spacecraft entourage, as 5 light carriers began spewing out various balls of steel from their gaping maws. Some charged with their Isoterran allies into the fray to disable the Lithorian scramber craft, but the majority began moving to bombard the Lithorian ships, fighters and dedicated bombers intermingling and going into a pincer formation. They seemed to have a thing for pincers; perhaps it wasn't just jellyfish their minds were imprinted with that day.
The pirates unfortunately were hardly able to enjoy the show; they had been reduced to a few mission-killed ships floating aimlessly, nothing more than spectators to the carnage around them. Though, it'd be hard to debate whether or not it was a wonderful spectacle for those small-minded folk able to see it.
The Prototype, as it slowly began moving to face the Lithorians, saw fit to demonstrate yet another odd quality.
As one of the debris balls approached, a great 'glob' of sorts suddenly erupted from one of the crystalline 'turrets', dashing into a small section of the approaching debris and disintegrating it with a flash. From behavior and results, it seemed to be some derivative to a plasma shield, though the ship's own shields didn't seem to like it too much as some particulate was burned away from the path it took.
Then, another followed, with more and more soon after, each dashing into random parts of the debris ball and creating small holes with a flash as it approached. It certainly wouldn't've stopped the hailstorm, and seeing as the kinetic impactor remained safely nestled in the debris ball it seemed to just be random chance dictating their path, but for the moment it lessened the load on the selective shield.
Unfortunately, try as it might, a particle gun was certainly something it couldn't touch, as it quickly began finding out the hard way. While the selective shield was able to slightly lessen the projectile's size-it was a particle shield vs. a particle weapon, after all-it was quickly hampered by the odd protection system repeatedly disintegrating the particles in the pion-ball's path, a device of protection now a device of harm.
When it impacted, carving a silent path from the anterior to the posterior at an angle, the only thing preventing the behemoth from being near-mission-killed was it's size; being essentially a 50km long mountain covered in armor and guns, there was thankfully a good deal of filler that the particle ball went through. Despite this, though, it suffered critical damages, the various magicky bits and pieces flashing and convulsing violently from the violent photonic decay happening in it's interior and the ship temporarily going into a drifting state, leaving the hailstorm free reign to continue approaching unabated.
The psionic missile swarm also began seeing results, as they began pockmarking the surface of the monolithic ship to cause further damage.
For now, it could only weakly retaliate, a few streaks of magical light leaping from some of the brighter-shining turrets as some sort of gesture of defiance. Some of the Zetyan fleet close to it began moving to protect it, under the direction of their AWACS sloop.
The Sadashi, meanwhile, now suffered the brunt of the Isoterran assault, six of the largest ships present suddenly being consumed with a deafening black and six more suddenly being hole-punched by a revolving stream of kinetic impactors. The rest began to go into critical states; the ship sandwich they had all unwittingly created was now putting the full pressure on them, even if it was on paper an even match. The support group further out from the main fleet was also in a staggering state, alone time with the other 25 ships having earned them some casualties and a great many more scars.
The Lithorian's message was answered with various panicked messages, either amounting to 'we're trying to' or 'ok please do what you did but more please god please'. If their foes could hear their fear, it would certainly be a delight to savor-like fine red wine, purchased with blood.
Kriqno looked on with anxiety as the battle raged onwards,noting the tides were not quite in their favour,even after their surprise arrival. Even so,he had faced the vermin before,and now he had even more tools at his disposal,though that seemed to go both ways.
He watched on and snarled as the ejecta of the RKKVs made contact with that all too familiar zetyan disintegration field. He was certain that the main penetrators had the sheer mass to make it through unabated,but the countless shards of debris were another story. He quickly identified the linchpin of this mechanism, eye fixated on the familiar silhouettes of three support cruisers. He needed to take them out,to ensure that the RKKVs did maximum damage.
And so the four lithorian battleships turned to face these new targets,circular maws glowing with a green light before their spinal meson accelerators unleashed screaming bolts towards their quarries. While these shots were diminutive compared to the main weapon of the battlestation,so were their targets. Naturally, due to there being 4 battleships,one of the cruisers had the misfortune of dealing with two of these pion beams at once.
Next came the problem of their fighters and ECM craft, being rapidly approached by overwhelming numbers of enemy craft. The lithorian fighter forms proved to be tricky opponents, being blessed with uncanny coordination as a result of their psychic links. They often chose not to fight one on one, instead assembling into small groups which quickly focused singular foes. Nevertheless, they had little chance as they were, but Kriqno thought of something that might help.
The child of Ka'thog began to feed upon the local energies of the psion field, bloating itself like a tick does on flesh. From there it began emanating an aura that greatly enhanced the psionic capabilities of both the lithorians and sadashi alike. For the fighters,this allowed them to metabolize that power into extra energy for their engines, speeding them up drastically. From there, the craft began interfacing with the minds of their pursuers, deliberately amplifying their malice to entice them and give chase. Most of the lithorian frontliners opened fire with their mass drivers,letting loose shells that simply flew by their enemies and headed for the massive dogfight. Like clockwork,each of these detonated and sent expanding cones containing millions of ball bearings,perfect for gutting clouds of fighters. The lithorian's own subcraft had only seconds to react, focusing all energy into their engines, foreboding shields and weapons as a result,and dashed for a precalculated path that would remain debris free for just a few seconds. That was all they needed, making it through to the other side of this destructive tidal wave, albeit with some friendly casualties and those that the foe shut down. Still, they now had a nice buffer between whatever remained of the enemy fighter contingent. The ECM craft got back to their job while the interceptors started firing.
Their missiles were useless given the micro debris, but their neutron cannons could make it through just fine, having been designed to penetrate thick strikeplates of hostile craft.
The forces sent forth by the zetyan carriers were a in need of a response aswell. Being faced with a flood of PD missiles. They were tiny things,not much bigger than a man and carrying two things,a nuclear warhead and an amorphous lens meant to concentrate the resulting photons in various ways. The tiny munitions detonated,each generating hundreds of laser pulses that traveled in an expanding pattern towards the unwelcome arrivals. For now that would have to do,the lithorian's attention already being forced on other matters.
The lithorian heavy cruisers got to work,setting their sights upon the carriers that released these inconveniences. Their spinal muon lances were the first to fire,being less advanced version of the meson weaponry present on their superior brethren. Their two main spheromak cannons were next. While they had all the properties of a regular gigantic plasma cannon,the unique shape of their shots allowed the electromagnetic waves they generated on impact to pass through Faraday Cages and standard hardening, ensuring a higher chance of affecting vulnerable circuitry and electronics. Kriqno hoped to disrupt the vessel's ability to disgorge subcraft,not being keen on having even more targets to worry about
The lithorian fleetmaster was also displeased by the fact that the isoterrans seemed to have taken little to no damage so far,no doubt a result of them not earning anyone's focus so far. Regardless, they proved quite problematic, therefore striking at them seemed a wise choice to him.
The carriers opened their maws once more, attempting to fire more alcubierre bubbles to launch their strike craft. Unfortunately, it seemed that their enemy had tinkered with their interdiction, as it now seemed to impact them as well. No matter, he figured, this merely called for a change of tactics. The carriers activated their launch mass drivers and shot out craft after craft off to the side of the central engagement, ensuring that they would skirt around that hellscape. The craft in question were of gunship configuration, and proceeded to alter their course soon after gaining distance, aiming to curve around the battle and push for the Isoterran force. They did not get anywhere remotely close however, having been geared for a different style of combat. The craft would proceed to release some of their anti ship missiles, letting them cruise towards the largest isoterran vessel, their dreadnought. The missiles were designed to get as close as possible, detonating only at a preset position or if contact with enemy PD and strike craft was imminent. Once that happened, the nuclear explosion would excite a brightstone mechanism and produce a tachyon arrow that flew along its previous course. This was all courtesy of the Furrelian Union, whom shared data on such weaponry at the collective's request in exchange for something of their own. Kriqno was beyond grateful for that ordeal, as it would certainly make his life just a little easier
At last, Kriqno's gaze shifted towards the Zetyan prototype warship.
The behemoth was exceptional, no doubt, well beyond what he thought possible for these vermin. He watched closely as arcane energies pulsed below the hull in response to his meson fire. He was no magician, but knew that mana had a habit of being unpredictable, more so than the psion field at least. He briefly pondered just how much control the Six Eyes had over these forces, before a crooked idea began to take shape inside his neural cortex.
First, he commanded his battlestation to release a volley of mass driver shells at it. These were much slower than usual and guided, allowing them to skirt around the ships trying to get in the way. Once close enough, each would shed its casing and release thousands of tiny but elaborate devices. As these small packets impacted the behemoth, they released pulses of tachyons; RADAR and various other particles to map out its insides.
Kriqno took in this data and studied it thoroughly. Next, his battlestation charged its energy projectors, setting them to gamma ray frequency. The carriers received a similar order, calibrating their own major projectors located at the tips of their fins. They then began to fire upon the stunned ship, sending streams of photons designed to penetrate past blocks of dumb matter. They were like skilled surgeons performing a lobotomy, carefully directing their scalpels. They aimed to irradiate anything that seemed to resemble a processing center, bridge, crew quarters or storage bays. Nevertheless, they tried their best to avoid anything that seemed remotely tied to the power grid, all in accordance to their leader's plan
"Cease fire on the large vessel, I need you to take care of those ships trying to shield it" he said sternly, addressing any sadashi willing and capable of hearing out his psi ping.
His own bioships moved in to do exactly as he said. Frigates, destroyers and light cruisers turned to the Zetyan forces trying to shield their novel weapon from harm. The latter opened fire with spinally mounted muon cannons, while the other two stuck with standard nucleonic shells and their NEFP cassaba combo, no use in fixing what clearly wasn't broken.
The digital brains of the SF-87 swarm were unaffected by the psionic meddling from the Lithorians, simply seeing the Lithorian small craft starting to angle away and giving chase. Rather than closing to dogfight however, they kept their distance and fired missiles at their exposed flanks and rear, while intentionally spreading out in an attempt to force the enemy to dilute their flak. However just to be on the safe side, their force guns were reassigned from shooting at the enemy to sniping incoming ball bearings, easing the burden on their shields.
Dido watched what looked like a flanking maneuver of gunships from the Lithorians on his display. His dreadnought squadron was located in the center of the fleet, meaning there were quite a few vessels in the way of the incoming gunship force. The Lithorians were really starting to annoy him, first interfering in their operation, and now bothering him directly.
"Advance to opposite the flanking forces near the Lithorians, and retarget axials against the Lithorian fleet. Frigates, launch fighters and deal with those incoming gunships" Dido ordered, marking the intended destination on the tactical map before him. The Isoterran fleet, which had already been accelerating, continued forward past their allies' main fleet towards those of the Sadashi, continuing to bombard them with their disintegrators, plasma weapons, and force guns. From each of the 19 frigates under his command, one-hundred fighters were launched from their cylindrical midsections like missiles, creating a force almost as large as the original to deal with the Lithorian's first small craft push. This new swarm accelerated towards the incoming gunships, augmented by the nearby frigates' force guns and point defense systems. Similar to what the first swarm had done, they engaged their own electronic warfare packages, initiating jamming on the enemy to ruin their targeting, while networking with the fleet to expand their own awareness.
The extra attention focused on them, paired with the fire from the Sadashi forces, had begun to take its toll however. To help cut down on this extra attention, the battlecruisers within the fleet released another volley from their semi-spinals, sending another thirty-six aircraft-carrier-sized relativistic shells towards the enemy, this time aimed at the Lithorian dreadnought.
The support cruisers soon found themselves being given the same treatment as their precious prototype, as four neon-green lights suddenly dashing through them with vicarious efficiency. One lost control of their engines for the moment as a bolt dashed through their midsection, another suffered damages to their midsection causing the shieldscreens to shut off, and the unfortunate hit by both pionic balls was sent into a mission-kill state, having been hit in both the command sections and the reactor bay. Despite this, it was less damage than predicted; three particle screens at once coupled with no errant plasma to disrupt it meant the particle bolts were worn down a tad better.
The carriers, meanwhile, also bore a significant brunt, as the various weapons fired upon them took their toll. The muon guns took some of their interior runways out for the count, and in three of the five damaged internal bits vital to power supply, causing them to falter somewhat. The spheromak shells also made decent headway, causing 3 to temporarily lose power in their bloated maws of hangars and stemming the flow of any more craft. The remaining two, while still disgorging craft, still were hit in their midsections, causing openings in their superstructure to be plainly visible and disrupting some more of their interior runways.
The Zetyan craft were a mixed bag; a good deal of the manned craft did indeed fall for the trap, diverting from their courses en route to the bioships to chase after their smaller foes, but many others seemed to be dumb automated craft following simple orders. Yet more of the manned craft, curiously, unintentionally diverted their artificial malice to the ships instead of the fighters; in their heads, they likely thought something along the lines of 'glorious target, glorious kill, murder die kill death kill' or something along those lines.
It didn't help either side any when it came to those laser pulses, both mindlessly charging into laser waves that struck at random with only some managing to dodge in their bloodlust, driving the strike force's numbers down to about slightly above half, give or take a few errant fools diving into munitions. The other group, caught in shrapnel, also saw a grand reduction to about 25% below half of their previous size, even for those craft that had PD installed, yet remaining unabated in their artificial rage as they chased after their quarry in blind malice, firing whatever weapons they had from missiles to guns to... more guns.
As for the meatshields, they seemed keen to demonstrate what they had learned from their foes as well.
While the spinals saw no issue, striking down a support frigate and damaging some of the larger ships present, the other munitions fired by their foes saw less purchase. As the NEFP/Casaba missiles roared towards their targets, the support frigates and escorts launched PD missiles, much faster than previous encounters. While some were unable to make it to their targets before they were primed-an assault cruiser and two frigates cursed their names as they were holepunched-many others managed to disrupt their rocketing foes, dashing outside of their previously recorded PD range and intercepting them before they could detonate.
They hadn't gone out very far, though, and now that they had their new data their foes could adapt accordingly. But, hey, if nothing else, it worked.
Without the missiles present to cause havoc, the nucleonic barrage also saw more focus from their conventional PD, though still more slipped through and took bites of the various ships sent to defend their Prototype. The large-mass RKKV penetrators were unabated, however, and were soon darting into the hulk's insides one by one and creating rather sizable holes in their precious dreadnought.
Ah, yes, their precious Prototype.
By initial outside views, it had recovered somewhat from the Lithorian uppercut, as it began maneuvering slowly to reorient that spinal it had. The interior, however, was an irradiated, melting mess, and the only things keeping it coordinated now were the crew's hatred and various AI helpers. The pion ball thankfully hadn't taken out their mana catalyst, but with the dead as it's witness it certainly had taken out many other important things, chief among them being the selective shield. And it allowed the Lithorian sensorprobes to roar towards it, largely unabated. Only their faux 'plasma shield' made effort to stop it as it leapt through the crystalline conduits, and even then in a weakened state; more like a lightning bolt taking small chunks out of a large ball than what it was before.
Then, after a moment, the monolith stopped returning fire. From an initial perspective, it seemed to be shutting off. The colors were starting to drain from the lines on it's hull, and even the lightning had begun to degrade to little more than sparks, various conduits letting off little zaps and incinerating the various probes around them like a bird picking off pests.
Emissions on the interior also seemed to be increasing, first gradually then exponentially. For a moment, it seemed as if the Lithorians had nicked a reactor, dooming the ship to a fate of being bled out like a slaughterhouse cow. Not like it wouldn't have been deserved.
But then, the spinal began to light up. At first, nothing more than a tiny light, but soon blossoming into a kaleidoscope of colors that increased in brightness still. And the emission buildup went haywire.
Even as knives of radiation began to cut into it's organs, and great spears of metal ran it through one at a time to gouge out it's insides, the beast seemed adamant to it's fate, as more and more power went into their accursed device. It's crew-what remained of it-seemed ready to fight against fate, or barring that the radiation, through brain damage, made them suicidally overconfident.
And the AWACS sloop had found them wanting.
Soon, the majority of Zetyan ships present were moving into positions to fight the Lithorians, either to serve as protection for the charging cruiser or just to fight them. It did take some convincing for them to forgoe the lamb for the wolf, but seeing as the Isoterrans had them on the down-low for the moment it was reason enough to get them going.
Spinals, missiles, shells, anything those ships could fire was soon racing towards the Lithorian fleet, as RKKVs and standard missiles danced with course-correcting shells and zipped between gaudy slugs. The battleship even let loose an LRM normally meant for siege scenarios, slow, covered in PD hardpoints and generally an oversized mockery of all normal missiles represented.
The Sadashi, meanwhile, saw some reprieve from the sandwich as their foes focused on their saviours. But their long-range support was mostly gone, various ships either mission-killed or outright destroyed and left as corpses floating in the void, and the main fleet was already beginning to cross that border themselves.
But the reprieve from combat meant they could focus on their foes more.
Soon, those few ships left began to focus on the Zetyan fleet, psionic pulses and missiles racing towards any targets that struck their fancy and perhaps catching some ships off guard in the heat of battle. Perhaps it would be futile, and end in their demise. But blessed is he who sacrifices for their fellow man, right?
Being vastly outnumbered and devoid of any reinforcements from their own fleet,the lithorian strike group and its ECM craft were handled,fighting down to their last craft,all that remained now was the debris field of their previous scatter shots.
The gunships noticed the lack of impact from their volley, aswell as the isoterran response. They released the last of their anti ship missiles. The first two were standard ones, packed with a few dozen independently targetable warheads,half of which were decoys. They shed off their outer layers, firing their entrails towards the mass of craft. Normally, their warheads were shaped charges, but some quick tinkering by maintenance symbiotes allowed them to have a more conventional effect, bursting into bright fireballs. The others used this to fly past the fighters and towards the fleet. Two more of the missiles were naught but a rocket propelled ECM suite, purposefully lagging behind to disrupt any of the fighters that may come after them. The rest were the already used tachyon arrow producers. They once again got as close as possible, detonating if interception was imminent and targeting their ejecta at the frigates this time.
The gunships then turned around and began burning to return to their fleet, letting out flares, jamming buoys and even vantablack coated nuclear warheads, which would wait silently until signaled to blow by incase any enemies gave chase
Kriqno looked at the volley of relativistic shells heading towards his very craft and was displeased to say the least, tapping Ginko on the mantle to deal with that while he focused on other matters.
Firstly, canister launchers deployed their ordinance in the path of these things, meeting then with fields of tiny ball bearings.
As expected, their own velocity played against them, shredding the impactors to a debris field that was albeit still heading towards. From there nuclear warheads reduced that to streams of plasma. Last but not least,the child of Ka'thog drew upon its psionic might, conjuring a magnetic field powerful enough to pivot these relativistic streams of plasma away from their battlestation and towards the close by zetyan fleet,their carriers specifically.
Speaking of the zetyans, their fire was felt,while the lithorians tried their best,sending out more of their laser missiles and shrapnel screens to reduce incoming punishment. Unfortunately three frigates were still gutted, with several others and some light cruisers being pock marked with impact sites.
The large LRM was arguably less adequate than the standard ordinance, as it was targeted quickly by a carrier's emitters on graser setting, ignoring the bulky frame and frying the complex systems beneath. From there it was simply a matter of moving out of its way.
Still, it was time to give them some pain aswell. Two of the lithorian battleships eyed their zetyan counterpart, releasing a volley of ECM missiles to dampen the enemy battleships reaction and some nightstone NEFPs. The missiles would detonate and propel a cone of crystalline shards composed of the exotic and extremely resilient material. As such, unlike regular canister shots or the secondary debris of their RKKVs, these ones could actually penetrate.
The other two were fixated on the pair of support cruisers, firing a salvo of ECM missiles alongside guided mass driver shells with nuclear shaped charges. They would normally be reluctant to use their most advanced railgun ammo, but these were priority targets.
The light cruisers,heavy cruisers and destroyers instead brought their undivided attention upon the assault cruisers of the Six Eyes, meeting them with nucleonic shells, recalibrated NEFPS and cassabas, balls of spheromak plasma and beams of penetrating muon particles, all concentrated on the five ships.
The tide of zetyan fighters was met by equal tides of lithorian interceptors, supported by heavy fighters. These larger organisms were packed with several energy emitters, alongside a pair of dual mass drivers firing canister shot shells and tubes of kinetic missiles, all in all a deadly combination.
The carriers that sent them instead focused on the destroyers of the zetyan force, targeting their weapon emplacements and irradiating their interiors in swooping arcs.
Kriqno looked in slight anxiety as the prototype turned towards them, somehow still operational and charging up for a deadly shot.
He raised his palm, earning the attention of his second in command.
"Aim our main meson accelerator at that thing, bring the eight secondaries online and do the same with those" He said sternly, earning a quick nod from the molluscoid who scrambled to do as ordered
He watched over a holographic display of the craft, various sensors carefully scrutinizing its emissions and adding the data from their impact probes to search for something
"Steady.......steady" he said,his face lighting up with the simulated glow of the prototypes very weapon as it faced them. Ginko was suffice to say not taking the sight well, shivering as fluids built up around her bulbous eyes, yet she said nothing, trusting in his judgement
A sudden ping heralded the triangulation of the enemy's mana siphon, followed by a series of beeping as targeting boxes closed in on that spot
"NOW! OPEN FIRE! OPEN FIRE!" he roared, slamming a clenched fist upon the living desk in front of him. In a motion, Ginko brought her tendrils to initiate the command, their bioship did the rest.
In a bright flash,9 streams of glowing green sped from various barrels upon the spaceborne creature and slammed into the maw of its enemy, headed straight for its heart. Kriqno had absolutely no idea what would happen once contact was achieved, but he had his hypothesis. In the best case scenario, the blasted thing would be done for. In the worst....well, at least the zetyans were the closest to ground zero, indeed being arranged all around it, that had to be something
As the last of the Lithorian fighters was extinguished, the strikefighters of the original force were reassigned to assist the second anti-gunship force, launching any missiles they had left at the fleeing craft. Due to the angle, many of these missiles would end up missing the majority of decoys and warheads dropped behind the gunships, giving them something else to worry about as they fled back to their fleet.
The chaos of detonations that the Lithorian gunships had employed were a double-edged sword, providing a blinding flash to anything nearby but illuminating everything to SF87 craft further away like a flash of a camera. This, combined with the difference in emissions, made the gunships stand out from the ECM missiles quite well, which meant a lot of plasma bolts and missiles coming their way as they launched against the Isoterran fleet. However they were not pursued, as the swarm of fighters was more concerned about screening, instead beginning to clear the nuclear warheads that had been left behind, their radar and particle sensors easily seeing past the simple vantablack coatings. The gauntlet that the gunships had just run had not been in vain though, as multiple tachyon arrow missiles had managed to get through, doing some damage to the frigates. It wasn't a substitute for actual naval gun fire, but it would definitely do.
The Isoterran warships themselves continued pushing through the Sadashi fleet in front of them, focusing fire on their heaviest ships to slowly whittle them down, as they worked towards the real threat. On his tactical feed, Admiral Dido watched approvingly as the notifications populated that the fleet's axials had finished charging. First came another round of thirty-six corvette-sized slugs, this time at the Child of Ka'thog. A few moments after, the dreadnought and battleships fired their spinal antilife beams, sending angry rays of black and red towards the same target as the mass driver slugs.
And as their allies continued their barrage on the Lithorians, so too did the rats, sending yet more volleys of shells and missiles their way as their efforts saw more and more results. Their foe's apt thinking caught them by surprise once again, however, as a stream of plasma came raining unto them from their allies, damaging a decent number of ships even with the support from their support ship's shieldscreens.
The standard battleship was the first target of the Lithorian's counterattack, and it felt a pain all-too-familiar to the Zetyan voidnavy as spears of crystal ran it through, impacting into various points and bringing the behemoth down a few pegs, fire belching from it's wounds as it's internal systems began to cave. While it hadn't been truly humbled, another hit like that would certainly bring a reality check on whoever directed the great steel beast.
The support cruisers, addled not only by themselves but by the sudden burst of directed ECM, were ample targets for the guided shells, even as their shieldscreens tried their best. One was impacted directly in the midsection, cleaving it in twine and ensuring it wouldn't have been a problem again. The other merely got away with it's fore becoming yet more damaged, and it's aft receiving a waitress's ass-slap as it's engines sputtered with pain.
The assault cruisers, while tankier than their brethren, would have been unable to fully withstand the barrage sent upon them by the bugs. They did receive help, however; the escorts sent out some of their fancier PD missiles out again, who in turn sought to break their previous PD range records and eliminate some of the missiles. However, less were sent out this time, enabling the remainder unaffected to roar towards their targets and impact unabated, damaging them further with their familiar style of holepunching. Perhaps it was another test, like their Prototype, or perhaps they simply just ran out.
Knowing them, likely the latter.
The remaining volleys were somewhat stifled by another frustration; a few of the support frigates/corvettes were also fitted with shieldscreens like their larger cruiser cousins, albeit far weaker and smaller in scale. These annoyances did their level best to in turn mitigate the incoming volley, making a deadly volley of Lithorian fire into a deadly volley of Lithorian fire that had a tad less projectiles than before. Despite the minute disruption, the volleys scored home and hearth, as two were sent to Lu Xaobu's locker on a tide of polarized ions and three were given a hard gut-punch by plasmatic munitions.
The various destroyers were arguably the luckiest, though the word's usage would be a debatable prospect in the grand scheme of things; they soon found their functioning weapons failing and destroying themselves one by one seemingly without rhyme or reason, as their interiors were reduced to the consistency of wet tissue paper and their exteriors dissolved from invisible heat. Several lost their spinals, and several more were now missing a concerning amount of turrets, as invisible scalpels cut them to atomic ribbons from afar.
Then, there was the Prototype.
It's death knells sounded off as it belched sparks and retched fire from the various holes put within it, the only thing keeping it together might as well have been hopes and toothpicks. But in it's final moments, it had seen fit to leave one last mark on the enemy, as the great maw on it's front fired with a rapture unkempt, a bright star racing out on a direct collision course with the battlestation's lower half, so fast it could hardly be seen even with sensors. It was originally aimed squarely at the great bulbous slug that was the Child, but it's targeting algorithms weren't exactly functional or cooperative.
It's last gasp done, it was finally content to die, as the Lithorian barrage struck it's heart and sent those few left onboard to the locker. A great supernova came forth from it's interior, dissolving it instantly and sending a hail of debris towards the other ships, and was soon beholden to a lightshow none else would witness as the micronebula began imploding upon itself, again and again and again until it was nothing more than the galaxy's fastest pulsar, a constant strobe flashing all over the system and likely putting out some very impolite messages in binary for those who mayhaps were versed in it.
The remainder of the Zetyan fleet now began focusing full-force on the Lithorian ships, diverting any scant attention they had given the jellyfish and engaging the bugs as best they could. More shells and more missiles were sent into the fray as their remaining craft, by this point only fighters and interceptors, engaged in a furball with the Lithorian biofighters, zipping and zooming in a high-speed bloodbath where only the fastest could survive.
The Sadashi ships present originally planned, albeit tentatively, to hold the line, the few ships left being whittled down to buy time for reinforcements to come, or for their allies to triumph over their foe. But their plans were for naught, as the Helic sent them a transmission that a few onboard those aching hulks had certainly been waiting for-fall back to the Lithorians.
They soon began to switch gears, as their warships began to limp back to their brothers in arms, the largest ships still alive acting as impromptu shields even as their numbers decreased yet more.
The gunships continued on in their escape. The energy projector nodes lighting up and destroying missiles while canister launchers created debris fields to shred those that made it through the fire. Still, bolts of plasma pierced and seared several, causing them to go lump into the void.
The ones that survived however, were taken aback by what seemed to be a truly gigantic detonation in the middle of the zetyan fleet. They changed course,using the magnitude of the event as cover while they flanked the rats,letting loose volleys of ECM missiles and more importantly Nightstone NEFPs into the backside of the zetyan battleship. Their railguns instead opted to focus on the support cruisers, firing guided shells that would detonate a series of nuclear shaped charges on impact
The Child of Ka'thog tried its best to weather the incoming volley, creating a hardlight barrier to break apart the slugs while other vessels lended fire from their energy projectors to vaporize the resulting debris. Even with this and the creature's own attempts at evasion,it was not enough, being peppered and gutted by the hail of shrapnel. The thing was already barely in one piece, holding onto by a thread until the beams of anti life sent it straight to The Almighty
The lithorian's battlestation too was hit hard,the prototypes last blow before annihilation managed to cleave off two of its side sections right off, depriving it of about four meson accelerators and a slew of other weaponry. Still, the beast endured, as Kriqno and Ginko staggered to their feet inside after being thrown off by the impact.
Already, its primary meson accelerator turned anew to the next most dangerous target it could find,the battleship. It fired straight down its front, placing it between its beam of exotic particles and the nightsone NEFPs of the gunships.
The other four pion weapons instead found quary in the newly arrived isoterran force, focusing upon one of their battleships.
The ten or so light cruisers set their sights on the assault and support counterparts of the zetyans, firing their muon spinals alongside a combination of ECM missiles and cassabas to hopefully finish the job for good.
The heavy cruisers remained fixated on the carriers, once more firing their spheromak cannons to keep them suppressed, adding their own muon spinals in the mix to stack up the pain. Every fighter they failed to release or became too irradiated to work within its bowels was one they did not have to face.
The frigates and destroyers focused primarily on the zetyan assault destroyers, switching some of their energy emitters to microwave frequency in order to suppress their scanners and systems while others were set to gamma ray and carved up paths of radioactive fury across their insides. A healthy number of mass driver and nucleonic shells were also present in the mix.
The lithorian battleships were beginning to loose any worthwhile targets within the ranks of the Six Eyes, yet nevertheless gave them one final regard. Torpedoes erupted from their tusks and flew towards the support and assault frigates, recognizing that their field had to be brought down
Each one was quite large by lithorian standards, boasting ample amounts of ECM, countermeasures and even energy projector nodes for point defense. Once close enough, they would shed their tops to reveal about three hundred guided warheads which would shoot out to their target, detonating their cassabas and pelting the unfortunate victims with a rain of supercritical jets
They then turned their attention to the isoterrans. Revealing their hidden underside launchers again, they let loose a volley of about eight RKKVs. The missiles detonated their shrapnel packs shortly after launch, creating a cone of debris that would fly towards zetyan ships while the main body flew past them. From there they would shed again, leaving kinetic penetrators that while smaller than those of the isoterrans had powerful gravitic thrusters for sudden course correction and even self defense. They were primarily aimed at the frigates of the flotilla.
As a last dish, the four bioships fired their meson accelerators, focusing fire on another unfortunate battleship of the isoterran force.
The carriers were pressed, releasing more craft to keep the zetyan blob of fighters at bay. They too did contribute however, switching their projector nodes to infrared frequency and blasting a veritable lightshow of beams into the fight, precise and numerous, as the lithorians often proffered. Their spinal mass drivers, normally used for launching craft, also released volleys of their own RKKVs at the isoterran battleships. These were much more akin to their own, larger than the missiles and little more than unguided slugs. Brutish but effective were they to hit.
Within the Isoterran fleet, a sudden lightshow occurred around two of the four battleships, as the pion beams from the Lithorian fleet were partially distorted, causing a large amount of radiation to suddenly appear around each vessel, damaging their surface batteries. However not all of the mesons were able to be deflect, and within each, machinery was damaged and fires started. Within, both living and non-living crew jumped into damage control, pressuring and depressurizing sections of the ship, and isolating others.
There was an slightly noticeable dip in incoming fire from the Isoterran fleet, as many of the battleships turned some of their MMDW disintegrator turrets against the incoming large RKKVs from the Lithorians, the massive slugs suddenly fragmenting into smaller pieces flying in all directions, which pelted against the fleet's shields and vaporized. Meanwhile, the swarm of SF-87s that had been surrounding the fleet jumped into action to deal with the smaller guided munitions, working in tandem with the frigates to hunt down and destroy each missile before most could cause damage, although some got through, striking holes in and completely gutting one or two of the screening vessels.
In reply, Dido ordered his forces to take advantage of the fact that the Sadashi were now beginning to fall back to the Lithorian group, increasing their jamming intensity by focusing in more on the now concentrated enemy forces, ensuring that they wouldn't be able to target his forces as effectively. Next, power was rerouted from many of the smaller gun batteries on the battleships, as well as other less-important systems, into the spinal weapons. This meant another four antilife beams were fired, two of them at the Lithorian battlestation, and two towards two of the battleships that had fired the meson beams. Accompanying this was a round of thirty-six massive relativistic shells from the battlecruisers, which had somehow escaped attracting any attention, dividing them between the battleships and carriers within the Lithorian fleet.
The Zetyan battleship would 'enjoy' a rather spectacular swan song, as the all-out assault from the gunships and the battlestation ravished it into a state of mission-killed nonfunction, fire billowing from the various holes that now decorated it's surface as the interior was reduced to a crumbling hellscape unlike any other.
The remaining support cruiser was also on the ropes, the combination of the railguns and the light cruiser's volleys making critical hits across the board. Lights flickered across it's surface, and while it had scores of PD hardpoints it had lost half of it's turrets, and was about to lose the other as it coughed fiery blood from the various breaches of it's skin.
The other ships fared somewhat better, if only due to being less damaged than their larger forebears. The escorts, those that remained, and the designated support ships managed to chip in as well, shieldscreen projections and some targeted PD lightening the load caused by the swathes of physical projectiles sent their way.
Nevertheless, the carriers saw the worst of it, muons disabling swathes of their unlaunched craft and turning even more of their insides to steel foiled mush. Two bit the dust, crumpling due to radiation turning their interiors white hot, and the rest were getting close to joining them, the numbers of craft being launched decreasing by the second.
The assault cruisers, still being pressed, saw no reprieve from the Lithorian assault as they began to drift towards critical condition. No improved interceptor missiles raced out to spare them from the missile volleys this time, and the invisible knives of the light cruisers carved them up like food on a cutting board, ensuring two were brought down, engulfed in fire and shrouded in debris, and leaving one with only hope, toothpicks and a sprinkle of rage to keep it going.
The assault destroyers finally began to see their numbers decrease, as one of their own served as a potent demonstration of the Lithorian energy emitters and another was skewered and imploded with a great green glob of pure energy. Their sensors being jammed and the previous assault from the carriers of the bugs also helped, as globs of green and slugs of grey zipped into the formation with impudence.
And the frigates came under fire in an exorbitant way, not only suffering the treatment of the destroyers but also having to deal with the torpedo volleys of the enemy battleships. The hordes of casaba warheads outshined any other ordinance they would receive from the bugs, however, as volley after volley of tiny lines of white-hot metal rained into their formation, causing heavy damages on every ship and sending a few to the locker with impudence.
Their retaliation seemed standard at first, just shooting more missiles and shells like usual. Odd, seeing how they were so obviously on the ropes.
But, then they stopped firing for a moment. Then, two moments. Several more. Were they planning to surrender?
But after a strangely long wait, they sent out a field of specialized munitions en masse from whatever weapons they had left, scores and scores of RKKV and casaba missiles sailing through the void with all of their most expensive ammo, from guided shells to casaba howitzers to oversized and overarmored spinal slugs. The AWACS sloop had ordered them to load and fire the majority, if not their entire capacity of 'special' munitions in one go, the majority targeted at the three biggest targets of the lithorian fleet-the battlestation, the battleships, and the carriers-and the rest fired at any target they saw fit.
They certainly wouldn't be able to do another volley like that again; those who still had any left had them in piddling numbers, and even if they wanted to launch them they'd likely have been carved to pieces by the Lithorians by then. As such, they could only offer their usual after their swan song had been sent out, normal shells and normal-er missiles lagging behind the mass of cooler, pricier ordinance.
-
The Sadashi fleet, meanwhile, had spent their good time limping towards the Lithorians. Command had told them they were out of their element and outnumbered; a fleet keyed towards ambushes and alpha strikes was no good if caught in the open, and the Lithorians had well established themselves as brawlers more fit for this scenario. But there was something else they could do, as they slowly attempted to file in with their comrades.
The remaining frigates, support corvettes, and one of the destroyers, now began to psionically bolster the Lithorian fleet with what power they had, some of the power draining from their own ships as their comrade-ships now found their sensors able to pick out things much clearer, and their internal systems beginning to move and course much faster. It wouldn't be able to last for long-they were essentially cutting off part of their own blood supply, and doing it for too long would result in gradual organ shutdown-but any bit would count, even if it didn't do much in the long run.
The ships not in support mode fired back at the Isoterrans as best they could, sending out some pulses and psion missiles towards the enemy fleet.
The lithorians,which had enjoyed a rather comfortable position thanks to the sadashi being their enemy's punching bag,were now experiencing the same thing themselves.
The battlestation endured, fragmenting the RKKVs and shells sent its way by way of canister shots, vaporizing and redirecting as much of the debris as it could with its plasma and electromagnetic shields while it's sheer girth and hardlight screens endured what remained. Everything changed when the anti life beams hit however, their foul energies caused the creature's cells to shut down, as if the grim reaper himself had just graced the bioship with its touch. It hung motionless, dead, effectively causing Kriqno and Ginko to be sitting inside a derelict.
The battleships and carriers were not so fortunate either. They were subjected to an overwhelming amount of fire,far more than their shields and counter measures could keep up with. As such, all of them took various degrees of damage,with two battleships and carriers going limp from all the punishment, they had been sent to The Almighty.
Then a miracle happened. Their allies, which by this point were hanging by a thread, began to channel psychic energies into the lithorian bioships. Seeing as their kind naturally metabolized such energies due to proximity to one of the psionic poles, this had far greater implications than even the jellyfish realized.
The vessels burst into an array of colours as a rainbow of veins began to glow beneath their armours. Already system performance was going through the roof, with both weapon and shield systems being the main benefactors. The battleships and carriers that had just perished sprung to life,their cells reinvigorated by the influx, albeit they were now immobile and would perish once more as soon as this stopped. The frigates that the zetyans killed earlier suffered the same effect, the battlestation meanwhile was able to revitalize itself aswell,with cellular activity picking up again followed shortly by reactor emissions picking up. Still, everything else left its mark, including the entire pieces it was missing from earlier, not much could be done about that
Kriqno was emboldened by this development, indeed feeling a surge of power coursing through his very veins while his neural cortex began operating better than ever. He knew that this would not last,but he could seriously turn the tide before that
The battlestation turned its main meson accelerator, now more powerful than ever, towards the isoterran dreadnought and let loose a series of three shots, something it would normally be incapable of. Its smaller accelerators instead turned to the Six Eyes that had battered in so, returning the favor as they released a barrage of meson bolts at the last support cruiser, it's assault brethren and the carriers, aiming to finally bring about their demise.
Nevertheless,the zetyans were a side objective by now,with Kriqno's undivided attention being placed upon the isoterrans. Their anti life beams were a danger he could not ignore,having little counter. Therefore,he figured getting them out of the way while they were in this state was the number one priority.
The multitude of frigates and destroyers set their energy projectors to microwave frequency;turning them on the dreadnought and its entourage of battleships to act as jamming and suppression tools. Besides that they traded volleys of mass driver shots with their counterparts in the isoterran force.
The cruisers, both light and heavy, set their projectors to gamma ray frequency, waving rays of deadly energy and radiation much like they did against the zetyan forces. Only now, these strikes were directed against the isoterran battleships and joined by their spinal muon mounts aswell, all empowered thanks to the boost. The heavy cruisers played the most important part, firing their pairs of spheromak cannons at the battleships and dreadnought. The plasma damage they might do, even under the empowerment, was merely a side dish to the disturbance that Kriqno hoped they would cause to their systems. Afterall, they seemed to have worked well enough on the zetyan carriers.
The Child of Ka'thog returned aswell,although was by far the most damaged of the resurrected assets. Indeed,chances are a good volley would put it to rest once more,but that was not yet to be. It released arcs of psionic might at the zetyan frigates,being the nearest to it. The ripples of power would jump from ship to ship,doing damage in rounds for as long as their creator lived
Lastly were the battleships and carriers,both living and those somewhere in between. They too brought their strength against the isoterran battleships,the former firing a series of shots from their spinal meson weapons. The latter meanwhile let loose a another volley of RKKV slugs,half of which were meant to fragment and clear the swarms of fighters surrounding the fleet while the others would stay in one piece and fly towards the isoterran battle cruisers.
These ships also began to mount a more indirect attack aswell. The carriers released more groups of gunships which did the same thing as the last ones,circling the main battle and going to the sides,occasionally releasing some of the tachyon arrow missiles at isoterran frigates while looking for vectors of attack against juicier targets.
The battleships instead released a volley of stealth torpedoes. Being layered in halostone and fitted with gravitic engines for maximum stealth, at least at long range, they would depart both above and below the main plane of battle. So far, they did little else, the sentient minds inhabiting them waiting patiently for the best time to properly spring into action.
The increase in psionic activity was picked up by the Isoterran magical sensing, causing Dido to wonder what the Sadashi were intending to do, before multiple notifications of Lithorian ships that had just been mission-killed beginning to resume activity started to show. Bearing his teeth and letting loose a low growl from his throat, he began barking orders to his subordinates.
Throughout the fight, the Isoterran battlegroup had continued to travel towards the Lithorian fleet. Now they elected to use that to their advantage, as the three maneuver squadrons split off from the others, firing their engines at a full burn that caused their thruster caps to glow purple, on a vector that would take them past the Lithorian fleet and towards the Sadashi helic station. As they passed by, the six battlecruisers rotated, pointing their bows at the resurrected battlestation, releasing another thirty-six relativistic slugs at it. Accompanying these was a large amount of MMDW disintegrator beam fire and plasma bolts. Meanwhile, the Sadashi amoung the Lithorian fleet were targeted by antiship missiles and tracking force gun bolts. Following the maneuver squadrons were the nine-hundred strikefighters launched by the attendant frigates, which targeted the incoming RKKVs along with the warships' point defense systems. However even as both the warships and fighters were damaged by the incoming impactors, the battlecruisers, which up until that point hadn't launched any small craft, began launching. Six thousand fresh SF-87s soared into space, half of which moved to engage gunships that dared to bother their warships, while the other half zipped ahead on their way to the Sadashi station.
The battlestation's pion guns hit the Isoterran dreadnought's gravitic shield layer, causing a lightshow of gamma rays to erupt around it, wasting much of the weapon's power. However, within the massive behemoth's internals, a variety of radiation was still delivered, vaporizing structural components and damaging its systems. The dreadnought, adopting a similar tactic as the battleships had previously, rerouted power from its smaller batteries to compensate for the axial weapon's large power draw and the now damaged capacitors and trunks. From its tip lanced an antilife beam in reply, aimed at the battlestation's geometric heart. In reply to the microwave jamming from the Lithorians, it joined the battleships in firing a massive salvo of antiship missiles, which were set to HARM mode, homing in on the sources of the microwave jamming. Meanwhile, they networked with the over three thousand fighters that still circled the main group of warships, using their hyperspectral sensors to bypass as much jamming as possible.
The frigates within both groups were taking a rather large beating from the attention they were getting, trading fire between themselves and the frigates and destroyers targeting them. Sending plasma fire, force gun bolts, and antiship missiles at their attackers, much of their screening capability apart from their point defense was taken up by simply shooting back at the enemy. Within the main group, much of this drop in screening power was taken over by the strikefighters, which had now mostly exhausted their missile supplies and were now relying on their guns to shoot down enemy gunships and target any solid munitions they could. This meant that all the Isoterran warships, especially the frigates, were beginning to show their wear even from a distance.
The launch of the stealth missiles was picked up by the Isoterran ships as small blips on their gravitic sensors, but much of their attention was tied up dealing with the enemy already, so there was not much that was able to be done apart from having any nearby SF-87s check out the area.
The sudden reactivation of the Lithorian forces sent panic through the Zetyans, their command scrambling to find some solution to this sudden problem as their foes suddenly came from the dead, shining with a rainbow far brighter than theirs had ever been.
The first to receive punishment for their vices were the support and assault cruisers, brought down to their graves kicking and screaming as a hail of green bolts tore them apart with vigor, their internal lights turning from electrical yellow to a sickly neon green. The carriers, too, suffered much the same, their internal structures caving like tissue paper with each impact and soon turning to little but a shell of corpses and radioactive debris each. The only consolation for their captains would likely be that they died before their bridges decompressed.
The frigates suffered less, but the punches they received had no less restraint than those layed upon their peers. A psychic merry go round soon enveloped the four frigates left, an invisible yet palpable force jumping between ships and leaving sizeable dents in their wake, their interiors slowly beginning to crunch like a peanut with each impact and their hulls slowly beginning to bend ever so slightly.
The rest of the ships seemed to have been granted reprieve, if only for their muted efforts compared to their peers. It gave them a chance to breathe, just for a minute or so.
And it gave their command plenty of time to panic.
Nobody in the AWACS sloop had seen the sudden surge of power from the Lithorians coming, and it had graduated them from 'major problem' to 'extreme danger' in just a few minutes. Their 'swan song' of sorts didn't help matters, given that only a few ships had any amount of specialized ammunition left, and even then only in piddling numbers. Their options were few, and most were, in essence, either stupid, suicide or both.
The only option that was seriously considered, though, would also be their last resort-having the ships overcharge the onboard Fracture Drones and launch them at the Lithorians, turning them into homemade gravity missiles.
It was a classic desperation maneuver, and given the nature of the drive they had mounted it'd still be somewhat effective even under interdiction, just slower and way faster at overheating. Even the corvette-scaled drones could leave some dents, given they actually hit.
But, in their current state with the ships they had left, they'd likely have to use every drone they had to make a sizeable impact. And that would leave them stranded, during wartime, in the core systems of enemy territory, while damaged, with no guarantee their allies could help them warp out, and in the middle of a galactic Ancerium shortage.
In purely abstract tactical terms, ignoring all context, it made sense in all the right ways. But logically, with context, it made sense in all the wrong ways.
But their allies would need support as well, given their newfound focus by the bugs. They were much more advanced, sure, but as bolts of mesons and particulate danced into their ranks they proved themselves no less invulnerable.
After a few minutes of argumentation, they finally came to a head, and orders rang out to the remaining forces. A rather hasty explanation of what was about to happen was also sent to Admiral Dido's ship, much to his likely chagrin.
First, they began to fall back to the Isoterran formation, as the Sadashi had to the Lithorians. Their support corvettes/frigates and escorts did their level best to begin intercepting what projectiles they could and providing electronic support, as the remaining ships provided covering fire for their allies. At the same time, each ship began to charge their fracture drones and setting their destination for whatever ships were best applicable in the combined Lithorian-Sadashi formation, gravitic signatures suddenly spiking in every ship present and increasing exponentially.
Three of the assault destroyers launched what little remained of their RKKV/Casaba warheads, a physical embodiment of a last gasp for what funding they could ever receive in the future. The last of their missiles and spinal shells rang out from both them and their comrades as well, as the turrets of the Zetyan fleet took their place with ensuing hails of slugs. It would take an agonizing few for their drones to reach the launching stage, not to mention any losses they could accrue in the very-near future. But anything to defeat a foe, right?
-
The sudden surprise of the Lithorian revival did indeed come as a shock to the Sadashi; they had merely expected improved performance on the living ships, not outright necromancy of the dead. But in turn, it emboldened them just as it did their allies, encouraging them to keep going even as their ships now began to feel the strain of projection, silently moaning and shifting as their internals began to stress and tense.
In fact, two of the ships giving their support already began to pump up their bolstering of the Lithorian fleet, even at risk of their own ships burning out sooner than their comrades. Their comrades, while unable to come close to making the lightshow their comrades could, decided to try a new trick; they began 'merging' the pulses and psionic cluster-missiles they sent towards the Isoterrans as they fired, turning them from a collection of smaller munitions into one large shot. Perhaps it wouldn't make much difference-so far, the Lithorians had been carrying most of the weight regarding the offense-but anything to help their friends, or for some come up with a more interesting story than 'i gave a bunch of bugs enough steroids to flatten a palm rashidya meatblob'.
The chaotic struggle continued, now turned even more dizzying as the Isoterran force started breaching and puncturing through the lithorian formation. The RKKVs hit their mark well enough,with only a few being dealt with by the previous multi layered defense systems ripping off the other two sections from the creature's mainframe and leaving gaping craters in other areas,thus denying it all but one of its precious meson accelerators.
The anti life beams then hit,bringing darkness to the bioship's illuminated hide as it was forced back to the reaper's realm. Thankfully, both Kriqno and Ginko were not in there,having boarded a subcraft and huddling amidst the battleships and carriers.
The fighters that blitzed past the lithorian formation soon found themselves assaulted as previous bumps on the rear tendrils of lithorian bioships revealed energy projector nodes and indeed detached entirely, proving to be living things in their own right that engaged the craft.
The gunships meanwhile were not willing to retreat or go down without a fight, launching fragmenting shells from their mass drivers and engaging their energy projectors to thin out the swarms before releasing their payloads of nightstone NEFPS, each targeted at the battleships and meant to propel countless shards of the exotic material once their nukes detonated.
The missile wave found itself some kills, ridding the battlefield of five or so frigates but otherwise being met with copious amounts of counter measures.
The aliens were hard pressed to think of their next strategy. The zetyans seemed to be plotting something if gravimetric readings were to be believed, the isoterrans had divided up their fleet to assail them and the Sadashi were on their last legs.
Kriqno knew that the battle would end soon,one way or the other,but he hoped his next moves might just tip the balance in their favor.
First,the destroyers and light cruisers quickly spun around by way of their gravitic tendrils and collapsed upon the now isolated Isoterran battlecruisers,letting loose flurries of their muon and nucleonic spinals alongside cassaba howitzer and standard NEFP missiles.
Then the heavy cruisers rerouted power purely to their pairs of spheromak cannons, this combined with the increased psychic boost allowed them to release a truly voluminous wave of plasma munitions as their rate of fire increased tenfold, much to the dismay of their occupant lithorians who began boiling alive.
Once again, Kriqno cared little for the damage the plasma itself would do, but the spheromak's magnetic disturbance to their enemies systems. The projectiles were thus aimed at the dreadnought and its cadre of battleships, as every hindrance they faced in releasing their magi weapons was key, while plenty were also rerouted to the zetyan forces to hopefully stop their would be scheme in its tracks
The carriers came up next,releasing another volley of relativistic slugs,these ones being fragmentary in nature to gut the ever growing swarm of issoterran strike craft which was building up. The surviving frigates would play a big part too,intensifying their jamming in accordance to the increased Sadashi support and preparing for the next step.
The battleships were quiet,too quiet. Even as bolts of plasma continued flying in droves from their peers,the vessels sat silently. Then,all of a sudden, their sides erupted with the glow of small suns as every single missile they possesed,no matter the configuration or usual purpose,was launched in a last ditch alpha strike at those core isoterran vessels, moving towards their quarry like a tidal wave and blinding the lithorian's own sensors with their plumes. Simply put, they would have no way to know how this attack would do until well after it was done.
Off on the sidelines,the intellects of the stealth torpedoes recognized the approaching fighters and quickly activated hardlight vectors on their halostone sheathed frames, masking themselves as asteroids while letting out little in the way of suspicious emissions. Of course, this too changed when the massive salvo was launched. Recognizing this as what may well be their best shot, the supposed "asteroids" suddenly released plumes of plasma and accelerated to relativistic speeds before the holographic facade was dropped. Their antimatter rockets served them well in accelerating towards their target, the dreadnought, while the gravitic tendrils used previously would bode well for maneuvering and any fuel they hadn't burned would no doubt make for a nasty surprise upon impact.
The maneuver squadrons raced onwards towards the Sadashi station as energy projector fire from the Lithorians reached through their formations like spotlights, trying to destroy the attacking strikefighters before they could engage the station. Unfortunately for both the Sadashi and Lithorians however, the SF-87s had sheer numbers on their side, as they began performing evasive maneuvers to make targeting more difficult, while continuing to close with the station. The six battlecruisers released a volley of thirty-six massive slugs, each racing on a relativistic path towards weak points in the helic station's structure, taking advantage of its spindly nature to try to break it apart in orbit. That done, they rotated and joined their attendant frigates in firing upon the pursuing destroyers and cruisers that were peppering their flanks, using their superior firepower as heavier combatants to their advantage. They were joined in this effort by the 3900 screening strikefighters, who worked to intercept missiles and engage the travelling energy projector batteries that had detached from the Lithorian warships.
The main Isoterran fleet continued returning fire as the Lithorians and Sadashi remnants continued their barrage, managing to each fire another salvo of five antilife bursts at the five heaviest Lithorian combatants. Much of the non-spinal fire was now coming almost entirely from the frigates, as most available offensive energy was being routed to the axials. As the gargantuan wave of Lithorian missiles closed in, many of their number were thinned out by the swarm of surviving SF-87s around the core fleet, as well as point defense. But it wasn't enough, and sensors within everyone's fleets were blinded as the combined flashes from the impacts washed out sensor readings in the area for the briefest of moments.
Dido, well protected deep inside of Grey Curator's command center, had just been about to send an irritated reply to the Zetyan commander's half-baked scheme when he felt the whole vessel shake as if struck by a giant hand from the nuclear barrage impacting against the shields, zeroing them, and then the armor, evaporating much of it and the surface guns. Alarms began to blare, indicating the massive damage they had sustained. A moment was take as the five ships reestablished communications, sharing information from their own remaining sensors and those of the other Isoterran assets, to determine the current situation. That changed things, and instead of sending his original irritated reply, he ordered the main fleet to accelerate at maximum power towards the Helic station, while sending a message to the Zetyans telling them to follow as they executed their plans, or die alone.
The main fleet then, now consisting of the heavily damage hulks of the dreadnought and battleships, little more than flying spinals now, and their comparatively undamaged frigates, which had not been targeted apparently, accelerated forward. Return fire to the Lithorians was provided by the frigates, while the large ships charged their spinals, having no other options anymore.
The continued reprieve from Lithorian assault was, of course, not to last. But any time was precious time, and if they weren't before the Zetyans were certainly high buyers now.
Their rushed scheme, able to be implemented only with the 'clemency' of their fellow pests, had managed to near it's completion. And indeed, it seemed to have started on que as the Lithorians sent off their barrages to the Isoterrans; two of the remaining assault frigates had managed to launch off their drones towards the battleships, which soon evolved into bright glowing specks of light as they increased in speed exponentially, ripping at themselves like mad dogs as the active interdiction began to take it's toll on the sorely blueballed FTL system.
But then, the plasmatic barrage came upon their ships, ending the reprieve as they were forced to endure another lashing. One of the assault frigates collapsed from a direct hit from a ball of molten energy, the psychic merry-go-round they endured earlier having taken a toll on it's internals, and two of the assault destroyers followed suit as they were cored like apples by voluminous, multispectral bolts of star energy. And Kriqno was wise to aim upon them, as the hail of bolts began to disrupt the charged-up energy of their slapdash bombs in a way that threatened destruction. A mad dash was undertaken to ensure that they did not explode, ruining their plan in as much time as it took to come up with it in the first place. An escort was lost in the chaos, however, as it disassembled with the help of a large gravimetric pulse; a preview of what could've been as the fore shattered like glass and the rear crumpled like paper.
The Lithorian missile wave also managed to strike collateral, as the one of the three remaining frigates managed to get clipped by a few enthusiastic missiles. The irony of the bugs copying the rat's own desperation move was not lost on their command.
Their retaliation was predictable at first; shoot more, and harder, since their half-baked plot now sat in a gutter. But the Isoterran's movements-and sudden targeting of the Sadashi station-soon made intentions clear, and their command to follow only served to confirm: complete your own objective, or earn a place in Zetyan Valhalla. And so they followed, the dog walking the rat as they began to rush towards the Sadashi station. As the Isoterrans had sent their slugs, so too did the Zetyans send theirs from what various turretry that was left on their ships. They weren't as fast as the Isoterran's, nor graced with being fired from a lauded spinal, but they had limited course correction and a guarantee that their nemeses hadn't made their target a blinker in the last two weeks.
-
The Sadashi ships had finally begun to give out. While every ship could perform the act of reinforcement, only specialized ships could normally do so for prolonged periods without harm, and never lasted long while under damage and duress. The last vestiges of their projected energy were sent into the Lithorian ships, and the biohulks who had given their support now coughed blood as their fellows moved to cover them. They were alive, with a high chance of earning some Purple Hearts/Medals of Honor, and they had put their foes on the edge. That was all their comrades could ask for.
Well, that, and that their station would survive what was barreling their way at 2/10ths the speed of light.
The Helic had, for the most part, gone unnoticed since the Lithorians had arrived. Command had expected their foe's attention to be put solely on the Lithorians as long as they were combat-capable, as by now they had established themselves as the bigger threat than they. It was a grossly awful surprise then, when both the incoming fleet of Isoterran strikefighters and the flurry of spinal shells suddenly showed up on their sensors.
The station had it's own fighters, and point defense systems hidden in it's shell and in a few of the surrounding asteroids. Half of their fighters had been launched by the time the SF-86's drew near, a bunch of pseudosapient drones numbering near 2,500 and counting as they rushed to meet their foes. And a few of the shells had managed to be intercepted by their 'traps', knocked off course just enough by weak psychometric pulses that seemed to come from the asteroids.
But the Helic was a shipyard, not a stronghold. Built to harbor, not to hold. And of the 36 the Isoterrans had delivered their way, 33 hit their mark, 8 shells each resolutely snapping off each helix on the top and bottom one by one like wishbones. The stream of fighters was cut from the source, as womb storage packets were severed from their nervous system and fighters in mid launch were suddenly shredded into gibs by muscles in tensile rigor mortis or impaled by shrapnel the size of houses.
The core of the station remained firm, a saturated pink light and a collection of pink rivers staring outwards as the paraplegic commandant watched itself and it's own limbs begin their deorbiting process at a snail's pace. Eventually, the smaller pieces and shrapnel would break up and burn in atmosphere, and the rest were likely to bring untold devastation with their sheer size as they eventually made impact on the planet below.
The inhabitated planet below.
Kriqno and his fellows could swear they heard screaming.
Those Sadashi ships, despite clearly resting on their last legs, suddenly began acting as if they had just entered combat in the first place, acting with a vigor straight out of some cliché movie scene. At risk of their wounds becoming worse, and heedless of their own ship's strains they began letting belt after belt of psionic munitions towards the Isoterrans, aimed mostly at their spinal-bearing ships. The support frigates also began to rebuild their strength with all the haste and spite they could muster, preparing to give their power to their comrades again as soon as they possibly could.
Kriqno's senses were briefly overwhelmed by the psychic death throes of untold sadashi,erased as pieces of the helic stations made contact and peppered the planet in fireballs bright as miniature suns.
Their allies, already a dying race, had just been dealt a heavy blow. The barbarity of the act was enough to bring distaste even to his cold alien mind. More pressing was the sheer tenacity of his foes. He had expected them to surrender or ask for some sort of terms, yet instead they seemed quite determined to battle to the death, not unlike the savage beasts he would normally hunt in the Expanse. Fine by him,if they chose to show no mercy,they would be granted none in return.
The child of Ka'thog reacted to the isoterran assault,extending umbilicals of pure mana and sheathing its allied vessels in their energy. Their occupants could only watch as the malignant sorcery thrown at them safely coalesced around the organic hull and surged through the strings. It was thus that the child perished again,this time for good,it's body simply too mangled and tainted to carry on. Still,it bought precious time. The zetyan plan had been unfoiled,much to the lithorian's luck,but not before two of their ftl bombs left their firing tubes. These distortions in space time each found their mark,obliterating a pair of destroyers as their organic hulls heaved and bent in impossible ways prior to coming apart,guts spilling forth into the void.
It was now time to retaliate.
Retribution was swift, the heavy cruisers focused their spheromak cannon fire upon the dreadnought and battleships, recognizing them as the biggest threat and thus aiming to prevent their spinal fire. Their own muon beamers joined in, blasting from their maws and streaking towards the dying battleships.
The Austral Spawn's own battleships instead turned to the isoterran dreadnought,focusing their meson accelerators upon,followed by two of the vessels going dark,no longer supported by the beneficial energies of their peers.
The carriers joined in aswell, firing their relativistic slugs at the battleships while their energy projectors set to gamma frequency and peppered the more numerous frigates. Their launch bays were busy, readying themselves for a massive release of craft
On the fleets rear, the battle intensified. Fragmentary mass driver rounds were fired en masse to thin out the masse of fighters, followed swiftly by the release of the lithorian's own interceptors from their present warships that quickly moved to engage. There were about six thousand of the bio forms in total, each reliant on a combination of missiles and a pair of neutron blasters to score kills against their opposition, joined in turn by a few dozen more of the autonomous energy projector battery
Their mother vessels meanwhile, set their sights towards the battlecruisers. The lithorian prowlers let loose a volley of their muon beam spinals at these foes, joined in by a barrage of nucleonic shells from the destroyers and active microwave jamming from the energy projectors of the frigates.
In Kriqno's mind, so long as he could eliminate the isoterran heavy hitters, the battle would be his. They had been beaten and bloodied, indeed they may well have been wiped already had a mere few factors gone differently, be it their allies not granting psionic support, the zetyan prototype not being taken care of quickly or their ftl bomb barrage coming to complete fruition. Still, he guessed that neither foe had any more aces up their sleeve and that he would at least prevent them from achieving whatever objective they set out for themselves if nothing else.
Grey Curator and the battleships within the Isoterran force now looked like pyramidic asteroids, their once monolithic hulls, bristling with weapons, now barren plains of metal distorted by numerous craters, punctures, and areas of flash-frozen hull that had been liquified by energy weapons. Mass driver rounds still impacted their surface, creating fresh holes in their titanic frames as they continued surging forward, half on momentum, half from their failing engines. Interior explosions could be seen from muon and meson weapons irradiating their innards. Deep within the dreadnought, Admiral Dido and his crew were being assaulted by alarms on every side, as the vessel's frame shook from the sustained damage. The Isoterrans had largely accomplished their goals here, having dealt a massive blow to both the Sadashi fleet and their shipyards, and now they were mainly interested in surviving the unwanted Lithorian intervention. Dido had hoped to make good his escape, but that option seemed to be gone now. With a growl, he gave the order to call for reinforcements, deciding to deal with the embarrassment of asking for help rather than losing his forces and his life.
The frigates of the group were working overtime, attempting to intercept what they could while dishing it out to the enemy. It was a battle they knew they wouldn't win however, as they were light combatants, and couldn't keep up with the numerically superior and heavier enemy ships bombarding them. Nearby, a volley of antilife beams lanced out from the Isoterran heavy hitters, a rare utterance from what otherwise seemed like dead hulks with active engines, all aimed at the Lithorian carriers.
Meanwhile, the battlecruisers sent another volley of spinal projectiles at the exposed core of the helic station, before recalling their fighters and going to join the main part of the force, bringing extra help to them. With their fighters racing to rejoin the battle fully, the Lithorians would once again be at a disadvantage, as the Isoterrans had brought over ten thousand fighters to the battle and while many were destroyed or exhausted, the majority of them were still fairly fresh.
The Isoterrans now taking up the full attention of the enemy gave the Zetyan command time to think, as the Sadashi sent their psion bolts and the Lithorians sent their particle slugs. As their ships gave the finishing touches to the station's situation, the steel asteroids returning to firing on the bugs and jellyfish, their command centered in the AWACS sloop now began to work overtime on coming up with some sort of endgame plan before the Isoterrans were eventually overwhelmed.
They had a few options to go from, though their feasibility beyond paper and thought process was a question hotly debated on.
They could wait for the Isoterran reinforcements, and/or call their own, which would bring some much needed fresh blood to the very deteriorated situation, however that could lead to the Lithorians and Sadashi summoning reinforcements as well, which would then lead to the Zetyans requesting their own out of necessity, and then the whole system would turn into a meat grinder as the four factions made entire mountain ranges out of molehills. And, given there was interdiction up, they would still need to wait fair longer for them to arrive than they would normally-both the signal and the reinforcements would be at the mercy of the many interdiction fields around, costing precious time that the Lithorians could use to win.
They could try their drone bomb gambit again. Evidently they worked, as eyes laid upon the concaved, broken masses that once were the unlucky pair of destroyers, and given that all sides were on their last legs it could turn the tide in their favor. But the same problem would present itself again-no FTL in enemy territory, and no guarantee of escape. The Lithorians could also let loose another plasma barrage towards their ships, disrupting their plan yet again and with no guarantee they could save as many ships as they did last time. High risk, high reward-it didn't feel right, but if done well it could guarantee an otherwise uncertain victory.
They could up and flee, urging their allies to do the same; they'd done what they came for, no point to staying in the frying pan for any longer than you had to. But the Lithorians were dogged opponents, the Sadashi had just become enraged beyond measure, and if the Isoterran's reinforcement call was any indication they seemed to have decided on what to do long ago. Of all the options, it was the only one deemed a no-go.
Finally, they could try some formation shifting, try to flank above or below the enemy formation and get some shots in that otherwise would have been unfeasible. But that would draw unneeded attention to themselves, and it would stretch them thin-both were easy death sentences, especially with their current situation. It would likely need Isoterran input to work.
Nobody was sure which would be the 'best' option, as in truth they were all filled with varying degrees of 'fuck my shit' and all had a high risk factor no matter what. But they couldn't just sit idly and repeat what they were doing, lest the pests and phyla win the day over a technologically superior opponent and their mortal enemies. What was a zet to do, under duress and on an invisible timer?
Why, phone a friend, of course.
A transmission soon bolted out to the Grey Curator from the AWACS sloop, asking them for their (hopefully quick)input on their quickly-thought up 'options'. Their ships, meanwhile, began to focus on the largest targets in the Lithorians with what weapons they had; nothing much else to do, when your leaders are stumped and your options are limited.
-
As the station was cored like an apple by the enemy barrage, the Sadashi ships began to act irrationally, the screams of their dead and dying now filling their heads incessantly like water from a broken tap. The combat capable ships now began, despite all sane logic dictating otherwise, to charge towards the enemy as to ensure all their future shots hit their marks, enduring increasing amounts of incoming fire as their wounds worsened and their physical state reached criticality, firing madly all the while. If they kept up their sudden deathmarch, they would undoubtedly be dead, but evidently the spirit of rage-or nihilism, t'was hard to tell-had fully taken their minds, leaving them little to worry about other than ensuring their foes were spited in their last gasps.
The few ships that had stayed behind, having been recharging their energy beforehand, had also seemed to lose any sense of self-preservation, though theirs was of a far more propitiatory nature. Charging up all of their ship's collective power into a single pulse, those ships gave their all-quite literally-to the remaining Lithorian ships left, their ships now turning to empty husks as their lifeblood donated itself to their allies. It certainly didn't compare to what they had before-like holding a candlelight to a lightbulb-but the nature of their sacrifice ensured their psionic reinforcement was residual instead of maintained. For a little while, at least, the Lithorians would be stronger than they.
The situation was becoming critical,with his enemies unwilling to back down and with little cause to continue on his part,it seemed that he would have to make the first move.
The carriers,all four of them, suddenly found themselves pierced by the eldritch blasts of the isoterran battleships, sapping the life out of them and naming them go limp. The zetyan fire by comparison was fat more manageable, with most being dealt with well before reaching their target, leaving a fraction to cause varrying degree of surface damage, at least they had been bled dry, or so Kriqno thought.
The arrival of the isoterran battlecruisers was a double edged sword. On one hand, the massive dogfight between their star craft slipped from the lithorian's graces thanks to enemy numbers bloating more than twice over. On the other hand, their light cruisers, destroyers and frigates merely performed a quick turn, courtesy of their gravitic tendrils, and allowed the lithorian fleet to fully bear its might upon the remaining opponents.
Once more, luck seemed to be on their side. Their sadashi peers channeled the breath of creation into their ranks, rejuvenating the carriers whose lives had just been harvested. It could not have been a better time, the vessels opening their baleen maws and activating mass driver launch tubes that laid dormant until now. Finally, the vessels could rely on their most powerful asset, their complement. Interceptors whizzed out of them in great snaking clouds, occasionally speckled with heavier fighter configurations and squadrons of gunships. In a matter of minutes, ten thousand more participants joined the fight, a figure which promptly doubled, then continued to rise
Unsurprisingly, these dedicated vessels made the subcraft belonging to the rest of the biofleet look like a pittance
Still, the actual lithorian warships were silent, no retaliatory strikes were made, only defensive, shooting down the occasional projectile or fighters.
Instead, a psychic message was relayed to the charging sadashi force, Kriqno was not proud of what he had to do, but he thought it was for their own good
"Pull back immediately. I swear upon my life,these savages will pay,but not here,not now. If you value our alliance,I beg of you to stand down and play along,no more blood has to be spilled today"
This was the followed by a conventional signal, unencrypted and accessible to all parties
"This is Kriqno of the Lithorian Collective,I wish to discuss the matter of your surrender. You are outgunned and outnumbered, by all accounts I should reduce you all to mangled wrecks for your crimes, but I digress. Unlike you, I do not slaughter all in my sight. So power down your weapons, allow us to board and I will make sure you live to see another day. Your six eyed friends can attest to it, for this is hardly my first 'dance' with them. I give you one minute to respond, any more and my volleys shall begin anew. Think very carefully on what you are going to do next..."
Dido was about to reply to the Zetyan message when the Lithorians abruptly stopped firing, before a message was sent to him, slightly delayed as it made its way through the various firewalls and cyber protections that the Isoterrans had put in place on their warships.
They were offering a chance to surrender...the idea of actually accepting it made him laugh, he knew little of the Lithorians or the Sadashi, but neither of them were likely happy with the destruction of the Helic station and the damage its deorbiting pieces would cause. And if he made it back home, the Empire wouldn't take kindly to surrendering in this sort of situation...
However, much of his fleet was heavily damaged, and wouldn't take much more, at least on its own...unless they could hold out for whatever reinforcements were inbound. Sadashi territory wasn't too far from theirs, so perhaps if he could stall, it would give them the reprieve they needed. Quickly, he ordered his assets to quit firing, before relaying the plan to the Zetyans: they would play the Lithorian game for now, until help could arrive to cover their escape.
On Kriqno's end, the only sign that their message had perhaps gotten through was the sudden 'silence', as the Isoterran units ceased firing, instead silently continuing on their current courses, while attack craft maintained a holding pattern at the ready. Then, after about four minutes had passed from the initial broadcast, a reply came on open channels "This is Rear Admiral Dido of the Isoterran Empire. I am interested in negotiating with you Kriqno, but before I lower our guard and simply let you onboard, I have some concerns for our safety, and what your intentions are if we simply allow you to capture us. I am sure you can understand such a request."
Kriqno was stressed. The enemy seemed to at least consider his plea, having ceased their own hostile actions, yet their silence made him doubt that. He did not attack after the one minute term was up, going back on his word in the hopes that this whole thing might just be resolved peacefully. By the three minute mark however, that hope was dashed. They were stalling, for what exact purpose he did not know but, either to concoct some kind of strategy or wait for reinforcements, either way it was not good
He was caught off guard by the response, having never expected one to come at all. It seemed reasonable, yet he knew there was no time to waste, he had to be firm and decisive about this
"I understand your concerns, but I have no interest of escalating this any further. Should you accept my proposal, your vessels will be seized and you shall be delivered to your respective polities, that is all. You have two minutes to give me your answer, pass this limit again and the deal is up, period"
Now he waited. If he was lucky,cooler heads would prevail and they'd all just walk away. Otherwise,it appeared he only bought a brief respite from the slaughter. Hopefully enough for the sadashi to reposition to safety.
A reply came fairly quickly this time, well within the time window: "Sir, you are asking me to simply place the lives of hundreds, if not more, of beings into the care of two hostile nations, an act for which I may be greatly punished for when I return home. The least you can do is give me some assurances that my personnel, and those of the Zetyans, will not be harmed or tortured, and will be properly housed and fed, while being speedily returned to our respective polities without issue."
Dido paused, before continuing "Alternatively, I would be much less worried if you wished to simply expel us from Sadashi space. This is a retaliatory strike for repeated Sadashi attacks on our allies, but I'm sure my superiors would be happy to come to a more peaceful arrangement if possible."
A a glimmer of light shone from Kriqno's mono eye. Perhaps he was wrong, perhaps they really wished for a peaceful resolution rather than stalling. Still, he had to remain firm, they were already looking to get away scot free
"With all due respect, I am the one who ceased hostilities and attempted diplomatic resolution, not you. If I wanted you dead, I would have simply done no such thing. Nevertheless, I assure you that none of your crew members will be subjected to torture or interrogation,alongside being safely delivered to your borders. I have already done such a thing with your allies on a previous occasion, they can vouch for my honesty. I insist, stop this here and now so that no more lives are lost"
"Respectfully, while I give credit for attempting a diplomatic resolution, that could also be because of a variety of other factors, all of which have little to do with your treatment of prisoners of war. One such reason being that we're causing too much damage, even if you do outgun us. Regardless, if you wish to stop the fighting, then we would be willing to depart this system immediately without further conflict, so long as your forces do not hinder us, and this would avoid much of my concerns regarding surrendering my forces to strangers, regardless of how much I trust your good intentions."
The lithorian was perplexed, these new creatures were certainly stubborn, perhaps moreso than the vermin. The inevitability of needing to negotiate with them on future occasions was a grim prospect indeed. Still, he decided to cut his losses, they were caught of guard and by an unexpected enemy, his performance was rather acceptable given the circumstances.
"Very well, take your vessels and depart immediately, we won't pursue. Make no mistake, I may forgive but I certainly do not forget, pull off such a stunt again and the consequences will be significant"
The lithorian vessels dropped their interdiction, keeping true on their end of the bargain. While this day ultimately ended in a loss, it was a bittersweet one, one from which they had to learn. One thing was undeniable, the zetyans had stepped up their game with these allies.
Dido stared at his conversation transcript, not quite believing his eyes or ears. Taking a moment before he replied to confirm they had just accepted his offer, he then sent a return "Of course. I shall inform my allies."
A detailed message was sent to the Zetyan commander, informing them of the deal that had just been reached with the Lithorians, and urging them to leave the system with them. At the same time, the Isoterran fleet adjusted their course, travelling away from both the Lithorian fleet and Sadashi planet, putting as much distance between them and their former enemies as quickly as possible as they prepped their FTL drives, while strike craft followed along. Meanwhile, they lowered their interdiction down to enough to cover themselves.
As the admiral negotiated with the bugs, the Zetyan command and control was, to put it truthfully, very surprised. Not only were their allies fluent in legalese and it's nuances, they were able to weasel them out of an otherwise surefire capture and internment in a timespan of less than 6-7 minutes. An impressive feat, considering circumstances, and one that could easily spark ideas in the more creatively inclined.
As they received the message from the Isoterrans, their battered fleet moved to follow the isoterrans, charging up their FTL and beginning to plot their courses as they fled the scene of the crime. The AWACS sloop, in turn, finally departed from it's distant hiding place as well, joining up on intercept course with the departing mothball of ships as quick as could be. Though it was a victory, it was one that served as a Moloch-from this would they need to steal many lessons away.
The sadashi, unsurprisingly, were not happy. Denied immediate gratification to their rage, they could only result to simmering rage, as the chaos on their planet began to die down and the maddening screaming in their minds began to fade. They would all pay dearly for this offense, indeed-but if there was peace to be had, let there be peace.
It would let their guard down later, after all.
Kriqno was now alone,
to stew in hid thoughts. His allies battered, their station destroyed and settlements compromised, this would make quite the report on his end
...
"And you were able to convince the remaining hostiles to leave?" The visage on the psi screen inquired,utterly devoid of emotion
"Not exactly, Lord Ka'thog. I wished to confiscate their ships and detain them,as I did in my previous assignment. Yet they were stubborn,I figured shedding more blood to achieve that was unnecessary..."
"You did the right thing. Escalating this petty dispute is not desirable,there are much bigger things at stake. Still,the Sadashi are our allies and have proven quite helpful to out cause,so I will make sure they are better protected"
"I assume I will be redeployed elsewhere...."
"Negative. You have experience with both the Clanholds and this 'Isoterran Empire'. Your performance has been stellar,I would want no one else on this. I'll be increasing your defense assets tenfold,and give you command of Taskforce Omega,I'd like to see those vermin try their little schemes again."
In fact, much of the Isoterran logistics had been sorted out within the first day or two, with assets being earmarked and research done, with some extra time being taken to get intelligence and some operational details from the Zetyans. While this was going on however, the Isoterrans had been preparing on the PR front, starting by carefully flooding the local Ancnet with anti-Sadashi memes, stoking speciesist fears concerning their natural psionics and unconventional biology. This was followed by a variety of news articles, pushed through a myriad web of small Ancnet news websites, many of which created for this purpose, using dogwhistle tactics to build on the speciesist fears under a legitimate facade of the Sadashi's commerce raiding against the Zetyans. Icing on the cake was then provided by a few small press releases from the Isoterran government itself, criticizing the Sadashi raiding as harming the local economy and contributing to unrest in the Invilis Corridor. With now two full weeks of propaganda disseminated and still continuing, the local views of the Sadashi remnants were now starting to fall, which made them more vulnerable to the next part of the Isoterran's plan. This involved careful penetration testing of the remnants' cyber defenses via the Ancnet, gathering what information they could in preparation for the direct action that they were about to take with the Zetyans.
With the background preparation out of the way, it was finally time to actually deal with the Sadashi. In truth, the Isoterrans cared little about them, and under any other circumstances, would have likely dismissed them as another small and distant nation that barely warranted attention. However, this small and distant nation provided the perfect opportunity to advance their regional propaganda, do some research into local psionics, and strengthen their relationship with the Zetyans. Which is why an oversized naval group of thirty Isoterran warships, mainly containing a mix of battleships, battlecruisers, and their attendant frigates, now sat within a designated mustering system owned by the ratlike aliens with which the Isoterrans were going to be working on this operation.
Rear Admiral Dido stood at parade rest within the CIC of the naval group's flagship, a dreadnought which had been somewhat euphemistically nicknamed Grey Curator, watching the tactical feed with some impatience, which currently displayed her assets and the surrounding system, waiting for the signal that it was time to jump into the target system.
On the Zetyan end, a large majority of their time spent in those 15 days were dedicated to planning and setup of the attack phase, letting the Isoterrans handle one end while they tackled another. The logistics on that front weren't the hard part-a few bribes, barterings and 'borrowing's ensured the attacking forces were ready within about 5 days-but it was instead the plannings regarding their cetacean foes had taken up the vast majority of their time.
Many in Zettish politics postuled that the reason the Sadashi Remnants hadn't been wiped off the map was because they were 'good target practice' or 'a good testbed' or some other reason that gave them some use. In truth, the real reason why the Sadashi hadn't been wiped out yet was because they were just so slippery. They were hardly a speck on most maps, and their opponents had a much more powerful and expansive military, yet they always seemed to be one step ahead of their six-eyed foes, having become very adept at the art of guerilla warfare in space. They had plenty of knowledge of most Zettish raiding doctrine, and their own forces were fine-tuned to be as good of a counter as they could be against them in kind.
But this time, their opponents weren't raiding. No, the great game of space tag had finally grown stale.
First, a large force of pirates were to be used as fall guys. They were likely already en route, baited or bribed into heading towards one of the two major systems of the Sadashi. Their purpose was simple; go in, soften stuff up, die. As they couldn't predict exactly what enemy forces would be in the system, Zetyan planners planned to use them as a sort of recon as well; a few pirate ships had hidden cameras stuck on them, so the main fleet could verify just how heavily defended the system was.
The second part would come when the main Zetyan fleet arrived, and it had the two forces linking up and FTL'ing to a location just behind where Remnant forces were determined to be, deploying radio silencers and some interdiction before any word could get out of the real threat so as to maintain the illusion of a piracy raid. The close ranges they would be warping into would ensure a majority of shots would hit, and thus entail quick elimination, or at the very least extensive and critical damages across the entire enemy fleet.
Finally, a few more pirates were to be baited in and used as minefield clearers, and infrastructure was to be destroyed though the Zetyans had largely seen this part as more of a cleanup phase than anything.
Shortsighted, perhaps, but the plan seemed fruitful enough beyond that.
As the Rear Admiral waited, a Zetyan sloop jumped into the system. They sent along a radio message and a request to establish a data-link, saying "<<The cat has entered the bag. The river is encroaching. Awaiting details.>>"
As for the 'cat's, well, were they in for the nastiest rides of their lives...
----------
In the Sadashi system of Moloch, a diaspora of scrap seemed to erupt from nowhere, a few holes in reality ripping open to reveal a host of Freeboot ships, brought either by rumors of treasure, a fight, or both. Exactly 75 ships had come to bargain, each one of varying size and unique from the rest in it's own, special way. Almost like snowflakes, if they were giant hulks of scrap metal held together by shitty welds and liable to break at a moment's notice.
The ships soon stopped movement, seemingly confused for a moment. Where was the fight? Where was the treasure?? Who are these other gu-
Ah.
They all soon caught sight of a large conspicuous station, a grand, helical bone-weaved structure that glistened in the rays of a blue sun, rivers and lakes of glowing pink awash on it's surface. Even a pirate could've concluded exactly who that belonged to, and soon concluded that whatever beef they had with each other could wait, as they began to rocket exponentially over to that great citadel so tantalizingly close.
As they continued, though, something felt...
amiss.
Why were there so many asteroids? And, why hadn't anyone come to fight them yet? Weren't these their sworn opponents? They'd die to kill a Zetyan, so why werent-?
-
The Sadashi commander watched the scrapheap approach their Helic, 'eyes' narrowed and focused as it watched them proceed into a deathtrap. They were larger than it'd expected, much larger, and while it had faith in those forces and traps waiting cloaked in the marrow belts it had already ordered the station to send out a tier-2 reinforcements signal-medium threat, high priority. They were stupid, sure-any Devil dumb enough to go into their core regions would have to be, let alone raid one of their maiden worlds-but their sheer numbers by themselves posed a massive threat in the first place, and the thought of stragglers left behind from an ambush filled it with unease, no matter how backwards they were.
Personal feelings, however, could wait. Especially since their quarry had just fully entered the pincer.
-
And suddenly, just as they were beginning to pass within firing range, the world around that pirate fleet erupted in fire.
Psionic missiles suddenly burst out from various marrow asteroids, splitting into triplets as they careened into various ships, while others suddenly flung themselves full force at their opponents, almost like self-propelled mass driver rounds. All around the entourage, 50 Sadashi ships exited their stealth formes, belting pulse after pulse after psionic pulse at their quarry nonstop, the largest of them shooting off an EMP at the largest pirate ships and temporarily rendering them immobile. A further 25 remained at range, shooting off psionic missiles in bursts and collectively projecting a large shield onto the Sadashi forces in the pincer, while also giving a psionic bolster to their allies to boost their firepower and speeds to potent levels.
Their opponents found themselves being decimated, naturally, yet surprisingly they found purchase with their resistance. A few of the smaller ships suffered critical damages, and others in the pincer found themselves taking hits by nature of sheer volume of fire most of the pirate ships put out, coupled with the close combat ranges they were engaged in.
This worried the Helic Commander. Lost/damaged ships were no small feat to fix and redeploy, and who knew if these troglodytes were only a preliminary.
As it watched the chaos unfold, it reached out with it's mind, communing with other station crew in what felt like an instant to check for any inbound FTL signatures, or barring that anything indicating such. It hoped that reinforcements signal they sent out would be received by allies...
Invilis Corridor-South of Calypso space
Ginko lightly tapped her foot against the organic plating of the floor,creating sparks as her talons grinded against them. Her diner plate sized eyes watched the sensor feeds eagerly,waiting for something to come up
"Hmph,no lithoids here either. It seems they've learned their lesson afterall" she boasted,the pair of tendrils she used for arms undulating with excitement
"We are not here for them. You should worry about the other ones" Came a voice from behind her,heralding the arrival of Kriqno into the chamber. The alien heaved its much larger form forwards atop a mass of tentacular appendages.
"The other ones? Are you referring to the six eyes? You beat them in battle,last I recall" The pair of squid like fins at the top of her body began to wriggle,her mind taken back to the captivating story that introduced her to said event
"I did,yes. But unlike your geologic adversaries,I fear they are far from done with us." The larger lithorian accentuated his claim with their arms,clutching their fingers into a balled fist
"What makes you think that?" Ginko asked,her boneless mantle tilting to the side
"They're relentless you see,our victory over them was little more than an inconvenience. Their deals with this 'Isoterran Empire' shows that. Besides,Naz'kids agreements with the sadashi make conflict almost inevitable. It's why we are patrolling so close to their space"
"Yes,I did hear that the two had.....history"
"Correct,which gives us a common hatred. Better yet,our association has yet to become common knowledge,we should capitalize on that"
Suddenly,the fins on Ginko's head began to vibrate,Kriqno too soon feeling the peculiar sensation. The progeny of their lord Ka'thog grew restless aswell out in the void,sensing the psionic ping sent out by the Sadashi captain,a call for reinforcements
"This is Kriqno of the Collective,status report! What's happening out there?! Give us a visual for Ka'thogs sake!" He replied,sending a secure psionic ping back to their alien allies,nevertheless beginning the process of spooling the FTL drives on their bio vessels in the case that a response failed to come
The clash between the pirate and Sadashi forces was silently observed by Dido, watching a compilation of videofeeds from the cameras that the Zetyans had so thoughtfully hidden on the cannon fodders' ships. Accompanying him, unseen but present nonetheless, was his digital operations officer, who was carefully combing through the feeds, noting order of battle, positioning, and other key details regarding both the pirate and Sadashi forces. As the pirates sprang the Remnants' trap, he tapped a holo-haptic button, before speaking "All ships, charge DT drives and prepare to jump to the target system." This command was confirmed on a nearby display, showing overviews of his thirty warships, including the fact that they were now charging drives.
A few minutes past, and he noted with satisfaction that despite being surrounded now, the pirates were still managing to make the enemy work for their advantage through sheer tenacity and volume of fire, wearing down the smaller ships of the Sadashi formation. He had to hand it to them, despite being ambushed by a superior enemy, they were doing better than many in their position. But now it was time for them to join the unwitting pirates, before the enemy got too much of an upper hand and was able to regroup. First he sent a message to the Zetyan corvette nearby that was providing the broadcast stream. "It is time, let us finish the job that the pirates have started, before the Sadashi get too comfortable." Quickly following this was an order for his ships to jump and enter combat on arrival.
As ordered, the Isoterran fleet activated their charged-up drives, disappearing from the system. A 'short', or rather a short-relative-to-most-distances-in-space interval behind the Sadashi forces making up the out-system part of the pincer, the oversized Isoterran naval group arrived. Nearly immediately, shields were raised and they opened fire, sending a colorful stream of force gun bolts, plasma beams, antiship missiles, and disintegrator beams at the Sadashi in a colorful lightshow of green, red-pink, purple, and white. This was augmented by the activation of jamming and other ECM, while specific interdiction was activated, utilizing the intelligence they and the Zetyans had gathered prior to this whole operation to target the Sadashi FTL and prevent escape, while allowing the pirates, Zetyans, and Isoterrans to come and go as they pleased.
"<<Roger. All ships, bag is in the river. Bag is in the river. Coordinates sent, prepare jump, prepare jump, prepare jump...>>"
The sloop sent the confirmation broadcast to the Zetyan forces elsewhere, sounding practically giddy as it jumped in turn towards Moloch, leaving the staging system a barren, peaceful place once again.
-
Meanwhile, at Moloch, the pirates now staggered and died where they stood, their combat-effective ships reduced to less than 13 and decreasing by the minute. The Sadashi ships had incurred no more damages, at least, for now, and it seemed they were alone-noone else had come by to help so far.
The Helic commander was pleased, and internally let off a sigh of relief. It had been expecting worse from them due to their numbers, even if they were pirates, but now it made a resolution to temper it's expectations, as it began to compose it's message to the-
A hurried thought reached it through the mindweb. FTL signatures. A lot of them. It caused it to go into shock, for but a moment, before it too was rushing to verify those claims. How true they were, how agonizingly true.
Soon, a panicked message coupled with a visual thoughtpic rushed out to the Lithorian battlegroup, racing along the psionic wavelength as fast as that Helic could possibly have made it.
"[The Devils come for us, and they bring their imps! Send us help! SEND US---!]"
-
The Sadashi ships soon found themselves being torn apart like their former prey, a hail of color and light digging into their forces like the claws of a hawk. Several of the lighter ships were destroyed immediately, and the Isoterran alpha strike incurred damages across the entirety of the main fleet almost immediately. The support group was plenty active, however, and as the main fleet began firing back at the Isoterrans they bolstered their shields and weapons, as more psionic missiles dashed towards them from afar. It seemed that they still had a shot.
And then the Zetyans arrived.
They were split into two groups of 25, each immediately ensuing fire upon their quarry upon exiting their wormholes. The support group was forced to rescind their psionic shields as they soon found themselves being hammered by a sizeable force on their rear, and the main fleet now found itself in the middle of a pincer as they took fire from both sides. A cruel irony, to be on the receiving end of your own trick.
Oddly enough, however, they avoided firing on the Sadashi battleship. As the Zetyans began to take fire from their foes, attention drawn from the Isoterrans, it would seem rather unsound; why not focus on the biggest, most dangerous target? The reason, however, soon revealed itself, as the leading battleship soon exited warp.
It's appearance was strange, alien compared to the other Zettish ships. It looked like a normal Zetyan battleship, except all of it's weapons were replaced with strange mounts holding glowing prismatic crystals. The normal exhaust jet every other ship had was replaced with what looked like flashing green-red tails, and it's spinal was just a void with seemingly nothing in it, as bright green-red lines pulsed across the ship like veins. An evident prototype, and judging by the situation one that they eagerly wanted to test.
As it entered the fray, it began aiming that spinal hole towards the battleship with the leisure of a sunday driver. It's 'weapons' lay still, as all those bright, flashy colors on the ship seemed to drain away, and the hole seemed to brighten up just a little.
And then, there was a bright flash from that hole in the front. Another, directly on the Sadashi battleship, it's psionic shields dematerializing in an instant. Laserlike streaks of raw magic energy began screaming out towards the Sadashi, as the battleship lay strangely dormant.
And then there was no battleship at all.
Every trap in a general radius of the skirmish was activated with a panic unlike any other, missile after missile roaring from empty keratin-calciod shells as a halo of purple streaks erupted around the squabbling bunch. The majority were focused on that prototype, as a few of the closest ones were picked off by some of the prototype's conventional PD. Some of the least damaged Sadashi ships began to focus on it as well, though for now they remained on their own as their brethren were forced to content with the pincer.
An action bred of panic, but to the Sadashi anything was needed now. Never before had the Devils fielded something capable of destroying ships in what seemed like an instant, and this thing now presented itself as that which needed destroying here and now. The Helic began practically spamming distress signals, muted by the jamming of the Isoterrans.
The sloop from earlier remained at the edges of the system, broadcasting data and helping coordinate between the two forces. So far, everything had gone according to plan, and better than expected. For once, the Sadashi were the ones on the ropes-and they were being hit with some of their tricks, to boot.
But alas!, for yet again there was an ace hidden far within the sleeve. And neither Zetyan nor Isoterran were aware of their saviors...
The lithorians scrambled to analyze the brief glimpse sent to them by the sadashi. From what they could quickly discern, the sadashi surrounded a number of unknown vessels,with a force of isoterrans pressuring them from one side. There were seemingly no vermin in sight,yet the presence of their associates meant the six eyes couldn't be far.
Quickly, Kriqno took control of the fleet, priming weapons and naturally decided to arrive behind the sadashi force, opposite of the Isoterran threat. Warp bubbles sheathed the main vessels and their smaller counterparts as they departed towards the battle.
"Should we give them a warning? They may choose to retreat" Ginko assessed,working on checking and double checking their systems.
"No,they want to ambush without notice,so shall we. It is about time we stepped up our game and showed who really controls the Corridor." he said,turning to Ginko with a blank aura in his eye
"No mercy" he followed
The molluscoid merely nodded, growing rather anxious as they finally closed in on their destination.
Suddenly,the lithorian fleet arrived behind the Zetyan one,sandwiching them just as the sadashi were. Gargantuan bioships bared their teeth and talons as they recognized their previous foe,feeling just the faintest drop of malice towards their vessels, whom they perceived as rival warbeasts
The two lithorians were admittedly shocked by two things. First was the Zetyan fleet standing between them and their allies,seeing as they were absent from the data sent to them. The second was the fact they were able to appear at all. The area was full of gravitational waves resembling interdiction, yet their FTL seemed somehow unaffected. This shock was brief however, conditioning kicking in to get them back in their A game
"Activate our meson accelerator" he said plainly, pointing to the largest ship in the zetyan fleet, the weird battleship that seemed to have just opened fire judging by the emissions around its spinal
"B-but that's not standard-"
"DAMN THE PROCEDURE.DO AS I SAY AND WE MIGHT JUST WIN THIS. I WANT RKKVs OUT NOW" he screeched, earning a quick nod from Ginko
The austral spawn moved with haste,the largest gun on their battle platform turning silently through the void of space,steadily pointing towards the irregular vessel that the Sadashi were prioritizing. The pion weapon briefly glowed with green light as a bolt of the particles leapt from its barell,hurling towards the hull of its target.
The battleships were next,unveiling small launchers on their undersides which began discharging unusually large missiles, at least by lithorian standards. They quickly accelerated to relativistic speeds, detonating shrapnel packs dotting their frames and creating an expanding cone of debris moving towards their enemies. Soon their launch mechanisms detached aswell,leaving only raw kinetic penetrators to speed towards their quarry.
The carriers opened their whale like mouths,charging up their Alcubierre catapults before launching a payload through the Sadashi force,and at the Isoterrans. The things promptly burst once between the Sadashi and Isoterran forces, revealing small fighters armed with nothing but ECM packs and some interceptors meant to protect them. Their purpose for now was simple, to throw off their enemy's sensors and targeting to save their allies from as much punishment as possible
Lastly,the frigates and destroyers joined the fray,letting loose volleys of their nucleonic cannons into the zetyan mass. This was accompanied by groups of Cassaba Howitzers and NEFPs, designed to detonate outside Zetyan PD range based on their battle data from the previous encounter. Clearly they were not messing around anymore, this was do or die, and these vermin had to perish
To finish off,the lithorian fleet engaged its blanket interdiction,seeking to ensure their enemies could not rely on FTL weaponry or maneuvers for this
"Apologies for running late. We suggest you wipe that filth between your ranks and focus on the Six Eyes,once they're gone we can deal with the others" he said sternly,projecting this message to as many Sadashi as he could,not knowing if their chain of command was still intact.
Like puzzle pieces coming together, Dido watched the Zetyan forces jump in to complete the pincer around the Sadashi, nodding in approval as their prototype dreadnought destroyed the Sadashi capital ship. He found the effect its main weapon had interested, making a mental note to ask the Zetyans about what exactly it did after the battle. Then he heard the alert of incoming FTL signatures, watching on his tactical display as fifty new ships came out of jump in-system of the Zetyan fleet. Recce systems quickly identified their disgusting organic hulls as Lithorian, making the Rear Admiral look on in scorn, annoyed that they would interfere in their operation.
"All ships, put interdiction to total, and punch through that Sadashi line. Battleships, launch fighters against the Lithorian craft" he ordered with a growl, slamming his fist down on the edge of the holographic table he had been looking at.
On the monolithic hulls of the four battleships, a relatively small door opened on each face and began continuously releasing a cloud of SF-87 strikefighters. The swarm of two thousand surged out towards the incoming Lithorian fighter-intercepter group, utilizing counter jamming to try to cancel out their ECM, while providing a massive group of extra eyes for the fleet. Space lit up with purple and green as they began firing their plasma cannon and force guns at the enemy.
Meanwhile, the warships of the Isoterran squadron continued bombarding the Sadashi. It had taken some time, but now the dreadnought and four battleships had finished charging their spinals. From the axial guns of the five, beams of black with red lightning within lanced out towards the largest nearby Sadashi ships, carrying antilife energy. This was accompanied by a storm of thirty-six 30-meter-wide relativistic shells sent from the semi-spinal guns of the six battlecruisers, which were aimed for the next six largest of the Sadashi ships after those targeted by the antilife beams.
The pattern of the Isoterran interdiction changed, as it was switched from specific targeting to blanket, preventing anything from coming or going into FTL on the battlefield.
And as the Lithorians arrived, so too were the Zetyans taken by surprise, knocked from the comfort zone of their average sunday genocide with the cacophony of FTL alerts and incoming projectiles. Their enemy's efforts soon saw purchase, as the calibrated Casaba/NEFP swarm soon began punching holes in ships across the fleet alongside their more standard nucleonic cannonry. Their ECM craft also helped matters, as the designated support ships of the fleet began scrambling to get things to a relative normal before that apparent giant debris ball got too close for the PD and shields to help them.
The Sadashi also made some headway despite their sandwiched state, as the ships began flinging psionic pulses at any applicable target. The psychic missiles not directed towards the Prototype managed to impact their targets without issue; despite everything they had learned from their hated foe, the Zetyans never quite figured out how to properly stop psionics.
They soon began retaliating, seemingly realizing an error of cockiness as their shield systems increased in intensity. While for now they could only offer scattered fire to their enemies, as the ECM waxed and waned, they revealed that they too had their own spacecraft entourage, as 5 light carriers began spewing out various balls of steel from their gaping maws. Some charged with their Isoterran allies into the fray to disable the Lithorian scramber craft, but the majority began moving to bombard the Lithorian ships, fighters and dedicated bombers intermingling and going into a pincer formation. They seemed to have a thing for pincers; perhaps it wasn't just jellyfish their minds were imprinted with that day.
The pirates unfortunately were hardly able to enjoy the show; they had been reduced to a few mission-killed ships floating aimlessly, nothing more than spectators to the carnage around them. Though, it'd be hard to debate whether or not it was a wonderful spectacle for those small-minded folk able to see it.
The Prototype, as it slowly began moving to face the Lithorians, saw fit to demonstrate yet another odd quality.
As one of the debris balls approached, a great 'glob' of sorts suddenly erupted from one of the crystalline 'turrets', dashing into a small section of the approaching debris and disintegrating it with a flash. From behavior and results, it seemed to be some derivative to a plasma shield, though the ship's own shields didn't seem to like it too much as some particulate was burned away from the path it took.
Then, another followed, with more and more soon after, each dashing into random parts of the debris ball and creating small holes with a flash as it approached. It certainly wouldn't've stopped the hailstorm, and seeing as the kinetic impactor remained safely nestled in the debris ball it seemed to just be random chance dictating their path, but for the moment it lessened the load on the selective shield.
Unfortunately, try as it might, a particle gun was certainly something it couldn't touch, as it quickly began finding out the hard way. While the selective shield was able to slightly lessen the projectile's size-it was a particle shield vs. a particle weapon, after all-it was quickly hampered by the odd protection system repeatedly disintegrating the particles in the pion-ball's path, a device of protection now a device of harm.
When it impacted, carving a silent path from the anterior to the posterior at an angle, the only thing preventing the behemoth from being near-mission-killed was it's size; being essentially a 50km long mountain covered in armor and guns, there was thankfully a good deal of filler that the particle ball went through. Despite this, though, it suffered critical damages, the various magicky bits and pieces flashing and convulsing violently from the violent photonic decay happening in it's interior and the ship temporarily going into a drifting state, leaving the hailstorm free reign to continue approaching unabated.
The psionic missile swarm also began seeing results, as they began pockmarking the surface of the monolithic ship to cause further damage.
For now, it could only weakly retaliate, a few streaks of magical light leaping from some of the brighter-shining turrets as some sort of gesture of defiance. Some of the Zetyan fleet close to it began moving to protect it, under the direction of their AWACS sloop.
The Sadashi, meanwhile, now suffered the brunt of the Isoterran assault, six of the largest ships present suddenly being consumed with a deafening black and six more suddenly being hole-punched by a revolving stream of kinetic impactors. The rest began to go into critical states; the ship sandwich they had all unwittingly created was now putting the full pressure on them, even if it was on paper an even match. The support group further out from the main fleet was also in a staggering state, alone time with the other 25 ships having earned them some casualties and a great many more scars.
The Lithorian's message was answered with various panicked messages, either amounting to 'we're trying to' or 'ok please do what you did but more please god please'. If their foes could hear their fear, it would certainly be a delight to savor-like fine red wine, purchased with blood.
Kriqno looked on with anxiety as the battle raged onwards,noting the tides were not quite in their favour,even after their surprise arrival. Even so,he had faced the vermin before,and now he had even more tools at his disposal,though that seemed to go both ways.
He watched on and snarled as the ejecta of the RKKVs made contact with that all too familiar zetyan disintegration field. He was certain that the main penetrators had the sheer mass to make it through unabated,but the countless shards of debris were another story. He quickly identified the linchpin of this mechanism, eye fixated on the familiar silhouettes of three support cruisers. He needed to take them out,to ensure that the RKKVs did maximum damage.
And so the four lithorian battleships turned to face these new targets,circular maws glowing with a green light before their spinal meson accelerators unleashed screaming bolts towards their quarries. While these shots were diminutive compared to the main weapon of the battlestation,so were their targets. Naturally, due to there being 4 battleships,one of the cruisers had the misfortune of dealing with two of these pion beams at once.
Next came the problem of their fighters and ECM craft, being rapidly approached by overwhelming numbers of enemy craft. The lithorian fighter forms proved to be tricky opponents, being blessed with uncanny coordination as a result of their psychic links. They often chose not to fight one on one, instead assembling into small groups which quickly focused singular foes. Nevertheless, they had little chance as they were, but Kriqno thought of something that might help.
The child of Ka'thog began to feed upon the local energies of the psion field, bloating itself like a tick does on flesh. From there it began emanating an aura that greatly enhanced the psionic capabilities of both the lithorians and sadashi alike. For the fighters,this allowed them to metabolize that power into extra energy for their engines, speeding them up drastically. From there, the craft began interfacing with the minds of their pursuers, deliberately amplifying their malice to entice them and give chase. Most of the lithorian frontliners opened fire with their mass drivers,letting loose shells that simply flew by their enemies and headed for the massive dogfight. Like clockwork,each of these detonated and sent expanding cones containing millions of ball bearings,perfect for gutting clouds of fighters. The lithorian's own subcraft had only seconds to react, focusing all energy into their engines, foreboding shields and weapons as a result,and dashed for a precalculated path that would remain debris free for just a few seconds. That was all they needed, making it through to the other side of this destructive tidal wave, albeit with some friendly casualties and those that the foe shut down. Still, they now had a nice buffer between whatever remained of the enemy fighter contingent. The ECM craft got back to their job while the interceptors started firing.
Their missiles were useless given the micro debris, but their neutron cannons could make it through just fine, having been designed to penetrate thick strikeplates of hostile craft.
The forces sent forth by the zetyan carriers were a in need of a response aswell. Being faced with a flood of PD missiles. They were tiny things,not much bigger than a man and carrying two things,a nuclear warhead and an amorphous lens meant to concentrate the resulting photons in various ways. The tiny munitions detonated,each generating hundreds of laser pulses that traveled in an expanding pattern towards the unwelcome arrivals. For now that would have to do,the lithorian's attention already being forced on other matters.
The lithorian heavy cruisers got to work,setting their sights upon the carriers that released these inconveniences. Their spinal muon lances were the first to fire,being less advanced version of the meson weaponry present on their superior brethren. Their two main spheromak cannons were next. While they had all the properties of a regular gigantic plasma cannon,the unique shape of their shots allowed the electromagnetic waves they generated on impact to pass through Faraday Cages and standard hardening, ensuring a higher chance of affecting vulnerable circuitry and electronics. Kriqno hoped to disrupt the vessel's ability to disgorge subcraft,not being keen on having even more targets to worry about
The lithorian fleetmaster was also displeased by the fact that the isoterrans seemed to have taken little to no damage so far,no doubt a result of them not earning anyone's focus so far. Regardless, they proved quite problematic, therefore striking at them seemed a wise choice to him.
The carriers opened their maws once more, attempting to fire more alcubierre bubbles to launch their strike craft. Unfortunately, it seemed that their enemy had tinkered with their interdiction, as it now seemed to impact them as well. No matter, he figured, this merely called for a change of tactics. The carriers activated their launch mass drivers and shot out craft after craft off to the side of the central engagement, ensuring that they would skirt around that hellscape. The craft in question were of gunship configuration, and proceeded to alter their course soon after gaining distance, aiming to curve around the battle and push for the Isoterran force. They did not get anywhere remotely close however, having been geared for a different style of combat. The craft would proceed to release some of their anti ship missiles, letting them cruise towards the largest isoterran vessel, their dreadnought. The missiles were designed to get as close as possible, detonating only at a preset position or if contact with enemy PD and strike craft was imminent. Once that happened, the nuclear explosion would excite a brightstone mechanism and produce a tachyon arrow that flew along its previous course. This was all courtesy of the Furrelian Union, whom shared data on such weaponry at the collective's request in exchange for something of their own. Kriqno was beyond grateful for that ordeal, as it would certainly make his life just a little easier
At last, Kriqno's gaze shifted towards the Zetyan prototype warship.
The behemoth was exceptional, no doubt, well beyond what he thought possible for these vermin. He watched closely as arcane energies pulsed below the hull in response to his meson fire. He was no magician, but knew that mana had a habit of being unpredictable, more so than the psion field at least. He briefly pondered just how much control the Six Eyes had over these forces, before a crooked idea began to take shape inside his neural cortex.
First, he commanded his battlestation to release a volley of mass driver shells at it. These were much slower than usual and guided, allowing them to skirt around the ships trying to get in the way. Once close enough, each would shed its casing and release thousands of tiny but elaborate devices. As these small packets impacted the behemoth, they released pulses of tachyons; RADAR and various other particles to map out its insides.
Kriqno took in this data and studied it thoroughly. Next, his battlestation charged its energy projectors, setting them to gamma ray frequency. The carriers received a similar order, calibrating their own major projectors located at the tips of their fins. They then began to fire upon the stunned ship, sending streams of photons designed to penetrate past blocks of dumb matter. They were like skilled surgeons performing a lobotomy, carefully directing their scalpels. They aimed to irradiate anything that seemed to resemble a processing center, bridge, crew quarters or storage bays. Nevertheless, they tried their best to avoid anything that seemed remotely tied to the power grid, all in accordance to their leader's plan
"Cease fire on the large vessel, I need you to take care of those ships trying to shield it" he said sternly, addressing any sadashi willing and capable of hearing out his psi ping.
His own bioships moved in to do exactly as he said. Frigates, destroyers and light cruisers turned to the Zetyan forces trying to shield their novel weapon from harm. The latter opened fire with spinally mounted muon cannons, while the other two stuck with standard nucleonic shells and their NEFP cassaba combo, no use in fixing what clearly wasn't broken.
The digital brains of the SF-87 swarm were unaffected by the psionic meddling from the Lithorians, simply seeing the Lithorian small craft starting to angle away and giving chase. Rather than closing to dogfight however, they kept their distance and fired missiles at their exposed flanks and rear, while intentionally spreading out in an attempt to force the enemy to dilute their flak. However just to be on the safe side, their force guns were reassigned from shooting at the enemy to sniping incoming ball bearings, easing the burden on their shields.
Dido watched what looked like a flanking maneuver of gunships from the Lithorians on his display. His dreadnought squadron was located in the center of the fleet, meaning there were quite a few vessels in the way of the incoming gunship force. The Lithorians were really starting to annoy him, first interfering in their operation, and now bothering him directly.
"Advance to opposite the flanking forces near the Lithorians, and retarget axials against the Lithorian fleet. Frigates, launch fighters and deal with those incoming gunships" Dido ordered, marking the intended destination on the tactical map before him. The Isoterran fleet, which had already been accelerating, continued forward past their allies' main fleet towards those of the Sadashi, continuing to bombard them with their disintegrators, plasma weapons, and force guns. From each of the 19 frigates under his command, one-hundred fighters were launched from their cylindrical midsections like missiles, creating a force almost as large as the original to deal with the Lithorian's first small craft push. This new swarm accelerated towards the incoming gunships, augmented by the nearby frigates' force guns and point defense systems. Similar to what the first swarm had done, they engaged their own electronic warfare packages, initiating jamming on the enemy to ruin their targeting, while networking with the fleet to expand their own awareness.
The extra attention focused on them, paired with the fire from the Sadashi forces, had begun to take its toll however. To help cut down on this extra attention, the battlecruisers within the fleet released another volley from their semi-spinals, sending another thirty-six aircraft-carrier-sized relativistic shells towards the enemy, this time aimed at the Lithorian dreadnought.
The support cruisers soon found themselves being given the same treatment as their precious prototype, as four neon-green lights suddenly dashing through them with vicarious efficiency. One lost control of their engines for the moment as a bolt dashed through their midsection, another suffered damages to their midsection causing the shieldscreens to shut off, and the unfortunate hit by both pionic balls was sent into a mission-kill state, having been hit in both the command sections and the reactor bay. Despite this, it was less damage than predicted; three particle screens at once coupled with no errant plasma to disrupt it meant the particle bolts were worn down a tad better.
The carriers, meanwhile, also bore a significant brunt, as the various weapons fired upon them took their toll. The muon guns took some of their interior runways out for the count, and in three of the five damaged internal bits vital to power supply, causing them to falter somewhat. The spheromak shells also made decent headway, causing 3 to temporarily lose power in their bloated maws of hangars and stemming the flow of any more craft. The remaining two, while still disgorging craft, still were hit in their midsections, causing openings in their superstructure to be plainly visible and disrupting some more of their interior runways.
The Zetyan craft were a mixed bag; a good deal of the manned craft did indeed fall for the trap, diverting from their courses en route to the bioships to chase after their smaller foes, but many others seemed to be dumb automated craft following simple orders. Yet more of the manned craft, curiously, unintentionally diverted their artificial malice to the ships instead of the fighters; in their heads, they likely thought something along the lines of 'glorious target, glorious kill, murder die kill death kill' or something along those lines.
It didn't help either side any when it came to those laser pulses, both mindlessly charging into laser waves that struck at random with only some managing to dodge in their bloodlust, driving the strike force's numbers down to about slightly above half, give or take a few errant fools diving into munitions. The other group, caught in shrapnel, also saw a grand reduction to about 25% below half of their previous size, even for those craft that had PD installed, yet remaining unabated in their artificial rage as they chased after their quarry in blind malice, firing whatever weapons they had from missiles to guns to... more guns.
As for the meatshields, they seemed keen to demonstrate what they had learned from their foes as well.
While the spinals saw no issue, striking down a support frigate and damaging some of the larger ships present, the other munitions fired by their foes saw less purchase. As the NEFP/Casaba missiles roared towards their targets, the support frigates and escorts launched PD missiles, much faster than previous encounters. While some were unable to make it to their targets before they were primed-an assault cruiser and two frigates cursed their names as they were holepunched-many others managed to disrupt their rocketing foes, dashing outside of their previously recorded PD range and intercepting them before they could detonate.
They hadn't gone out very far, though, and now that they had their new data their foes could adapt accordingly. But, hey, if nothing else, it worked.
Without the missiles present to cause havoc, the nucleonic barrage also saw more focus from their conventional PD, though still more slipped through and took bites of the various ships sent to defend their Prototype. The large-mass RKKV penetrators were unabated, however, and were soon darting into the hulk's insides one by one and creating rather sizable holes in their precious dreadnought.
Ah, yes, their precious Prototype.
By initial outside views, it had recovered somewhat from the Lithorian uppercut, as it began maneuvering slowly to reorient that spinal it had. The interior, however, was an irradiated, melting mess, and the only things keeping it coordinated now were the crew's hatred and various AI helpers. The pion ball thankfully hadn't taken out their mana catalyst, but with the dead as it's witness it certainly had taken out many other important things, chief among them being the selective shield. And it allowed the Lithorian sensorprobes to roar towards it, largely unabated. Only their faux 'plasma shield' made effort to stop it as it leapt through the crystalline conduits, and even then in a weakened state; more like a lightning bolt taking small chunks out of a large ball than what it was before.
Then, after a moment, the monolith stopped returning fire. From an initial perspective, it seemed to be shutting off. The colors were starting to drain from the lines on it's hull, and even the lightning had begun to degrade to little more than sparks, various conduits letting off little zaps and incinerating the various probes around them like a bird picking off pests.
Emissions on the interior also seemed to be increasing, first gradually then exponentially. For a moment, it seemed as if the Lithorians had nicked a reactor, dooming the ship to a fate of being bled out like a slaughterhouse cow. Not like it wouldn't have been deserved.
But then, the spinal began to light up. At first, nothing more than a tiny light, but soon blossoming into a kaleidoscope of colors that increased in brightness still. And the emission buildup went haywire.
Even as knives of radiation began to cut into it's organs, and great spears of metal ran it through one at a time to gouge out it's insides, the beast seemed adamant to it's fate, as more and more power went into their accursed device. It's crew-what remained of it-seemed ready to fight against fate, or barring that the radiation, through brain damage, made them suicidally overconfident.
And the AWACS sloop had found them wanting.
Soon, the majority of Zetyan ships present were moving into positions to fight the Lithorians, either to serve as protection for the charging cruiser or just to fight them. It did take some convincing for them to forgoe the lamb for the wolf, but seeing as the Isoterrans had them on the down-low for the moment it was reason enough to get them going.
Spinals, missiles, shells, anything those ships could fire was soon racing towards the Lithorian fleet, as RKKVs and standard missiles danced with course-correcting shells and zipped between gaudy slugs. The battleship even let loose an LRM normally meant for siege scenarios, slow, covered in PD hardpoints and generally an oversized mockery of all normal missiles represented.
The Sadashi, meanwhile, saw some reprieve from the sandwich as their foes focused on their saviours. But their long-range support was mostly gone, various ships either mission-killed or outright destroyed and left as corpses floating in the void, and the main fleet was already beginning to cross that border themselves.
But the reprieve from combat meant they could focus on their foes more.
Soon, those few ships left began to focus on the Zetyan fleet, psionic pulses and missiles racing towards any targets that struck their fancy and perhaps catching some ships off guard in the heat of battle. Perhaps it would be futile, and end in their demise. But blessed is he who sacrifices for their fellow man, right?
Being vastly outnumbered and devoid of any reinforcements from their own fleet,the lithorian strike group and its ECM craft were handled,fighting down to their last craft,all that remained now was the debris field of their previous scatter shots.
The gunships noticed the lack of impact from their volley, aswell as the isoterran response. They released the last of their anti ship missiles. The first two were standard ones, packed with a few dozen independently targetable warheads,half of which were decoys. They shed off their outer layers, firing their entrails towards the mass of craft. Normally, their warheads were shaped charges, but some quick tinkering by maintenance symbiotes allowed them to have a more conventional effect, bursting into bright fireballs. The others used this to fly past the fighters and towards the fleet. Two more of the missiles were naught but a rocket propelled ECM suite, purposefully lagging behind to disrupt any of the fighters that may come after them. The rest were the already used tachyon arrow producers. They once again got as close as possible, detonating if interception was imminent and targeting their ejecta at the frigates this time.
The gunships then turned around and began burning to return to their fleet, letting out flares, jamming buoys and even vantablack coated nuclear warheads, which would wait silently until signaled to blow by incase any enemies gave chase
Kriqno looked at the volley of relativistic shells heading towards his very craft and was displeased to say the least, tapping Ginko on the mantle to deal with that while he focused on other matters.
Firstly, canister launchers deployed their ordinance in the path of these things, meeting then with fields of tiny ball bearings.
As expected, their own velocity played against them, shredding the impactors to a debris field that was albeit still heading towards. From there nuclear warheads reduced that to streams of plasma. Last but not least,the child of Ka'thog drew upon its psionic might, conjuring a magnetic field powerful enough to pivot these relativistic streams of plasma away from their battlestation and towards the close by zetyan fleet,their carriers specifically.
Speaking of the zetyans, their fire was felt,while the lithorians tried their best,sending out more of their laser missiles and shrapnel screens to reduce incoming punishment. Unfortunately three frigates were still gutted, with several others and some light cruisers being pock marked with impact sites.
The large LRM was arguably less adequate than the standard ordinance, as it was targeted quickly by a carrier's emitters on graser setting, ignoring the bulky frame and frying the complex systems beneath. From there it was simply a matter of moving out of its way.
Still, it was time to give them some pain aswell. Two of the lithorian battleships eyed their zetyan counterpart, releasing a volley of ECM missiles to dampen the enemy battleships reaction and some nightstone NEFPs. The missiles would detonate and propel a cone of crystalline shards composed of the exotic and extremely resilient material. As such, unlike regular canister shots or the secondary debris of their RKKVs, these ones could actually penetrate.
The other two were fixated on the pair of support cruisers, firing a salvo of ECM missiles alongside guided mass driver shells with nuclear shaped charges. They would normally be reluctant to use their most advanced railgun ammo, but these were priority targets.
The light cruisers,heavy cruisers and destroyers instead brought their undivided attention upon the assault cruisers of the Six Eyes, meeting them with nucleonic shells, recalibrated NEFPS and cassabas, balls of spheromak plasma and beams of penetrating muon particles, all concentrated on the five ships.
The tide of zetyan fighters was met by equal tides of lithorian interceptors, supported by heavy fighters. These larger organisms were packed with several energy emitters, alongside a pair of dual mass drivers firing canister shot shells and tubes of kinetic missiles, all in all a deadly combination.
The carriers that sent them instead focused on the destroyers of the zetyan force, targeting their weapon emplacements and irradiating their interiors in swooping arcs.
Kriqno looked in slight anxiety as the prototype turned towards them, somehow still operational and charging up for a deadly shot.
He raised his palm, earning the attention of his second in command.
"Aim our main meson accelerator at that thing, bring the eight secondaries online and do the same with those" He said sternly, earning a quick nod from the molluscoid who scrambled to do as ordered
He watched over a holographic display of the craft, various sensors carefully scrutinizing its emissions and adding the data from their impact probes to search for something
"Steady.......steady" he said,his face lighting up with the simulated glow of the prototypes very weapon as it faced them. Ginko was suffice to say not taking the sight well, shivering as fluids built up around her bulbous eyes, yet she said nothing, trusting in his judgement
A sudden ping heralded the triangulation of the enemy's mana siphon, followed by a series of beeping as targeting boxes closed in on that spot
"NOW! OPEN FIRE! OPEN FIRE!" he roared, slamming a clenched fist upon the living desk in front of him. In a motion, Ginko brought her tendrils to initiate the command, their bioship did the rest.
In a bright flash,9 streams of glowing green sped from various barrels upon the spaceborne creature and slammed into the maw of its enemy, headed straight for its heart. Kriqno had absolutely no idea what would happen once contact was achieved, but he had his hypothesis. In the best case scenario, the blasted thing would be done for. In the worst....well, at least the zetyans were the closest to ground zero, indeed being arranged all around it, that had to be something
As the last of the Lithorian fighters was extinguished, the strikefighters of the original force were reassigned to assist the second anti-gunship force, launching any missiles they had left at the fleeing craft. Due to the angle, many of these missiles would end up missing the majority of decoys and warheads dropped behind the gunships, giving them something else to worry about as they fled back to their fleet.
The chaos of detonations that the Lithorian gunships had employed were a double-edged sword, providing a blinding flash to anything nearby but illuminating everything to SF87 craft further away like a flash of a camera. This, combined with the difference in emissions, made the gunships stand out from the ECM missiles quite well, which meant a lot of plasma bolts and missiles coming their way as they launched against the Isoterran fleet. However they were not pursued, as the swarm of fighters was more concerned about screening, instead beginning to clear the nuclear warheads that had been left behind, their radar and particle sensors easily seeing past the simple vantablack coatings. The gauntlet that the gunships had just run had not been in vain though, as multiple tachyon arrow missiles had managed to get through, doing some damage to the frigates. It wasn't a substitute for actual naval gun fire, but it would definitely do.
The Isoterran warships themselves continued pushing through the Sadashi fleet in front of them, focusing fire on their heaviest ships to slowly whittle them down, as they worked towards the real threat. On his tactical feed, Admiral Dido watched approvingly as the notifications populated that the fleet's axials had finished charging. First came another round of thirty-six corvette-sized slugs, this time at the Child of Ka'thog. A few moments after, the dreadnought and battleships fired their spinal antilife beams, sending angry rays of black and red towards the same target as the mass driver slugs.
And as their allies continued their barrage on the Lithorians, so too did the rats, sending yet more volleys of shells and missiles their way as their efforts saw more and more results. Their foe's apt thinking caught them by surprise once again, however, as a stream of plasma came raining unto them from their allies, damaging a decent number of ships even with the support from their support ship's shieldscreens.
The standard battleship was the first target of the Lithorian's counterattack, and it felt a pain all-too-familiar to the Zetyan voidnavy as spears of crystal ran it through, impacting into various points and bringing the behemoth down a few pegs, fire belching from it's wounds as it's internal systems began to cave. While it hadn't been truly humbled, another hit like that would certainly bring a reality check on whoever directed the great steel beast.
The support cruisers, addled not only by themselves but by the sudden burst of directed ECM, were ample targets for the guided shells, even as their shieldscreens tried their best. One was impacted directly in the midsection, cleaving it in twine and ensuring it wouldn't have been a problem again. The other merely got away with it's fore becoming yet more damaged, and it's aft receiving a waitress's ass-slap as it's engines sputtered with pain.
The assault cruisers, while tankier than their brethren, would have been unable to fully withstand the barrage sent upon them by the bugs. They did receive help, however; the escorts sent out some of their fancier PD missiles out again, who in turn sought to break their previous PD range records and eliminate some of the missiles. However, less were sent out this time, enabling the remainder unaffected to roar towards their targets and impact unabated, damaging them further with their familiar style of holepunching. Perhaps it was another test, like their Prototype, or perhaps they simply just ran out.
Knowing them, likely the latter.
The remaining volleys were somewhat stifled by another frustration; a few of the support frigates/corvettes were also fitted with shieldscreens like their larger cruiser cousins, albeit far weaker and smaller in scale. These annoyances did their level best to in turn mitigate the incoming volley, making a deadly volley of Lithorian fire into a deadly volley of Lithorian fire that had a tad less projectiles than before. Despite the minute disruption, the volleys scored home and hearth, as two were sent to Lu Xaobu's locker on a tide of polarized ions and three were given a hard gut-punch by plasmatic munitions.
The various destroyers were arguably the luckiest, though the word's usage would be a debatable prospect in the grand scheme of things; they soon found their functioning weapons failing and destroying themselves one by one seemingly without rhyme or reason, as their interiors were reduced to the consistency of wet tissue paper and their exteriors dissolved from invisible heat. Several lost their spinals, and several more were now missing a concerning amount of turrets, as invisible scalpels cut them to atomic ribbons from afar.
Then, there was the Prototype.
It's death knells sounded off as it belched sparks and retched fire from the various holes put within it, the only thing keeping it together might as well have been hopes and toothpicks. But in it's final moments, it had seen fit to leave one last mark on the enemy, as the great maw on it's front fired with a rapture unkempt, a bright star racing out on a direct collision course with the battlestation's lower half, so fast it could hardly be seen even with sensors. It was originally aimed squarely at the great bulbous slug that was the Child, but it's targeting algorithms weren't exactly functional or cooperative.
It's last gasp done, it was finally content to die, as the Lithorian barrage struck it's heart and sent those few left onboard to the locker. A great supernova came forth from it's interior, dissolving it instantly and sending a hail of debris towards the other ships, and was soon beholden to a lightshow none else would witness as the micronebula began imploding upon itself, again and again and again until it was nothing more than the galaxy's fastest pulsar, a constant strobe flashing all over the system and likely putting out some very impolite messages in binary for those who mayhaps were versed in it.
The remainder of the Zetyan fleet now began focusing full-force on the Lithorian ships, diverting any scant attention they had given the jellyfish and engaging the bugs as best they could. More shells and more missiles were sent into the fray as their remaining craft, by this point only fighters and interceptors, engaged in a furball with the Lithorian biofighters, zipping and zooming in a high-speed bloodbath where only the fastest could survive.
The Sadashi ships present originally planned, albeit tentatively, to hold the line, the few ships left being whittled down to buy time for reinforcements to come, or for their allies to triumph over their foe. But their plans were for naught, as the Helic sent them a transmission that a few onboard those aching hulks had certainly been waiting for-fall back to the Lithorians.
They soon began to switch gears, as their warships began to limp back to their brothers in arms, the largest ships still alive acting as impromptu shields even as their numbers decreased yet more.
The gunships continued on in their escape. The energy projector nodes lighting up and destroying missiles while canister launchers created debris fields to shred those that made it through the fire. Still, bolts of plasma pierced and seared several, causing them to go lump into the void.
The ones that survived however, were taken aback by what seemed to be a truly gigantic detonation in the middle of the zetyan fleet. They changed course,using the magnitude of the event as cover while they flanked the rats,letting loose volleys of ECM missiles and more importantly Nightstone NEFPs into the backside of the zetyan battleship. Their railguns instead opted to focus on the support cruisers, firing guided shells that would detonate a series of nuclear shaped charges on impact
The Child of Ka'thog tried its best to weather the incoming volley, creating a hardlight barrier to break apart the slugs while other vessels lended fire from their energy projectors to vaporize the resulting debris. Even with this and the creature's own attempts at evasion,it was not enough, being peppered and gutted by the hail of shrapnel. The thing was already barely in one piece, holding onto by a thread until the beams of anti life sent it straight to The Almighty
The lithorian's battlestation too was hit hard,the prototypes last blow before annihilation managed to cleave off two of its side sections right off, depriving it of about four meson accelerators and a slew of other weaponry. Still, the beast endured, as Kriqno and Ginko staggered to their feet inside after being thrown off by the impact.
Already, its primary meson accelerator turned anew to the next most dangerous target it could find,the battleship. It fired straight down its front, placing it between its beam of exotic particles and the nightsone NEFPs of the gunships.
The other four pion weapons instead found quary in the newly arrived isoterran force, focusing upon one of their battleships.
The ten or so light cruisers set their sights on the assault and support counterparts of the zetyans, firing their muon spinals alongside a combination of ECM missiles and cassabas to hopefully finish the job for good.
The heavy cruisers remained fixated on the carriers, once more firing their spheromak cannons to keep them suppressed, adding their own muon spinals in the mix to stack up the pain. Every fighter they failed to release or became too irradiated to work within its bowels was one they did not have to face.
The frigates and destroyers focused primarily on the zetyan assault destroyers, switching some of their energy emitters to microwave frequency in order to suppress their scanners and systems while others were set to gamma ray and carved up paths of radioactive fury across their insides. A healthy number of mass driver and nucleonic shells were also present in the mix.
The lithorian battleships were beginning to loose any worthwhile targets within the ranks of the Six Eyes, yet nevertheless gave them one final regard. Torpedoes erupted from their tusks and flew towards the support and assault frigates, recognizing that their field had to be brought down
Each one was quite large by lithorian standards, boasting ample amounts of ECM, countermeasures and even energy projector nodes for point defense. Once close enough, they would shed their tops to reveal about three hundred guided warheads which would shoot out to their target, detonating their cassabas and pelting the unfortunate victims with a rain of supercritical jets
They then turned their attention to the isoterrans. Revealing their hidden underside launchers again, they let loose a volley of about eight RKKVs. The missiles detonated their shrapnel packs shortly after launch, creating a cone of debris that would fly towards zetyan ships while the main body flew past them. From there they would shed again, leaving kinetic penetrators that while smaller than those of the isoterrans had powerful gravitic thrusters for sudden course correction and even self defense. They were primarily aimed at the frigates of the flotilla.
As a last dish, the four bioships fired their meson accelerators, focusing fire on another unfortunate battleship of the isoterran force.
The carriers were pressed, releasing more craft to keep the zetyan blob of fighters at bay. They too did contribute however, switching their projector nodes to infrared frequency and blasting a veritable lightshow of beams into the fight, precise and numerous, as the lithorians often proffered. Their spinal mass drivers, normally used for launching craft, also released volleys of their own RKKVs at the isoterran battleships. These were much more akin to their own, larger than the missiles and little more than unguided slugs. Brutish but effective were they to hit.
Within the Isoterran fleet, a sudden lightshow occurred around two of the four battleships, as the pion beams from the Lithorian fleet were partially distorted, causing a large amount of radiation to suddenly appear around each vessel, damaging their surface batteries. However not all of the mesons were able to be deflect, and within each, machinery was damaged and fires started. Within, both living and non-living crew jumped into damage control, pressuring and depressurizing sections of the ship, and isolating others.
There was an slightly noticeable dip in incoming fire from the Isoterran fleet, as many of the battleships turned some of their MMDW disintegrator turrets against the incoming large RKKVs from the Lithorians, the massive slugs suddenly fragmenting into smaller pieces flying in all directions, which pelted against the fleet's shields and vaporized. Meanwhile, the swarm of SF-87s that had been surrounding the fleet jumped into action to deal with the smaller guided munitions, working in tandem with the frigates to hunt down and destroy each missile before most could cause damage, although some got through, striking holes in and completely gutting one or two of the screening vessels.
In reply, Dido ordered his forces to take advantage of the fact that the Sadashi were now beginning to fall back to the Lithorian group, increasing their jamming intensity by focusing in more on the now concentrated enemy forces, ensuring that they wouldn't be able to target his forces as effectively. Next, power was rerouted from many of the smaller gun batteries on the battleships, as well as other less-important systems, into the spinal weapons. This meant another four antilife beams were fired, two of them at the Lithorian battlestation, and two towards two of the battleships that had fired the meson beams. Accompanying this was a round of thirty-six massive relativistic shells from the battlecruisers, which had somehow escaped attracting any attention, dividing them between the battleships and carriers within the Lithorian fleet.
The Zetyan battleship would 'enjoy' a rather spectacular swan song, as the all-out assault from the gunships and the battlestation ravished it into a state of mission-killed nonfunction, fire billowing from the various holes that now decorated it's surface as the interior was reduced to a crumbling hellscape unlike any other.
The remaining support cruiser was also on the ropes, the combination of the railguns and the light cruiser's volleys making critical hits across the board. Lights flickered across it's surface, and while it had scores of PD hardpoints it had lost half of it's turrets, and was about to lose the other as it coughed fiery blood from the various breaches of it's skin.
The other ships fared somewhat better, if only due to being less damaged than their larger forebears. The escorts, those that remained, and the designated support ships managed to chip in as well, shieldscreen projections and some targeted PD lightening the load caused by the swathes of physical projectiles sent their way.
Nevertheless, the carriers saw the worst of it, muons disabling swathes of their unlaunched craft and turning even more of their insides to steel foiled mush. Two bit the dust, crumpling due to radiation turning their interiors white hot, and the rest were getting close to joining them, the numbers of craft being launched decreasing by the second.
The assault cruisers, still being pressed, saw no reprieve from the Lithorian assault as they began to drift towards critical condition. No improved interceptor missiles raced out to spare them from the missile volleys this time, and the invisible knives of the light cruisers carved them up like food on a cutting board, ensuring two were brought down, engulfed in fire and shrouded in debris, and leaving one with only hope, toothpicks and a sprinkle of rage to keep it going.
The assault destroyers finally began to see their numbers decrease, as one of their own served as a potent demonstration of the Lithorian energy emitters and another was skewered and imploded with a great green glob of pure energy. Their sensors being jammed and the previous assault from the carriers of the bugs also helped, as globs of green and slugs of grey zipped into the formation with impudence.
And the frigates came under fire in an exorbitant way, not only suffering the treatment of the destroyers but also having to deal with the torpedo volleys of the enemy battleships. The hordes of casaba warheads outshined any other ordinance they would receive from the bugs, however, as volley after volley of tiny lines of white-hot metal rained into their formation, causing heavy damages on every ship and sending a few to the locker with impudence.
Their retaliation seemed standard at first, just shooting more missiles and shells like usual. Odd, seeing how they were so obviously on the ropes.
But, then they stopped firing for a moment. Then, two moments. Several more. Were they planning to surrender?
But after a strangely long wait, they sent out a field of specialized munitions en masse from whatever weapons they had left, scores and scores of RKKV and casaba missiles sailing through the void with all of their most expensive ammo, from guided shells to casaba howitzers to oversized and overarmored spinal slugs. The AWACS sloop had ordered them to load and fire the majority, if not their entire capacity of 'special' munitions in one go, the majority targeted at the three biggest targets of the lithorian fleet-the battlestation, the battleships, and the carriers-and the rest fired at any target they saw fit.
They certainly wouldn't be able to do another volley like that again; those who still had any left had them in piddling numbers, and even if they wanted to launch them they'd likely have been carved to pieces by the Lithorians by then. As such, they could only offer their usual after their swan song had been sent out, normal shells and normal-er missiles lagging behind the mass of cooler, pricier ordinance.
-
The Sadashi fleet, meanwhile, had spent their good time limping towards the Lithorians. Command had told them they were out of their element and outnumbered; a fleet keyed towards ambushes and alpha strikes was no good if caught in the open, and the Lithorians had well established themselves as brawlers more fit for this scenario. But there was something else they could do, as they slowly attempted to file in with their comrades.
The remaining frigates, support corvettes, and one of the destroyers, now began to psionically bolster the Lithorian fleet with what power they had, some of the power draining from their own ships as their comrade-ships now found their sensors able to pick out things much clearer, and their internal systems beginning to move and course much faster. It wouldn't be able to last for long-they were essentially cutting off part of their own blood supply, and doing it for too long would result in gradual organ shutdown-but any bit would count, even if it didn't do much in the long run.
The ships not in support mode fired back at the Isoterrans as best they could, sending out some pulses and psion missiles towards the enemy fleet.
The lithorians,which had enjoyed a rather comfortable position thanks to the sadashi being their enemy's punching bag,were now experiencing the same thing themselves.
The battlestation endured, fragmenting the RKKVs and shells sent its way by way of canister shots, vaporizing and redirecting as much of the debris as it could with its plasma and electromagnetic shields while it's sheer girth and hardlight screens endured what remained. Everything changed when the anti life beams hit however, their foul energies caused the creature's cells to shut down, as if the grim reaper himself had just graced the bioship with its touch. It hung motionless, dead, effectively causing Kriqno and Ginko to be sitting inside a derelict.
The battleships and carriers were not so fortunate either. They were subjected to an overwhelming amount of fire,far more than their shields and counter measures could keep up with. As such, all of them took various degrees of damage,with two battleships and carriers going limp from all the punishment, they had been sent to The Almighty.
Then a miracle happened. Their allies, which by this point were hanging by a thread, began to channel psychic energies into the lithorian bioships. Seeing as their kind naturally metabolized such energies due to proximity to one of the psionic poles, this had far greater implications than even the jellyfish realized.
The vessels burst into an array of colours as a rainbow of veins began to glow beneath their armours. Already system performance was going through the roof, with both weapon and shield systems being the main benefactors. The battleships and carriers that had just perished sprung to life,their cells reinvigorated by the influx, albeit they were now immobile and would perish once more as soon as this stopped. The frigates that the zetyans killed earlier suffered the same effect, the battlestation meanwhile was able to revitalize itself aswell,with cellular activity picking up again followed shortly by reactor emissions picking up. Still, everything else left its mark, including the entire pieces it was missing from earlier, not much could be done about that
Kriqno was emboldened by this development, indeed feeling a surge of power coursing through his very veins while his neural cortex began operating better than ever. He knew that this would not last,but he could seriously turn the tide before that
The battlestation turned its main meson accelerator, now more powerful than ever, towards the isoterran dreadnought and let loose a series of three shots, something it would normally be incapable of. Its smaller accelerators instead turned to the Six Eyes that had battered in so, returning the favor as they released a barrage of meson bolts at the last support cruiser, it's assault brethren and the carriers, aiming to finally bring about their demise.
Nevertheless,the zetyans were a side objective by now,with Kriqno's undivided attention being placed upon the isoterrans. Their anti life beams were a danger he could not ignore,having little counter. Therefore,he figured getting them out of the way while they were in this state was the number one priority.
The multitude of frigates and destroyers set their energy projectors to microwave frequency;turning them on the dreadnought and its entourage of battleships to act as jamming and suppression tools. Besides that they traded volleys of mass driver shots with their counterparts in the isoterran force.
The cruisers, both light and heavy, set their projectors to gamma ray frequency, waving rays of deadly energy and radiation much like they did against the zetyan forces. Only now, these strikes were directed against the isoterran battleships and joined by their spinal muon mounts aswell, all empowered thanks to the boost. The heavy cruisers played the most important part, firing their pairs of spheromak cannons at the battleships and dreadnought. The plasma damage they might do, even under the empowerment, was merely a side dish to the disturbance that Kriqno hoped they would cause to their systems. Afterall, they seemed to have worked well enough on the zetyan carriers.
The Child of Ka'thog returned aswell,although was by far the most damaged of the resurrected assets. Indeed,chances are a good volley would put it to rest once more,but that was not yet to be. It released arcs of psionic might at the zetyan frigates,being the nearest to it. The ripples of power would jump from ship to ship,doing damage in rounds for as long as their creator lived
Lastly were the battleships and carriers,both living and those somewhere in between. They too brought their strength against the isoterran battleships,the former firing a series of shots from their spinal meson weapons. The latter meanwhile let loose a another volley of RKKV slugs,half of which were meant to fragment and clear the swarms of fighters surrounding the fleet while the others would stay in one piece and fly towards the isoterran battle cruisers.
These ships also began to mount a more indirect attack aswell. The carriers released more groups of gunships which did the same thing as the last ones,circling the main battle and going to the sides,occasionally releasing some of the tachyon arrow missiles at isoterran frigates while looking for vectors of attack against juicier targets.
The battleships instead released a volley of stealth torpedoes. Being layered in halostone and fitted with gravitic engines for maximum stealth, at least at long range, they would depart both above and below the main plane of battle. So far, they did little else, the sentient minds inhabiting them waiting patiently for the best time to properly spring into action.
The increase in psionic activity was picked up by the Isoterran magical sensing, causing Dido to wonder what the Sadashi were intending to do, before multiple notifications of Lithorian ships that had just been mission-killed beginning to resume activity started to show. Bearing his teeth and letting loose a low growl from his throat, he began barking orders to his subordinates.
Throughout the fight, the Isoterran battlegroup had continued to travel towards the Lithorian fleet. Now they elected to use that to their advantage, as the three maneuver squadrons split off from the others, firing their engines at a full burn that caused their thruster caps to glow purple, on a vector that would take them past the Lithorian fleet and towards the Sadashi helic station. As they passed by, the six battlecruisers rotated, pointing their bows at the resurrected battlestation, releasing another thirty-six relativistic slugs at it. Accompanying these was a large amount of MMDW disintegrator beam fire and plasma bolts. Meanwhile, the Sadashi amoung the Lithorian fleet were targeted by antiship missiles and tracking force gun bolts. Following the maneuver squadrons were the nine-hundred strikefighters launched by the attendant frigates, which targeted the incoming RKKVs along with the warships' point defense systems. However even as both the warships and fighters were damaged by the incoming impactors, the battlecruisers, which up until that point hadn't launched any small craft, began launching. Six thousand fresh SF-87s soared into space, half of which moved to engage gunships that dared to bother their warships, while the other half zipped ahead on their way to the Sadashi station.
The battlestation's pion guns hit the Isoterran dreadnought's gravitic shield layer, causing a lightshow of gamma rays to erupt around it, wasting much of the weapon's power. However, within the massive behemoth's internals, a variety of radiation was still delivered, vaporizing structural components and damaging its systems. The dreadnought, adopting a similar tactic as the battleships had previously, rerouted power from its smaller batteries to compensate for the axial weapon's large power draw and the now damaged capacitors and trunks. From its tip lanced an antilife beam in reply, aimed at the battlestation's geometric heart. In reply to the microwave jamming from the Lithorians, it joined the battleships in firing a massive salvo of antiship missiles, which were set to HARM mode, homing in on the sources of the microwave jamming. Meanwhile, they networked with the over three thousand fighters that still circled the main group of warships, using their hyperspectral sensors to bypass as much jamming as possible.
The frigates within both groups were taking a rather large beating from the attention they were getting, trading fire between themselves and the frigates and destroyers targeting them. Sending plasma fire, force gun bolts, and antiship missiles at their attackers, much of their screening capability apart from their point defense was taken up by simply shooting back at the enemy. Within the main group, much of this drop in screening power was taken over by the strikefighters, which had now mostly exhausted their missile supplies and were now relying on their guns to shoot down enemy gunships and target any solid munitions they could. This meant that all the Isoterran warships, especially the frigates, were beginning to show their wear even from a distance.
The launch of the stealth missiles was picked up by the Isoterran ships as small blips on their gravitic sensors, but much of their attention was tied up dealing with the enemy already, so there was not much that was able to be done apart from having any nearby SF-87s check out the area.
The sudden reactivation of the Lithorian forces sent panic through the Zetyans, their command scrambling to find some solution to this sudden problem as their foes suddenly came from the dead, shining with a rainbow far brighter than theirs had ever been.
The first to receive punishment for their vices were the support and assault cruisers, brought down to their graves kicking and screaming as a hail of green bolts tore them apart with vigor, their internal lights turning from electrical yellow to a sickly neon green. The carriers, too, suffered much the same, their internal structures caving like tissue paper with each impact and soon turning to little but a shell of corpses and radioactive debris each. The only consolation for their captains would likely be that they died before their bridges decompressed.
The frigates suffered less, but the punches they received had no less restraint than those layed upon their peers. A psychic merry go round soon enveloped the four frigates left, an invisible yet palpable force jumping between ships and leaving sizeable dents in their wake, their interiors slowly beginning to crunch like a peanut with each impact and their hulls slowly beginning to bend ever so slightly.
The rest of the ships seemed to have been granted reprieve, if only for their muted efforts compared to their peers. It gave them a chance to breathe, just for a minute or so.
And it gave their command plenty of time to panic.
Nobody in the AWACS sloop had seen the sudden surge of power from the Lithorians coming, and it had graduated them from 'major problem' to 'extreme danger' in just a few minutes. Their 'swan song' of sorts didn't help matters, given that only a few ships had any amount of specialized ammunition left, and even then only in piddling numbers. Their options were few, and most were, in essence, either stupid, suicide or both.
The only option that was seriously considered, though, would also be their last resort-having the ships overcharge the onboard Fracture Drones and launch them at the Lithorians, turning them into homemade gravity missiles.
It was a classic desperation maneuver, and given the nature of the drive they had mounted it'd still be somewhat effective even under interdiction, just slower and way faster at overheating. Even the corvette-scaled drones could leave some dents, given they actually hit.
But, in their current state with the ships they had left, they'd likely have to use every drone they had to make a sizeable impact. And that would leave them stranded, during wartime, in the core systems of enemy territory, while damaged, with no guarantee their allies could help them warp out, and in the middle of a galactic Ancerium shortage.
In purely abstract tactical terms, ignoring all context, it made sense in all the right ways. But logically, with context, it made sense in all the wrong ways.
But their allies would need support as well, given their newfound focus by the bugs. They were much more advanced, sure, but as bolts of mesons and particulate danced into their ranks they proved themselves no less invulnerable.
After a few minutes of argumentation, they finally came to a head, and orders rang out to the remaining forces. A rather hasty explanation of what was about to happen was also sent to Admiral Dido's ship, much to his likely chagrin.
First, they began to fall back to the Isoterran formation, as the Sadashi had to the Lithorians. Their support corvettes/frigates and escorts did their level best to begin intercepting what projectiles they could and providing electronic support, as the remaining ships provided covering fire for their allies. At the same time, each ship began to charge their fracture drones and setting their destination for whatever ships were best applicable in the combined Lithorian-Sadashi formation, gravitic signatures suddenly spiking in every ship present and increasing exponentially.
Three of the assault destroyers launched what little remained of their RKKV/Casaba warheads, a physical embodiment of a last gasp for what funding they could ever receive in the future. The last of their missiles and spinal shells rang out from both them and their comrades as well, as the turrets of the Zetyan fleet took their place with ensuing hails of slugs. It would take an agonizing few for their drones to reach the launching stage, not to mention any losses they could accrue in the very-near future. But anything to defeat a foe, right?
-
The sudden surprise of the Lithorian revival did indeed come as a shock to the Sadashi; they had merely expected improved performance on the living ships, not outright necromancy of the dead. But in turn, it emboldened them just as it did their allies, encouraging them to keep going even as their ships now began to feel the strain of projection, silently moaning and shifting as their internals began to stress and tense.
In fact, two of the ships giving their support already began to pump up their bolstering of the Lithorian fleet, even at risk of their own ships burning out sooner than their comrades. Their comrades, while unable to come close to making the lightshow their comrades could, decided to try a new trick; they began 'merging' the pulses and psionic cluster-missiles they sent towards the Isoterrans as they fired, turning them from a collection of smaller munitions into one large shot. Perhaps it wouldn't make much difference-so far, the Lithorians had been carrying most of the weight regarding the offense-but anything to help their friends, or for some come up with a more interesting story than 'i gave a bunch of bugs enough steroids to flatten a palm rashidya meatblob'.
The chaotic struggle continued, now turned even more dizzying as the Isoterran force started breaching and puncturing through the lithorian formation. The RKKVs hit their mark well enough,with only a few being dealt with by the previous multi layered defense systems ripping off the other two sections from the creature's mainframe and leaving gaping craters in other areas,thus denying it all but one of its precious meson accelerators.
The anti life beams then hit,bringing darkness to the bioship's illuminated hide as it was forced back to the reaper's realm. Thankfully, both Kriqno and Ginko were not in there,having boarded a subcraft and huddling amidst the battleships and carriers.
The fighters that blitzed past the lithorian formation soon found themselves assaulted as previous bumps on the rear tendrils of lithorian bioships revealed energy projector nodes and indeed detached entirely, proving to be living things in their own right that engaged the craft.
The gunships meanwhile were not willing to retreat or go down without a fight, launching fragmenting shells from their mass drivers and engaging their energy projectors to thin out the swarms before releasing their payloads of nightstone NEFPS, each targeted at the battleships and meant to propel countless shards of the exotic material once their nukes detonated.
The missile wave found itself some kills, ridding the battlefield of five or so frigates but otherwise being met with copious amounts of counter measures.
The aliens were hard pressed to think of their next strategy. The zetyans seemed to be plotting something if gravimetric readings were to be believed, the isoterrans had divided up their fleet to assail them and the Sadashi were on their last legs.
Kriqno knew that the battle would end soon,one way or the other,but he hoped his next moves might just tip the balance in their favor.
First,the destroyers and light cruisers quickly spun around by way of their gravitic tendrils and collapsed upon the now isolated Isoterran battlecruisers,letting loose flurries of their muon and nucleonic spinals alongside cassaba howitzer and standard NEFP missiles.
Then the heavy cruisers rerouted power purely to their pairs of spheromak cannons, this combined with the increased psychic boost allowed them to release a truly voluminous wave of plasma munitions as their rate of fire increased tenfold, much to the dismay of their occupant lithorians who began boiling alive.
Once again, Kriqno cared little for the damage the plasma itself would do, but the spheromak's magnetic disturbance to their enemies systems. The projectiles were thus aimed at the dreadnought and its cadre of battleships, as every hindrance they faced in releasing their magi weapons was key, while plenty were also rerouted to the zetyan forces to hopefully stop their would be scheme in its tracks
The carriers came up next,releasing another volley of relativistic slugs,these ones being fragmentary in nature to gut the ever growing swarm of issoterran strike craft which was building up. The surviving frigates would play a big part too,intensifying their jamming in accordance to the increased Sadashi support and preparing for the next step.
The battleships were quiet,too quiet. Even as bolts of plasma continued flying in droves from their peers,the vessels sat silently. Then,all of a sudden, their sides erupted with the glow of small suns as every single missile they possesed,no matter the configuration or usual purpose,was launched in a last ditch alpha strike at those core isoterran vessels, moving towards their quarry like a tidal wave and blinding the lithorian's own sensors with their plumes. Simply put, they would have no way to know how this attack would do until well after it was done.
Off on the sidelines,the intellects of the stealth torpedoes recognized the approaching fighters and quickly activated hardlight vectors on their halostone sheathed frames, masking themselves as asteroids while letting out little in the way of suspicious emissions. Of course, this too changed when the massive salvo was launched. Recognizing this as what may well be their best shot, the supposed "asteroids" suddenly released plumes of plasma and accelerated to relativistic speeds before the holographic facade was dropped. Their antimatter rockets served them well in accelerating towards their target, the dreadnought, while the gravitic tendrils used previously would bode well for maneuvering and any fuel they hadn't burned would no doubt make for a nasty surprise upon impact.
The maneuver squadrons raced onwards towards the Sadashi station as energy projector fire from the Lithorians reached through their formations like spotlights, trying to destroy the attacking strikefighters before they could engage the station. Unfortunately for both the Sadashi and Lithorians however, the SF-87s had sheer numbers on their side, as they began performing evasive maneuvers to make targeting more difficult, while continuing to close with the station. The six battlecruisers released a volley of thirty-six massive slugs, each racing on a relativistic path towards weak points in the helic station's structure, taking advantage of its spindly nature to try to break it apart in orbit. That done, they rotated and joined their attendant frigates in firing upon the pursuing destroyers and cruisers that were peppering their flanks, using their superior firepower as heavier combatants to their advantage. They were joined in this effort by the 3900 screening strikefighters, who worked to intercept missiles and engage the travelling energy projector batteries that had detached from the Lithorian warships.
The main Isoterran fleet continued returning fire as the Lithorians and Sadashi remnants continued their barrage, managing to each fire another salvo of five antilife bursts at the five heaviest Lithorian combatants. Much of the non-spinal fire was now coming almost entirely from the frigates, as most available offensive energy was being routed to the axials. As the gargantuan wave of Lithorian missiles closed in, many of their number were thinned out by the swarm of surviving SF-87s around the core fleet, as well as point defense. But it wasn't enough, and sensors within everyone's fleets were blinded as the combined flashes from the impacts washed out sensor readings in the area for the briefest of moments.
Dido, well protected deep inside of Grey Curator's command center, had just been about to send an irritated reply to the Zetyan commander's half-baked scheme when he felt the whole vessel shake as if struck by a giant hand from the nuclear barrage impacting against the shields, zeroing them, and then the armor, evaporating much of it and the surface guns. Alarms began to blare, indicating the massive damage they had sustained. A moment was take as the five ships reestablished communications, sharing information from their own remaining sensors and those of the other Isoterran assets, to determine the current situation. That changed things, and instead of sending his original irritated reply, he ordered the main fleet to accelerate at maximum power towards the Helic station, while sending a message to the Zetyans telling them to follow as they executed their plans, or die alone.
The main fleet then, now consisting of the heavily damage hulks of the dreadnought and battleships, little more than flying spinals now, and their comparatively undamaged frigates, which had not been targeted apparently, accelerated forward. Return fire to the Lithorians was provided by the frigates, while the large ships charged their spinals, having no other options anymore.
The continued reprieve from Lithorian assault was, of course, not to last. But any time was precious time, and if they weren't before the Zetyans were certainly high buyers now.
Their rushed scheme, able to be implemented only with the 'clemency' of their fellow pests, had managed to near it's completion. And indeed, it seemed to have started on que as the Lithorians sent off their barrages to the Isoterrans; two of the remaining assault frigates had managed to launch off their drones towards the battleships, which soon evolved into bright glowing specks of light as they increased in speed exponentially, ripping at themselves like mad dogs as the active interdiction began to take it's toll on the sorely blueballed FTL system.
But then, the plasmatic barrage came upon their ships, ending the reprieve as they were forced to endure another lashing. One of the assault frigates collapsed from a direct hit from a ball of molten energy, the psychic merry-go-round they endured earlier having taken a toll on it's internals, and two of the assault destroyers followed suit as they were cored like apples by voluminous, multispectral bolts of star energy. And Kriqno was wise to aim upon them, as the hail of bolts began to disrupt the charged-up energy of their slapdash bombs in a way that threatened destruction. A mad dash was undertaken to ensure that they did not explode, ruining their plan in as much time as it took to come up with it in the first place. An escort was lost in the chaos, however, as it disassembled with the help of a large gravimetric pulse; a preview of what could've been as the fore shattered like glass and the rear crumpled like paper.
The Lithorian missile wave also managed to strike collateral, as the one of the three remaining frigates managed to get clipped by a few enthusiastic missiles. The irony of the bugs copying the rat's own desperation move was not lost on their command.
Their retaliation was predictable at first; shoot more, and harder, since their half-baked plot now sat in a gutter. But the Isoterran's movements-and sudden targeting of the Sadashi station-soon made intentions clear, and their command to follow only served to confirm: complete your own objective, or earn a place in Zetyan Valhalla. And so they followed, the dog walking the rat as they began to rush towards the Sadashi station. As the Isoterrans had sent their slugs, so too did the Zetyans send theirs from what various turretry that was left on their ships. They weren't as fast as the Isoterran's, nor graced with being fired from a lauded spinal, but they had limited course correction and a guarantee that their nemeses hadn't made their target a blinker in the last two weeks.
-
The Sadashi ships had finally begun to give out. While every ship could perform the act of reinforcement, only specialized ships could normally do so for prolonged periods without harm, and never lasted long while under damage and duress. The last vestiges of their projected energy were sent into the Lithorian ships, and the biohulks who had given their support now coughed blood as their fellows moved to cover them. They were alive, with a high chance of earning some Purple Hearts/Medals of Honor, and they had put their foes on the edge. That was all their comrades could ask for.
Well, that, and that their station would survive what was barreling their way at 2/10ths the speed of light.
The Helic had, for the most part, gone unnoticed since the Lithorians had arrived. Command had expected their foe's attention to be put solely on the Lithorians as long as they were combat-capable, as by now they had established themselves as the bigger threat than they. It was a grossly awful surprise then, when both the incoming fleet of Isoterran strikefighters and the flurry of spinal shells suddenly showed up on their sensors.
The station had it's own fighters, and point defense systems hidden in it's shell and in a few of the surrounding asteroids. Half of their fighters had been launched by the time the SF-86's drew near, a bunch of pseudosapient drones numbering near 2,500 and counting as they rushed to meet their foes. And a few of the shells had managed to be intercepted by their 'traps', knocked off course just enough by weak psychometric pulses that seemed to come from the asteroids.
But the Helic was a shipyard, not a stronghold. Built to harbor, not to hold. And of the 36 the Isoterrans had delivered their way, 33 hit their mark, 8 shells each resolutely snapping off each helix on the top and bottom one by one like wishbones. The stream of fighters was cut from the source, as womb storage packets were severed from their nervous system and fighters in mid launch were suddenly shredded into gibs by muscles in tensile rigor mortis or impaled by shrapnel the size of houses.
The core of the station remained firm, a saturated pink light and a collection of pink rivers staring outwards as the paraplegic commandant watched itself and it's own limbs begin their deorbiting process at a snail's pace. Eventually, the smaller pieces and shrapnel would break up and burn in atmosphere, and the rest were likely to bring untold devastation with their sheer size as they eventually made impact on the planet below.
The inhabitated planet below.
Kriqno and his fellows could swear they heard screaming.
Those Sadashi ships, despite clearly resting on their last legs, suddenly began acting as if they had just entered combat in the first place, acting with a vigor straight out of some cliché movie scene. At risk of their wounds becoming worse, and heedless of their own ship's strains they began letting belt after belt of psionic munitions towards the Isoterrans, aimed mostly at their spinal-bearing ships. The support frigates also began to rebuild their strength with all the haste and spite they could muster, preparing to give their power to their comrades again as soon as they possibly could.
Kriqno's senses were briefly overwhelmed by the psychic death throes of untold sadashi,erased as pieces of the helic stations made contact and peppered the planet in fireballs bright as miniature suns.
Their allies, already a dying race, had just been dealt a heavy blow. The barbarity of the act was enough to bring distaste even to his cold alien mind. More pressing was the sheer tenacity of his foes. He had expected them to surrender or ask for some sort of terms, yet instead they seemed quite determined to battle to the death, not unlike the savage beasts he would normally hunt in the Expanse. Fine by him,if they chose to show no mercy,they would be granted none in return.
The child of Ka'thog reacted to the isoterran assault,extending umbilicals of pure mana and sheathing its allied vessels in their energy. Their occupants could only watch as the malignant sorcery thrown at them safely coalesced around the organic hull and surged through the strings. It was thus that the child perished again,this time for good,it's body simply too mangled and tainted to carry on. Still,it bought precious time. The zetyan plan had been unfoiled,much to the lithorian's luck,but not before two of their ftl bombs left their firing tubes. These distortions in space time each found their mark,obliterating a pair of destroyers as their organic hulls heaved and bent in impossible ways prior to coming apart,guts spilling forth into the void.
It was now time to retaliate.
Retribution was swift, the heavy cruisers focused their spheromak cannon fire upon the dreadnought and battleships, recognizing them as the biggest threat and thus aiming to prevent their spinal fire. Their own muon beamers joined in, blasting from their maws and streaking towards the dying battleships.
The Austral Spawn's own battleships instead turned to the isoterran dreadnought,focusing their meson accelerators upon,followed by two of the vessels going dark,no longer supported by the beneficial energies of their peers.
The carriers joined in aswell, firing their relativistic slugs at the battleships while their energy projectors set to gamma frequency and peppered the more numerous frigates. Their launch bays were busy, readying themselves for a massive release of craft
On the fleets rear, the battle intensified. Fragmentary mass driver rounds were fired en masse to thin out the masse of fighters, followed swiftly by the release of the lithorian's own interceptors from their present warships that quickly moved to engage. There were about six thousand of the bio forms in total, each reliant on a combination of missiles and a pair of neutron blasters to score kills against their opposition, joined in turn by a few dozen more of the autonomous energy projector battery
Their mother vessels meanwhile, set their sights towards the battlecruisers. The lithorian prowlers let loose a volley of their muon beam spinals at these foes, joined in by a barrage of nucleonic shells from the destroyers and active microwave jamming from the energy projectors of the frigates.
In Kriqno's mind, so long as he could eliminate the isoterran heavy hitters, the battle would be his. They had been beaten and bloodied, indeed they may well have been wiped already had a mere few factors gone differently, be it their allies not granting psionic support, the zetyan prototype not being taken care of quickly or their ftl bomb barrage coming to complete fruition. Still, he guessed that neither foe had any more aces up their sleeve and that he would at least prevent them from achieving whatever objective they set out for themselves if nothing else.
Grey Curator and the battleships within the Isoterran force now looked like pyramidic asteroids, their once monolithic hulls, bristling with weapons, now barren plains of metal distorted by numerous craters, punctures, and areas of flash-frozen hull that had been liquified by energy weapons. Mass driver rounds still impacted their surface, creating fresh holes in their titanic frames as they continued surging forward, half on momentum, half from their failing engines. Interior explosions could be seen from muon and meson weapons irradiating their innards. Deep within the dreadnought, Admiral Dido and his crew were being assaulted by alarms on every side, as the vessel's frame shook from the sustained damage. The Isoterrans had largely accomplished their goals here, having dealt a massive blow to both the Sadashi fleet and their shipyards, and now they were mainly interested in surviving the unwanted Lithorian intervention. Dido had hoped to make good his escape, but that option seemed to be gone now. With a growl, he gave the order to call for reinforcements, deciding to deal with the embarrassment of asking for help rather than losing his forces and his life.
The frigates of the group were working overtime, attempting to intercept what they could while dishing it out to the enemy. It was a battle they knew they wouldn't win however, as they were light combatants, and couldn't keep up with the numerically superior and heavier enemy ships bombarding them. Nearby, a volley of antilife beams lanced out from the Isoterran heavy hitters, a rare utterance from what otherwise seemed like dead hulks with active engines, all aimed at the Lithorian carriers.
Meanwhile, the battlecruisers sent another volley of spinal projectiles at the exposed core of the helic station, before recalling their fighters and going to join the main part of the force, bringing extra help to them. With their fighters racing to rejoin the battle fully, the Lithorians would once again be at a disadvantage, as the Isoterrans had brought over ten thousand fighters to the battle and while many were destroyed or exhausted, the majority of them were still fairly fresh.
The Isoterrans now taking up the full attention of the enemy gave the Zetyan command time to think, as the Sadashi sent their psion bolts and the Lithorians sent their particle slugs. As their ships gave the finishing touches to the station's situation, the steel asteroids returning to firing on the bugs and jellyfish, their command centered in the AWACS sloop now began to work overtime on coming up with some sort of endgame plan before the Isoterrans were eventually overwhelmed.
They had a few options to go from, though their feasibility beyond paper and thought process was a question hotly debated on.
They could wait for the Isoterran reinforcements, and/or call their own, which would bring some much needed fresh blood to the very deteriorated situation, however that could lead to the Lithorians and Sadashi summoning reinforcements as well, which would then lead to the Zetyans requesting their own out of necessity, and then the whole system would turn into a meat grinder as the four factions made entire mountain ranges out of molehills. And, given there was interdiction up, they would still need to wait fair longer for them to arrive than they would normally-both the signal and the reinforcements would be at the mercy of the many interdiction fields around, costing precious time that the Lithorians could use to win.
They could try their drone bomb gambit again. Evidently they worked, as eyes laid upon the concaved, broken masses that once were the unlucky pair of destroyers, and given that all sides were on their last legs it could turn the tide in their favor. But the same problem would present itself again-no FTL in enemy territory, and no guarantee of escape. The Lithorians could also let loose another plasma barrage towards their ships, disrupting their plan yet again and with no guarantee they could save as many ships as they did last time. High risk, high reward-it didn't feel right, but if done well it could guarantee an otherwise uncertain victory.
They could up and flee, urging their allies to do the same; they'd done what they came for, no point to staying in the frying pan for any longer than you had to. But the Lithorians were dogged opponents, the Sadashi had just become enraged beyond measure, and if the Isoterran's reinforcement call was any indication they seemed to have decided on what to do long ago. Of all the options, it was the only one deemed a no-go.
Finally, they could try some formation shifting, try to flank above or below the enemy formation and get some shots in that otherwise would have been unfeasible. But that would draw unneeded attention to themselves, and it would stretch them thin-both were easy death sentences, especially with their current situation. It would likely need Isoterran input to work.
Nobody was sure which would be the 'best' option, as in truth they were all filled with varying degrees of 'fuck my shit' and all had a high risk factor no matter what. But they couldn't just sit idly and repeat what they were doing, lest the pests and phyla win the day over a technologically superior opponent and their mortal enemies. What was a zet to do, under duress and on an invisible timer?
Why, phone a friend, of course.
A transmission soon bolted out to the Grey Curator from the AWACS sloop, asking them for their (hopefully quick)input on their quickly-thought up 'options'. Their ships, meanwhile, began to focus on the largest targets in the Lithorians with what weapons they had; nothing much else to do, when your leaders are stumped and your options are limited.
-
As the station was cored like an apple by the enemy barrage, the Sadashi ships began to act irrationally, the screams of their dead and dying now filling their heads incessantly like water from a broken tap. The combat capable ships now began, despite all sane logic dictating otherwise, to charge towards the enemy as to ensure all their future shots hit their marks, enduring increasing amounts of incoming fire as their wounds worsened and their physical state reached criticality, firing madly all the while. If they kept up their sudden deathmarch, they would undoubtedly be dead, but evidently the spirit of rage-or nihilism, t'was hard to tell-had fully taken their minds, leaving them little to worry about other than ensuring their foes were spited in their last gasps.
The few ships that had stayed behind, having been recharging their energy beforehand, had also seemed to lose any sense of self-preservation, though theirs was of a far more propitiatory nature. Charging up all of their ship's collective power into a single pulse, those ships gave their all-quite literally-to the remaining Lithorian ships left, their ships now turning to empty husks as their lifeblood donated itself to their allies. It certainly didn't compare to what they had before-like holding a candlelight to a lightbulb-but the nature of their sacrifice ensured their psionic reinforcement was residual instead of maintained. For a little while, at least, the Lithorians would be stronger than they.
The situation was becoming critical,with his enemies unwilling to back down and with little cause to continue on his part,it seemed that he would have to make the first move.
The carriers,all four of them, suddenly found themselves pierced by the eldritch blasts of the isoterran battleships, sapping the life out of them and naming them go limp. The zetyan fire by comparison was fat more manageable, with most being dealt with well before reaching their target, leaving a fraction to cause varrying degree of surface damage, at least they had been bled dry, or so Kriqno thought.
The arrival of the isoterran battlecruisers was a double edged sword. On one hand, the massive dogfight between their star craft slipped from the lithorian's graces thanks to enemy numbers bloating more than twice over. On the other hand, their light cruisers, destroyers and frigates merely performed a quick turn, courtesy of their gravitic tendrils, and allowed the lithorian fleet to fully bear its might upon the remaining opponents.
Once more, luck seemed to be on their side. Their sadashi peers channeled the breath of creation into their ranks, rejuvenating the carriers whose lives had just been harvested. It could not have been a better time, the vessels opening their baleen maws and activating mass driver launch tubes that laid dormant until now. Finally, the vessels could rely on their most powerful asset, their complement. Interceptors whizzed out of them in great snaking clouds, occasionally speckled with heavier fighter configurations and squadrons of gunships. In a matter of minutes, ten thousand more participants joined the fight, a figure which promptly doubled, then continued to rise
Unsurprisingly, these dedicated vessels made the subcraft belonging to the rest of the biofleet look like a pittance
Still, the actual lithorian warships were silent, no retaliatory strikes were made, only defensive, shooting down the occasional projectile or fighters.
Instead, a psychic message was relayed to the charging sadashi force, Kriqno was not proud of what he had to do, but he thought it was for their own good
"Pull back immediately. I swear upon my life,these savages will pay,but not here,not now. If you value our alliance,I beg of you to stand down and play along,no more blood has to be spilled today"
This was the followed by a conventional signal, unencrypted and accessible to all parties
"This is Kriqno of the Lithorian Collective,I wish to discuss the matter of your surrender. You are outgunned and outnumbered, by all accounts I should reduce you all to mangled wrecks for your crimes, but I digress. Unlike you, I do not slaughter all in my sight. So power down your weapons, allow us to board and I will make sure you live to see another day. Your six eyed friends can attest to it, for this is hardly my first 'dance' with them. I give you one minute to respond, any more and my volleys shall begin anew. Think very carefully on what you are going to do next..."
Dido was about to reply to the Zetyan message when the Lithorians abruptly stopped firing, before a message was sent to him, slightly delayed as it made its way through the various firewalls and cyber protections that the Isoterrans had put in place on their warships.
They were offering a chance to surrender...the idea of actually accepting it made him laugh, he knew little of the Lithorians or the Sadashi, but neither of them were likely happy with the destruction of the Helic station and the damage its deorbiting pieces would cause. And if he made it back home, the Empire wouldn't take kindly to surrendering in this sort of situation...
However, much of his fleet was heavily damaged, and wouldn't take much more, at least on its own...unless they could hold out for whatever reinforcements were inbound. Sadashi territory wasn't too far from theirs, so perhaps if he could stall, it would give them the reprieve they needed. Quickly, he ordered his assets to quit firing, before relaying the plan to the Zetyans: they would play the Lithorian game for now, until help could arrive to cover their escape.
On Kriqno's end, the only sign that their message had perhaps gotten through was the sudden 'silence', as the Isoterran units ceased firing, instead silently continuing on their current courses, while attack craft maintained a holding pattern at the ready. Then, after about four minutes had passed from the initial broadcast, a reply came on open channels "This is Rear Admiral Dido of the Isoterran Empire. I am interested in negotiating with you Kriqno, but before I lower our guard and simply let you onboard, I have some concerns for our safety, and what your intentions are if we simply allow you to capture us. I am sure you can understand such a request."
Kriqno was stressed. The enemy seemed to at least consider his plea, having ceased their own hostile actions, yet their silence made him doubt that. He did not attack after the one minute term was up, going back on his word in the hopes that this whole thing might just be resolved peacefully. By the three minute mark however, that hope was dashed. They were stalling, for what exact purpose he did not know but, either to concoct some kind of strategy or wait for reinforcements, either way it was not good
He was caught off guard by the response, having never expected one to come at all. It seemed reasonable, yet he knew there was no time to waste, he had to be firm and decisive about this
"I understand your concerns, but I have no interest of escalating this any further. Should you accept my proposal, your vessels will be seized and you shall be delivered to your respective polities, that is all. You have two minutes to give me your answer, pass this limit again and the deal is up, period"
Now he waited. If he was lucky,cooler heads would prevail and they'd all just walk away. Otherwise,it appeared he only bought a brief respite from the slaughter. Hopefully enough for the sadashi to reposition to safety.
A reply came fairly quickly this time, well within the time window: "Sir, you are asking me to simply place the lives of hundreds, if not more, of beings into the care of two hostile nations, an act for which I may be greatly punished for when I return home. The least you can do is give me some assurances that my personnel, and those of the Zetyans, will not be harmed or tortured, and will be properly housed and fed, while being speedily returned to our respective polities without issue."
Dido paused, before continuing "Alternatively, I would be much less worried if you wished to simply expel us from Sadashi space. This is a retaliatory strike for repeated Sadashi attacks on our allies, but I'm sure my superiors would be happy to come to a more peaceful arrangement if possible."
A a glimmer of light shone from Kriqno's mono eye. Perhaps he was wrong, perhaps they really wished for a peaceful resolution rather than stalling. Still, he had to remain firm, they were already looking to get away scot free
"With all due respect, I am the one who ceased hostilities and attempted diplomatic resolution, not you. If I wanted you dead, I would have simply done no such thing. Nevertheless, I assure you that none of your crew members will be subjected to torture or interrogation,alongside being safely delivered to your borders. I have already done such a thing with your allies on a previous occasion, they can vouch for my honesty. I insist, stop this here and now so that no more lives are lost"
"Respectfully, while I give credit for attempting a diplomatic resolution, that could also be because of a variety of other factors, all of which have little to do with your treatment of prisoners of war. One such reason being that we're causing too much damage, even if you do outgun us. Regardless, if you wish to stop the fighting, then we would be willing to depart this system immediately without further conflict, so long as your forces do not hinder us, and this would avoid much of my concerns regarding surrendering my forces to strangers, regardless of how much I trust your good intentions."
The lithorian was perplexed, these new creatures were certainly stubborn, perhaps moreso than the vermin. The inevitability of needing to negotiate with them on future occasions was a grim prospect indeed. Still, he decided to cut his losses, they were caught of guard and by an unexpected enemy, his performance was rather acceptable given the circumstances.
"Very well, take your vessels and depart immediately, we won't pursue. Make no mistake, I may forgive but I certainly do not forget, pull off such a stunt again and the consequences will be significant"
The lithorian vessels dropped their interdiction, keeping true on their end of the bargain. While this day ultimately ended in a loss, it was a bittersweet one, one from which they had to learn. One thing was undeniable, the zetyans had stepped up their game with these allies.
Dido stared at his conversation transcript, not quite believing his eyes or ears. Taking a moment before he replied to confirm they had just accepted his offer, he then sent a return "Of course. I shall inform my allies."
A detailed message was sent to the Zetyan commander, informing them of the deal that had just been reached with the Lithorians, and urging them to leave the system with them. At the same time, the Isoterran fleet adjusted their course, travelling away from both the Lithorian fleet and Sadashi planet, putting as much distance between them and their former enemies as quickly as possible as they prepped their FTL drives, while strike craft followed along. Meanwhile, they lowered their interdiction down to enough to cover themselves.
As the admiral negotiated with the bugs, the Zetyan command and control was, to put it truthfully, very surprised. Not only were their allies fluent in legalese and it's nuances, they were able to weasel them out of an otherwise surefire capture and internment in a timespan of less than 6-7 minutes. An impressive feat, considering circumstances, and one that could easily spark ideas in the more creatively inclined.
As they received the message from the Isoterrans, their battered fleet moved to follow the isoterrans, charging up their FTL and beginning to plot their courses as they fled the scene of the crime. The AWACS sloop, in turn, finally departed from it's distant hiding place as well, joining up on intercept course with the departing mothball of ships as quick as could be. Though it was a victory, it was one that served as a Moloch-from this would they need to steal many lessons away.
The sadashi, unsurprisingly, were not happy. Denied immediate gratification to their rage, they could only result to simmering rage, as the chaos on their planet began to die down and the maddening screaming in their minds began to fade. They would all pay dearly for this offense, indeed-but if there was peace to be had, let there be peace.
It would let their guard down later, after all.
Kriqno was now alone,
to stew in hid thoughts. His allies battered, their station destroyed and settlements compromised, this would make quite the report on his end
...
"And you were able to convince the remaining hostiles to leave?" The visage on the psi screen inquired,utterly devoid of emotion
"Not exactly, Lord Ka'thog. I wished to confiscate their ships and detain them,as I did in my previous assignment. Yet they were stubborn,I figured shedding more blood to achieve that was unnecessary..."
"You did the right thing. Escalating this petty dispute is not desirable,there are much bigger things at stake. Still,the Sadashi are our allies and have proven quite helpful to out cause,so I will make sure they are better protected"
"I assume I will be redeployed elsewhere...."
"Negative. You have experience with both the Clanholds and this 'Isoterran Empire'. Your performance has been stellar,I would want no one else on this. I'll be increasing your defense assets tenfold,and give you command of Taskforce Omega,I'd like to see those vermin try their little schemes again."