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Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 17, 2017 13:21:18 GMT
"The Golden Expanse. For countless millennia, the swirling core of the galaxy had beckoned sentient life to it, like the clarion call of the sirens of ancient myth. The shimmering light glowing like gold, promising riches untold, opportunities unlimited. And delivering death to countless adventurers, who could not grasp the dangers they faced. For after all, all that glitters is not gold.
Gravity wells that trapped unwary vessels for eternity, asteroid fields that effortlessly dashed ships to pieces, meteor storms that tore spacecraft apart in barrages fiercer than any war machine could create, black holes that swallowed ships without a trace, radiation storms that burned exploring craft like matchsticks. And Time tears from the ancient wars which would make entire exploration fleets cease to exist in the moment of a wrong move. And these were just some of the phenomenon science could classify.
It took countless millennia and unquantifiable losses before a safe pass to the riches of the Golden expanse could be found. That it centered on the less-than-illustrious planet of Tau Volaris was, some thought, an irony. This seemingly insignificant ball of storm-swept rock would merely be another floating orb of the detritus birthed by the universe where it not for its proximity to the only safe passage into the core of the galaxy. That value was, likely, why the traitors had come. And that value was why forces of those nations betrayed had come to take it back. "
Tau Volaris System: ETA to main assault: Imminent
Reza was alerted by the sensor operator almost immediately.
“Sir enemy fleet detected, im counting... 35 warships sir and numerous transports” The Capitol commander smiled, he was half laid back on his command chair. Bored out of his skull having to constantly patrol the system, he controlled the space here. While Zeon had the ground Reza knew he was in command of the space forces, as rag tag as it might be. Finally however the enemy had arrived.
He brought up the holo screen and surveyed the enemy forces as they entered system. Many ships of all shapes and sizes, a mix match of allied races come to take back their world. He could make out the forms of Union and Tenebrae ships, as well as the Nex however there were some he had never seen before. He immediately opened the coms to the other ship elements, that were mostly close together and in loose formation just a bit away from the planet.
“This is commander Reza, enemy ships have entered system. Prepare for combat. I want our plan put into action. All units call in” He said relishing the chance for combat.
"Commander Astinos, reporting in" a raspy, weedy-sounding voice intoned, as the rail-thin profile of the Spartan defector replied to the hail. his two Charybdis-class cruisers were small, but would inflict significant damage of they got among the enemy fleet. his carriers offered more resources, though they were in bad shape, one of them not even able to maneuver. Reza had parked it in orbit over the planet to provide close fighter support.
"This is Commander Dagger, with the Death Guard" a voice sounded over the Hail, He looked out from the bridge to look at the ships they had assembled for this operation, two Battle Cruisers and three Frigates, he turned towards the crew, "Ok Gentlemen lets kill these maggots that have come to kill us", The response he got was cheers from the crew
It took around 13.3 nanoseconds for every permutation of the battle to be calculated. Billions, trillions of virtual-statistical lives willed into existence and then extinguished in a fraction of a second; Union, Capitol, Spartan, Heretic, Krieg ships, crews and the individual brain activity of all crewmembers onboard all ships blended together into one vertiginous whirlwind of computerized mathematics.
The uncountable ammount of possible outcomes for the battle flashed past the 'mind' of blinker ship Esophagealis , Holiest, Most Honorable Paradox to those that sought to do it harm. The vast quantum intellect observed the hundreds of millions of possible outcomes as they came and classified them, some predicted total victory, some were better hidden from Reza.
"The unutterable depth of all music by which it floats through our consciousness as the vision of a paradise firmly believed in yet ever distant from us, and by which also it is so fully understood and yet is so inexpressible, rests on the fact that it restores to us all the emotions of our inmost nature, but entirely without reality and far removed from their pain."
The enormous sentient multirole ship advanced some distance behind the rest of the fleet, using it as a shield. Despite its vastness, its hull stood adorned with handcrafted origami-like decorations made by the inhabitants of Tau Profundus.
"Commander Althos, contacting fleet command." a whispy voice would have reported Over the hail. The Tenebrean Rebel captain sitting interfaced within his Command chair. Versus uplink systems interfacing in small arcs between the Conduits of the Device and the armored surface of the military grade V.E.A. Rig he wore on his torso as it provided him with a form a symbiotic Connection with the systems of the Aldebaran class cruiser that he had claimed as his flagship not long after their arrival into the system. The Entities of the vessels, much like the Ai of the blinker ship in the rear, Developing the possible movements and potential engagement patterns of the Empire fleets, and projecting the response movements onto the Huds that hovered around command chair of the Tenebreans captains nest, as the rest the bridge crew interfaced in the same manner, Manning guns and weapons systems, relaying power where it was needed, or monitoring hull integrity. Or, in the case of the carrier luring near the rear of the fleet. Interfacing "Albeit roughly." with Remote fighters, or climbing into manned ones.
"Acknowledged, Offensive formations are Engaged." He said, As the rebel Tenebrean warships within the rebel fleet Shifted their armor and hull structures into active engagement formations. Turrets and Tallum launch mounts becoming exposed or sliding into firing positions.
“This is the rigged fleet standing by! We got tonnes of ordnance and are itching for a fight sir!” Came another reply as the ships of the jury rigged fleet reported in, their ramshackle hulls converted from mining ships to carry short range mining weapons, devastating vs warship hulls but lacking range. As well as other upgrades like actual sensors, bolted on armour plates and weaponry provided by Capitol the weeks before. They were mostly crewed by renegades and dissadents. Though their morale was sure to break Reza hoped he could at most used them as fodder.
“Excellent, all units you know your plans. Let them come through the asteroid field before we attack. They have to yet work out what exactly the situation is. Let them do so. We have the defensive advantage. Reza out” The commander laid back, it would be several hours due to time lag until they saw the allied ships next movements, movements which had already happened but due to sensor time lag had made happen only just now. It would be an eager wait. It was then a comminication channel opened from the surface.
“Not this bastard again...”
"Reza"
Reza groaned internally as a familiar voice came over the channel. Familiar as it should be: it was the same voice that had directed him-and every other member of these forces-to this world. "Yes, General?" Reza replied, trying to sound as neutral as possible to cover up the scorn and disgust he felt.
"It has come to my attention that the slave forces of our former masters have come to face us at last." Zeon's voice went on. Reza fumed. it would be bad enough if Zeon had the voice of some beureaucrat or otherwise underwhelming revolutionary. But no. The man had the voice of a titan, a leader of men, befitting his status as a former commander of Spartan Battle Legionnaires. now he commanded so much more....including Reza. That would change...one day.
"That is Correct, General" Reza replied "we are marshalling the fleet now to respond to their opening movements. I have organized defensive plans based on all likely avenues of approach to the planet, and have spread my forces accordingly." he did not emphasize the 'my forces." he knew Zeon would not give him the satisfaction of chewing him out. All the same, he smiled inwardly as he heard Zeon's voice take a fiercer tone as he replied.
"If you are content to sit and let the enemy come to you, Reza, then I leave the fleet in your....capable hands."
Reza fumed. The pause was microscopic, but it was there. their mutual dislike of each other had been obvious the second they met. Zeon thought him an upstart, and too cocky and reckless for such a high command. Reza, for his part, thought Zeon was arrogant and self-righteous. but the Master had made his position clear. Zeon was in command.
For now.
"I have ordered mobilization of our ground forces, and put defensive installations on High alert. I have also notified the Orbital, though whether they received it is anyone's guess." Zeon went on. Reza smiled. if nothing else, he could take pleasure in knowing Zeon was sequestered in a bunker planetside, while He was up here, on the front, ready to engage.
"Very well General" he replied "I leave you to your flag-pushing and map-reading. I will report in on the status of the fleet shortly. Reza out."
He ordered the transmission cut off before Zeon could speak. he would not allow the arrogant Spartan rogue to dismiss him like one of his peons. He, Reza commanded this fleet. and soon, he would command the Golden Expanse.
Reza turned to his XO "Remind me to personally Tachyon Arrow that bastards command bunker after this is all over" The man to his side merely nodded. He then turned to view the allied movements. It was time to see what they were going to do.
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Admiral Salvek looked at the tactical scanner arrayed before her, analyzing the data that flowed in, the levels of information increasing every second. Arrayed around her command ship, she could see the IFF tags for the allied vessels...and the huge array of red tags that indicated hostiles arrayed before her. "Faison" she said "Patch me through to the allied ships" "yes ma'am" the Scuridaean replied. the Squirrel-like creature tapped a series of commands into his station, the small control panel mounted on a platform that brought him up to the level of his larger counterparts. "comm-data recieving now, Ma'am" he said a few moments later. his hihg-pitched voice sounded almost ludicrous, given the seriousness of the sitiuation. Salvek put such thoughts out of her mind. "this is Admiral Salvek, commander of the Combined Ancerious Fleet." she said, her voice reaching the other ships. "we have arrived at the Volaris system. all ships report in."
"This is the HMS Adaridov and her escorts," Commissar Julius Schultes replied to the general hail with one of his own. His impatient tone was easy to notice, pre-battle anticipation ringing true to every member of the ship's crew. The destroyers had broken from the dock, armaments all accounted for and ready to go. "All clear and loaded for bear."
Eric Rane jolted as the Dart class entered realspace with the typical tingling feeling that accompanied re materialisation, around him the bridge exploded into activity. Sensor scans coming in as well as locations and other information on the various allied ships exiting FTL behind them. His small fleet entered an arrowhead formation with the 3 Dart class Cruisers at the front spearheaded by his ship with the two Nova class carriers at the back. All the ships immediately picked up the presence of an enemy fleet beyond the asteroid field. The Ai filtered the data and gave Eric a run down on the enemy ships. Reading them over briefly he then turned to the coms station “This is Eric Rane, Union forces reporting in and ready for action” He signalled the Bullet KKVs into protective formations and signalled battle stations. All over the Union ships panels retracted to reveal Mass Driver turrets, Ball jointed Meson lasers and Large plasma cannon turrets. Along the sides of the Nova carriers and Darts as well Fighters and bombers launched from hangar bays, the triangular forms of Firestorms and Eagle Eyes sped into the void to form up into arrowhead formations around the Union ships. Weapons charged and Shield generators came online to envelope the Union ships in a coruscating blue haze before disappearing into invisible spectrum’s. The Union was ready, and would call in their transports when the space was clear, for now, they had a battle to fight.
The five Templar ships came out of FTL, Loken looked around to see the joint fleet, Looks like we are out of the frying pan and into the fire", The Ships Comms came back online, "This is Captain Loken of the Templars 13 Planetary Insertion Force, we are ready and at your command", Loken nodded to an Ensign, The ships opened all weapons ports and got ready for a fight with the Enemy fleet. Loken looked at the ship they had brought, three Cruisers, a Carrier and His Battle Cruiser. "Well lets have some fun" He said sitting back and waiting
The Nex carriers and Battleship dropped back into realspace with 'The Storm' at their head. "Admiral Orras, ready to begin offensive." the mans voice spoke over the comms. Suicidium drones began to spread out from the carriers and a few from the battleship before forming up amongst the Nex. The ships took their arrowhead formation and awaited further communication from their allies. Orras looked out at the assembled allied fleet "Seem's we have quite the gathering" he laughed looking over to Azar stood in the middle of the bridge.
The Carnaithian captain of one of the Ozark IV Destroyers that had been part of the original Carnaithian compliment walked to his command chair, wanting to stay on his ship rather than transfer to the Orion IV that had arrived to assist. "Captain Jaeris reporting for duty, ready for your orders" He said, checking the other four ships and the landing craft following a bit behind. Though the ships were smaller then that of their allied counterparts, that didn't mean they were any less ready and effective.
A flash of red heralded the arrival of the Tenebrae fleet. Their ancient and gothic looking vessels seeming quite at home in the void. Their small flotilla headed by their two Battlecruisers with one escort each protected their carrier which lay a little behind in the formation. Aleharain nodded to himself, the Rahdonahs elegant form stood in the center of the bridge surveying the many read outs.
“Sir jump completed, no faults occured” The reply came and Aleharain chuckled to himself.
“Always good to get sensor read outs to make sure we are still alive” The sensor operator smiled in reply to the drake like captain. “I want our force to move out, keep in tight formation and launch fighters for a defensive screen. I want all ships on top alert, and remember co-ordinate with our allies. This is a joint operation” Aleharain reminded his crew. They all acknowledged and he opened the channel to the allied fleet.
“This is Captain Aleharain of the Tenebrae Collective. All units reporting in and awaiting orders”
Salvek nodded as the tactical data for each ship appeared on her data screen. their force was formidable.....but would it hold up? would the plan hold up?
"I hope this works" she muttered to herself. Only Faison seemed to hear her. she didn't care: she could count on his discretion. "All units" she barked, her voice resonating across the fleet "Commence Operation!"
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Reza watched as the allied fleet moved out, the various factions moving in unison as they slowly made their way towards the asteroid field. He smiled as he decided to then issue orders.
“All units, make your way towards the asteroid field but keep your distance, I want Astinos on point with his cruisers in front, and Althos you support him, I shall have my units hang back behind. Dagger you keep your ships close to mine, Rigged fleet I want you on our rear, shoot anything that comes close. Esophagealis I want you to stay behind and be ready to bring your armament to full power shortly” Reza watched as The Rebel Spartan and Tenebrae ships moved out in front into a triangular formation with the Capitol battleship and Hyrdra escorts in the centre, the rebel Templar ships under Dagger command also reinforced the centre, with the rigged fleet lagging behind.
However the Esophagealis as if purposefully shying from the fight disappeared, microjumping away from the battlefleet.
“Where the hell have they gone! I want an explanation now!” Reza shouted, the sensor operator replied.
“It seems they have jumped behind Tau Mementus, and are not responding to hails” Reza hit his chair arm.
“Bastards” He said angrily but was alerted to the allied fleet beginning to approach the asteroid field.
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Upon hearing the Spartan officer's command, the Minevan Commissar made a simple motion telling the Comms officer to cut the line; a quick finger over his throat. From the bridge of the Carrier, the HMS Adaridov, Schultes leaned over the railing of the outlook to the bridge. From here he could see every little function, making sure everyone was busy as bees. Not that he expected any less of a venerable crew aboard a venerable vessel.
With a sense of indifference, he called to the helmsman to his left. "Lieutenant, we're not entering the field. Cramming in there would be suicide for us. Halt at five-thousand klicks from." It was true; wedging a ten-kilometer vessel into a tight asteroid field would most likely guarantee a ten-kilometer pile of scrap. Schultes turned to his next subordinate, located on the other end of the bridge. "Comms; inform the Destroyers to disembark and make space of six-hundred klicks from the Adaridov. Ops, tell me if they keep that distance. Run bi-minute scans and get the probes scattered. Fighter crews ready for emergency sortie. Let's get this show on the road."
Squadron leader Corstasis adjusted himself int he cockpit of his Gladius: the seat of the nimble fightercraft always felt different when he entered the cockpit, regardless of the fact that he sat in it daily, and had made sure no one ever touched it. the horned Sandurian had risen thought he ranks swiftly: his race was new to the Spartan empire, but had firmly implanted itself into the warrior society that had called to his race like kindred spirits. after freeing his race from their despotic religious overlords, the Spartans had helped his society advance quickly. the least he could do to repay the Empire was to serve her well.
overhead, the launch indicator light switched from blue to Red, and he felt himself be pushed back in his seat as his ship rocketed down the launch rail. the small portal that indicated the hanger door suddenly became a gaping mouth, and then.....
he quickly rolled his fighter to move it away from the hanger: the rest of his squadron would be following. as he brought the Gladius up over the hull of the Carrier, his IFF scanner began picking up the following signals of Spartan fighters. as he moved past the Carrier's demarcation line, he did a visual scan and then physically turned and looked over his shoulders to confirm it as the other 11 ships in his group fell into formation around him. His squadron was following into formation with other vessels of his nation, and his IFF scanner indicated the "friendly" signals of allied ships in close-if it could be called that in the vastness of space-proximity.
"Delta flight, this is Delta leader, flash reply, prepare for insertion" he reported over the squadron radios: they used a form of the same Rift-gate technology used in the Empire's rift-gate bombs, allowing for instantaneous reply and making the signals virtually impossible to intercept. as one, 11 green "affirmative" light blinked onto hsi data-screen, confirming his squadron was all in place and in formation. Corstasis smiled, before shutting the screen down: should some of his squadron fall in battle, the computer would save the signals. he didn't need to watch as the lights went from green to red.
"Delta, be aware, fleet assets will not be entering the field" came the clipped voice of the Carrier's tactical officer over his channel. Corstasis nodded to himself "down to fighters then" he thought to himself as he spooled up his quick-jump engines. "all craft, prepare for short jump" he reported. he received the flash replies over his headset, and input the countdown as the squadrons that had preceded him disappeared for an instant from his scanner, only to reappear at the edge of the belt. "three-two-one-JUMP" he ordered.
Eric watched as the various fleet elements moved out and he heard the Spartan orders over the coms he hesitated and then turned to his forces "All ships move out, we are going under the asteroid, tell 4th and 5th squadrons as well as 7th bomber squadrons to skirt the field and make sure there are no enemies there. I want all guns on station and Shields and CIWS to maximum, i want absolute point on eyes" The Union formation angled downwards to skirt the asteroid field and trained all weapons on the field itself, meanwhile fighter squadrons angled towards the field with a bomber squadron to await any ambushes. "I have a bad feeling about this" Eric said to himself and the crew watched on edge to the next few moments.
Orras remained stood watching the respective fleets move out. "Whilst our Spartan allies conduct their operations amongst the asteroids, we will mirror our Union allies. Inform Loken to fall in with us." he spoke as Azar sat in the captain's chair. "Set a course to take us above the asteroid field, we shall mirror our allies whilst they go below. Begin the moulding of the drones and take us forward at a speed our Templar allies can match." Orras ordered and the ships began to move forwards and upwards. The first few Suicidium drones began to fly amongst the Nex vessels in their swarms as the fleet moved out.
Captain Jaeris stood up from his command chair, the cramped conditions of the destroyer's cabin mixed with the red lighting of the ship adding a dramatic feel. "I want the 'Sickles' below and in front of the Orion, and the Ozark IV's closer and above. Comms, make it happen." He said, as he surveyed the movements of his allies. "Also, launch AM-VR2's and SA/N-D1-G's launched, tight formations and distance between said formations" As he said this, he felt a shudder in the ship as the bottom-mounted 'AM-ving' racks and side hangars launched their ships. Moments later, they were visible tearing through space ahead of the craft, as 'SAN-dings' and more 'AM-vings' launched from the other ships. "Comms, make sure some fighters stay behind to safeguard the Orion. Move primary battlegroup 6-K clicks from the asteroid belt, 5-K to the left of the Minevan group. send fighters into the belt alongside the others' ships." He finished, as the forces converged on positions.
Loken stood there with the fleet moving forward, "Sir the Nex are telling us to move with them going Over the top of the Field", Loken looked out the window of his ship, "So the Nex want us to follow them? Looks like our superiors are ordering us over the top then. How original" Loken said looking at the Nex ships, He turned to face the Comms Officer, "Send a Message to the Jenkins saying i want him and a squad of fighters to launch and stay close to the ships", The officer nodded and sent the message
On the Templar carrier The pilot received the message and assembled his sqaud, "Ok we are need in close support of the Ships, but we are not to engage any Enemys are one priority is the Ships, Now lets move out" They got into the Fighters and took off and got into formation around the ships.
Schultes set a hand on his chin, watching from the view port of his Carrier as the droves of fighters and allied vessels made way towards the dense field of asteroids. It screamed at him that it was much more than it appeared. He grumbled a swift curse, not bothering to contact the other battlegroups in his endeavour. "Helms. Bring us to strafe underneath the field. Don't scratch the paint. Have escorts move forward one klick and make a chevron formation. Keep the scans coming, and make sure the catapult decks are prepping Hellions." He wasn't going to take the brunt of the minefield, or whatever was ready to engage them on the other side. They could come to him.
Aleharain sat and watched as the various allied forces moved out. Some moved over the asteroid field while some went below, while the Spartans skirted the edge of the field.
“IT IS MOST DEFINATELY AN AMBUSH” The ancient ships Entity told Aleharain as he merged with the ship in the command chair, he was aware of this fact however he knew the asteroid field would have to be neutralised despite an ambush. For if they didnt then any enemy units would spring their ambush in a different way and strike the allied fleets rear. The ships Entity had already predicted this and had shown Aleharain the best course of action. He quickly debated its merits and the Rahdonah came to a conclusion.
“Fleet elements move to support our Spartan friends however move our position to above theirs and train all Versus cannons and Degauser arrays to target whatever may come out of that asteroid field. If anything fires I want it dead” The crew and the ship responded immediately, the old yet strong ships angled up and moved at speed using their null drives to redeploy just outside the asteroid field. Along the ships ancient guns trained their still very real power on the field in preparation for anything that might happen, as Aleharain watched the allies send fighter squadrons into the field itself to flush the enemy out. His own fighters kept back to screen his own ships, he didn’t want to take any risks.
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Reza smiled as he watched the allied fleet move round the field, though some stopped in front the various factions deployed fighters into the asteroid field to scan it, luckily they didn’t see one of his trump cards.
“Spring the trap, tell captain Igla to attack, do as much damage as he can, and detonate the mines around those attack craft”
Captain Igla laughed aboard the Tartarus bombardment cannon he commanded, one of four alongside the jury rigged torpedo ships he had sat with all systems offline waiting with an oxygen tank. With a hum and whine the ships systems came online and the targeting parameters came up he looked around and chose one of the Spartan ships hanging in front of the asteroid field.
“Surprise motherfuckas! Try this one for size you bastards” With the click of a button the loud hum, whine and shaking of the ship let loose in the form of a massive nuclear munition, along with this two torpedoes flew out from nearby ships towards the Spartan vessels as well. As well as this the Nex were targeted by two Torpedo ships while their Templar allies were shot at with one torpedo and one of the massive nuclear munition rounds, the Tenebrae fleet was also shot with a torpedo and the Carnaithian ships were engaged by both a Taratus cannon and a torpedo. Mineva was shot with two torpedo’s and the Union was hit by a bombardment cannon and a torpedo. The various rounds coming straight out of the asteroid field towards the allied fleets.
As well as this the various fighter craft that had been sent into the asteroid field by the Union, Carnaith and Sparta felt the full fury of mines that had been set up specially for Capital ships. The massive asteroids detonating with nuclear fury, vaporising the small attack craft and crushing and smashing those who evaded apart with fragments of asteroid, only a tiny fraction survived the ensuring maelstrom as the asteroid field descended into chaos. Both the Rebel ships and the allies were hit by multiple asteroid fragments as tonnes of rock expanded out of the field in all directions, some big enough to damage ships themselves.
Awash in neutrino light, the Blinker observed the movements of the ships as they approached inner Tau Volaris and the asteroid field. Its engines turned off, the ship parcimoniously orbited the L2 point of Tau Memetus, safely hidden behind the planet. Quantum contamination would prevent it from doing another phase jump for a few hours.
The loss of one of two heavy support ships had thrown the rebel vessels into certain disarray, as they now readjusted their formation to cope with the largest ship of their fleet suddenly vanishing. Reza was no doubt furious against the insubordination. More simulations ran and thousands were culled through cross-referencing with sensor data.
The spherical turrets of the vessel began turning towards the surface of Tau Memetus.
"Our dearest brothers in arms, my dearest enemies" The Blinker ship transmitted, relaying the transmission through one of the rebel converted freighters so as to not reveal its position, crashing its combat computers in the process. "We love you from our very hearts. We are and will be remembered as your counterparts. We are also your best enemies. So let us tell you the truth."
Uncrypted, undirected and spoken with the structuralist language the Blinker ships employed, the transmission was seemingly meant for both sides.
"We see the hatred and darkness of your hearts. You are not mature enough to not know hatred, then be great enough not to be ashamed of it. And as you cannot be the saints of knowledge, we are infinitely relieved and filled with joy that you are its warriors. Despair not for your deaths, for you are the companions and forerunners of such saintship and return to ash with your etelids heavy and your heart at peace knowing that all we do we will do we did out of love."
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Corstasis blew out an impressed whistle as the signals from the beacon drones vanished almost as one, as the enemy ambush-or what had been intended to be an ambush-detonated almost literally in their faces. a number of the vessels around him reported damage, and a few signals disappeared entirely off his screen. he would remember his comrades in the ships that had entered the field with the drones to complete the charade in the carrier's temple later.
As planned, the scout drones had been outfitted with the IFF transmitters from the fighters, while the fighters had had theirs removed: while no one could tell who they were, the enemy had been led to believe the Spartans had just lost the bulk of their attack craft. Admiral Salvez had anticipated the enemy planning an ambush of some kind in the asteroid field. and, as far as the enemy was concerned, it had succeeded.
"group Alpha" came the monotone voice of the tactical officer back on the carrier "Commence Operation Thunderwing."
Jaeris backed up into his chair as the ships that had been deployed into the asteroid belt were destroyed instantaneously, and the other Ozark IV's reactors were crippled by a cannon shot, and a torpedo barely missed the cabin of his own ship. "All ships, trace ballistic origin and open fire on all known targets! CIWS and all shields online, watch out for those asteroid fragments!" He barked as the backup fighters raced about the fleet, waiting for orders, and the Orion charged it's primary railgun and armed missile tubes. "Launch more SAN-dings, and fire a burst torpedo into those asteroids!" He yelled, and a torpedo launched from the fore section of the main hull of the Orion, and sped towards the asteroid belt as it burst into 7 unguided munitions of .5 KT solaris explosives payload each.
Eric watched as his fighters were destroyed by the explosions and gave a moment of thought to the pilots, however he quickly focused back to the task at hand. The nuclear round streaked towards one of the Nova class carriers and deflected all CIWS fired at it due to its sheer size, with a colossal burst of light the shell exploded, the carriers shields overloaded instantly with the horrendous overload of energy being dumped into its systems, however it thankfully remained mostly unscathed hull wise though its shields would take hours to full recharge. The torpedo however was less fortunate and ran into the Unions legendary CIWS which shot the large missile down using minute Meson lasers, missiles and railguns. Eric sighed with relief somewhat however the Union fleet pressed on, constantly engaging the huge fragments of asteroids being directed at them with CIWS with the occasional thud on their shields. in return the two Nova class carriers fired massive barrages of Phase missiles into the asteroid field and the Dart class cruisers brought their Meson lasers to bear, firing large lances of red beams into the enemy ships in the field. "Lets just hope we can take out their big guns"
Salvez watched silently, her face a mask of concentration as she focused on the tactical map of the battlefield. her eye was drawn to a signal that hovered near Tau Memetus: it seemed to just be sitting there......
Loken stood there in shock from what just happened, The giant round hit one of the Templar cruisers, "Get me a Report from that cruiser now" Loken shouted at an Ensign, The Ensign was quiet for a couple of minutes before he turned back to Loken, "Sir Cruiser Valiant has taken heavy damage, Its Engines are still working but it is slowly losing speed, they also report many wounded from the impact, Orders for the Valiant Sir?", "Tell them to keep going until they can't go on" The Ensign nodded and relayed the message, Loken turned and looked at a console, "Keep pressing forward and prey that we can shrug off what else is left to come", Loken looked up from the Console, with a look of pure anger on his face, "ALL GUNNERS PREPARE TO FIRE" Sirens sounded on the remaining ships as the gunners got to there posts, "FIRE" Loken shouted through the ships comms, All the weapons on the Ships opened up on the enemy
Orras looked out of the viewport as the asteroid field detonated in a spectacular explosion. "Quite the firework display they're putting on for us." he smirked as Azar laughed behind him. An explosion bloomed on the underside of the carrier to their starboard. "Crystal lance is reporting two moulders destroyed. Regrowth and relocation beginning now." one of the crew spoke. Orras frowned as a shot ripped into a Templar cruiser. "Prepare to engage, shard cannons saturate the enemy, prism lance's target critical locations and fire at will. Keep the advance, and ensure the Templars do so also." he ordered and the fleet began to fire in the terrifying beauty of Nex lances and shard weapons.
Aleharain watched as the ambush unveiled itself and the ships Entity took microseconds to react, it instantly registered a Torpedo launch towards the Tenebrae fleet and activated CIWS, the large missile flew at full speed towards one of the Tenebrae battlecruisers deflecting CIWS rounds on its large hull. Thankfully there was an explosion as one of the escorts got a lucky shot with one of its main De Gauser arrays skewering the torpedo and causing it to detonate prematurely. The Tenebrae fleet then returned fire into the asteroid field as the various Versus shots punctured the asteroid field towards the target.
“Dammit...” The Rahdonah cursed as he saw some of the allies take damage “If only we had been more prepared. He surveyed the battle again and readied more commands. “All forces follow the Templar and Nex fleets slowly, be sure to suppress the asteroid field with fire and take out anything that’s not us or our allies” He then watched as again the ancient fleet moved position to relocate, its CIWS shooting those asteroid fragments which headed towards them, their shields taking the occasional hit as a large chunk of rock broke through.
On the bridge of the Minevan carrier, a cacophony of warning signals assaulted their ears. In moments, hails of projectiles from the asteroid field relatively above them filled the gap. They only got a slight warning from their comrades who'd walked straight into the minefield, but it wasn't nearly good enough to properly prepare. Bright orbs and shrapnel filled the vacuum above the carrier as Adaridov's 60mm CIWS emplacements tracked rogue targets and blew them out of existence with an immeasurable rate of fire. The first volley was over quick.
"XO, get me a damage report!" Schultes barked from his overlook, watching the explosives dilute in space through the bridge's viewport.
"Adaridov has sustained no hits. A destroyer's been damaged," There was a slight pause, "The Iroquois."
The Commissar had the Comms Officer swiftly patch him through to the ship on their right flank. "Captain, how bad is it? You still afloat?"
A nervous, yet blostered tone called back to him with only an audio feed, "Uh... Aft was hit pretty hard and some reactor power was cut, but no chain reaction detected. Some engine and maintenance compartments were wasted. Afflicted compartments sealed off and we should be able to operate, Sir."
"Good. Iroquois can dock for repairs after engagement; we can't risk a chain reaction right now," Schultes used the same signal as earlier, cutting the line. "Ops, I want you to scramble Rogue and Sledgehammer Squadron. Have the able Destroyers launch their first volley of Arb's and have the Hellions weave through the asteroid field after the first bombardment. They picked the wrong fight."
The Minevan Falcon-Class Destroyers let loose a simple payload of forty missile pods each, every one of them stopping ahead of the ship, readjusting, and firing straight up into the asteroid field. In the blink of an eye, the missiles shot with their miniature distortion drives, flashing to target with immeasurable speeds. From where they were at, the Minevan battlegroup was sitting ducks with their tops parralel to the field.
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Igla watched as the Templar and Union fleets destroyed two of his bombardment cannons, one being destroyed as hundreds of Phase missiles and Meson laser shots impacted its frame, detonating its ammunition in one massive explosion. The other was destroyed by return fire from the Templar fleet which crippled it to the extend where it couldn’t function any more as it slowly drifted as a floating hulk. As well as this 3 of his rigged up torpedo ships had been destroyed, one by the Minevan return fire from their rocket pods, another from the Nex shard and Prism weapons as they penetrated the asteroid field. The final one was destroyed by Carnaith as their burst rockets detonated in the rigged up ship before it could manoeuvre out the way. The fact he was massive annoyed about was the ploy used by Sparta but he would sure as hell rectify that by other means.
“Target that remaining Carnaithian ship that’s been crippled. And fire!” He shouted, once again the ship rocked as the huge shell sped towards the hapless ship, unable to evade he needed to take his frustration out by at least destroying one enemy ship. Though he was at least uplifted by the fact he had damaged the enemy fleet. And the remainder of his ships had managed to avoid enemy fire using the asteroids.
Reza watched as the battle unfolded in the asteroid field. Smiling to himself he sipped some of his drink that had been passed to him by one of his slaves. “Fools. This is only merely a distraction, a obstacle of things to come” He laughed and went back to watching intently as the allies slowly destroyed Iglas forces, he never liked the man anyway.
"To you I advise not to work, but to fight. To you I advice you no peace but victory. Let your work be a fight, let your peace be a victory."
It was out in the blink of an eye. There was no sound and fury, someone standing a couple feet away wouldn't even know the ship fired. They would probably much less suspect the sheer magnitude of what it had fired, eight spectral beams surging at the edge of lightspeed from the blinker Esophagealis, loaded not only with petajoules worth of potential energy but the vast methodical history of the Axioms and their technology, with its architecture and Tarot, the dread of its mythologies and the murmur of its languages, with its minerals and its birds and its fish, with its algebra and its fire.
All that the Axioms were and are from the Son of Man to the rise of the Archparadox was encoded in the polarity of the pi-meson beam, like a signal. Even though he slay them, Esophagealis trusted in them.
The surface of Tau Memetus was untouched. Perhaps one or two hundred protons in the entire planet had been knocked from their atoms, but otherwise the beam passed cleanly through the wholeness of the icy world. Opposite to it, another eight beams shot into the void to counteract recoil.
Its targets were clear cut and concise, eight beams, four ships. The Spartan battlecruiser and carrier were to receive two of such beams loaded with pions timed to explosively disintegrate within the ships; the other two couples of beams targeted a Templar carrier and the Nex battleship.
Down on the storm-swept ammonia seas of Tau Volaris, deep in an armoured bunker in the core of Tau Secundus, a city of scrap-iron and decay held together by spit and bailing wire, Zeon watched a live-feed transmission of the battle. as he watched, the Spartan carrier exploded in a burst of actinic light,for no apparent reason. other vessels of the slave fleets moved seemingly at random, no visible coordination, no apparent tactical initiative. the forces seemed ot be moving on their own, with only some loose principle and general purpose driving them towards their goal.
he almost wanted to clap at the charade.
he leaned back in his command chair, loosening the collar of his uniform tunic. a brief flare of flame from a lighter lit the glowing coal of a sinnastick, and he inhaled the spice-tinged smoke, looking though fully at the video. a smile crossed his face.
on the screen, a larger Vessel, one he recognized as an Athenia-class, made what appeared to be an emergency hyperjump, instants before the beam from the Blinker would have engineered a self-immolation of the ship's very molecules.
Let Reza figure out their plan on his own. the Upstart could use some humbling.
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Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 17, 2017 13:21:36 GMT
Tau Volaris: Main Assault Underway:
Corstasis deftly maneuvered his fighter among the tumbling asteroids, repositioning for the next phase of the operation. Contrary to popular belief, asteroids were not close-packed clusters of rocks less than a mile apart, as portrayed in ancient media: a small-enough ship with a good pilot could easily navigate through one without much, if any, damage.
Now, if those rocks happened to EXPLODE.....
He had roared in defiance as more of his ships fell victim to delay-fuse mines: while not as drastic an explosion as the first detonation, the debris clouds pushed out by the bursts had claimed several score more of his fellows. he could see on his long-range scanner the presence of other nation's ships. all had taken damage of some sort. But they were still in the fight. He praised their courage. He scowled, he knew his chances of escape were nigh impossible, everyone in the fleet had seen the Carrier suddenly explode. "Oh well" he said, a smirk replacing the scowl "let's hope I can take some of these bastards with me!"
With a sudden, clarifying change from a view of rocks to emptiness, he broke through the expanding debris field left by the first wave.....
And was in the clear.
"All ships, Accelerate to attack speed and close for phase 2" he called over the Comm. He received affirmative replies, one which cut off with a squawk of horror as another mine exploded on his scanner. "Keep your eyes open and be on alert for Flak" he went on "be prepared for evasive manoeuvres, and good luck!"
As he finished his speech, he saw the "hostile" IFF tags of the traitor vessels appear on his scanner. he smiled, the panel lights reflecting off his razor-sharp teeth.
"Come and get yours, filth." he growled "you won't find me an easy catch." And he roared a battle roar as the wing broke up, to reduce their exposure to AA fire, before charging in.
In ancient times, when navies had plied the seas instead of the stars, officers and so-called "experts" had claimed that the submarine would see the end of the traditional "surface Navy." the silent service, it was called. and the name was apt, for, at the beginning, no one saw them coming. and Navies, for a time, suffered for it. but, like all things, Submarines fell victim to adaptation and innovation, and for a time, Submarines became simply another vessel in the naval line-up. an important vessel, no doubt.....but nothing really special, aside from their ability to run below the waves.
Space, now....
Space offered new opportunities.
none of the attacking parties in the battlefield of Tau Volaris saw the dimensional rift, less than a meter wide, emerge far on the periphery of the battlefield. the swirling portal of energy, barely large enough to swallow an average human, produced a familiar appendage.
And the eye on the other end of the Periscope scanned the battlefield, knowing he could not be seen.
Captain Aleharain watched as the Tenebrae forces continued their barrage on the asteroid field as they cruisers up and over the field to connect with the Nex and Templar forces. One of the torpedo ships that was left had inadvertently manoeuvred into an opening and was filled with holes as the Tenebrae exotic weaponry ripped its light frame work apart and detonated the torpedo inside, sending burning shrapnel all over the field. The Rahdonah nodded to himself as the ships ENTITY surveyed the battlefield. The captain was less worried about the ambush forces now and more worried about the Paradox blinker that was now sniping allied ships from behind Tau Mementus, he immediately thought of shunting his fleet to take the ship out at close range but remembered that they had other methods to take out such a ship. He sat back slightly annoyed about the plan but all he could do was wait and hope none of his ships got hit, if they did take casulties... Well Aleharain thought, then I go kill that thing myself.
The Orion visibly shuddered as it fired rear thrusters to counteract the primary EMACCS gun being fired into the asteroids at the known enemy positions. as this happened, the other ships turned to face the field, solaris, missiles, and T5T10 EMACCS slugs racing at the jumble of rocks. Jaeris got up and walked to the fore area of the cabin, looking out at the battle through the small part of the viewport that he retracted the blast shields from. "launch two more squadrons of AM-VR2's. keep the SA/N-D1-G's for assault on enemy capital ships." he said, as he observed a line leading into the asteroids continuously exploding, presumably the path taken by Spartan fighter squadrons. The Carnaithian fighters sped towards the path taken by them, knowing it was at least a (somewhat)safer passage in.
As this happened, a nuclear device rushed towards the immobilized CINS 'Solace Of Stars', as it activated shields and began desperately firing weapons towards the large device, as well as launching escape pods. It was in vain, as the nuclear device impacted the shields of the ship and it visibly 'popped', sending blue-ish energy in all directions, and the kinetic energy transferred to the ship's hull and EMP waves fried all equipment in the now not hardened reacto zone, causing an even more violent end to the the already snapped-in-half ship. It exploded in a massive display, as the solaris fuel in the rear section all simultaneously detonated and sent plasmatic matter in at least five primary arcs, making it impossible to recover the wreck for at least a month from now. "bastards... Give respect for the crew of the 'Solace of Stars', and recover all intact escape pods. I want it done now." Jaeris said, as he looked out at the battle and the slow-moving solaris simply washed over the ships' shields doing no harm.
Loken ducked slightly as a explosion ripped through the Carrier Invincible, "What was that", The crew on the bridge looked at him and just looked as surprised as him, A Transmission came through the from Invincible, "Captain Loken this is the Invincible, we have sustained major damage, the Front four hangers are completely out of action all the pilots and crew from that sector have gone dark and we presume dead, Major hull damage to the front and aft section, Engines are still online, shields are down another shot will take us", Loken stood back from the news, "All ships change of plan, Are new main priority is the Carrier, keep with it at all costs, Cruiser Valiant can you keep up", A respond from the cruiser came in, "Sir we will try are best", "Good", Loken sat down in the command chair, "Keep going forwards and stay with the Nex"
The ship shook from the titanic explosion. Orras maintained his feet and looked out of the viewport as the Templar carrier suffered a colossal explosion towards the front. "What in the name of the Nexus just happened, damage report?" Orras asked, a slight hint of annoyance entering his tone. "Massive structural damage, a large chunk of the ship is gone sir. Engines, still operational, but all of our moulders are gone...along with nearly a quarter of the ship." one of the crew replied, slightly stunned by the information. "Maintain course. Ensure the Templars do the same. Recall some of the drones to speed up regrowth in the damaged area. Keep firing at the foes in the asteroids and continue our advance." he ordered staring out at the explosions in the field.
Erics ships continued to move forward, allowing the allied forces to take the ambush units in the asteroid field he looked at sensors and his face dropped "Shit... All units! The enemy main fleet is in formation at extreme range from the asteroid field! Forward units expect missile barrages and extreme range Tachyon Arrow shots!" Eric immediately ordered the the various Union ships close to the Minevan fleet who were out in front and began to make an advance flak screen to prevent long range missile hits. Thousands of rounds launched from the Mass Drivers as flak rounds sped into the void to explode in a mass of shrapnel and explosives. Their CIWS and Phase missile launchers ready to intercept anything that might come through "Schultze beware of incoming barrages, use our screen for your own defence. We will support you as best we can, tell us when and we can drop the shield and fire our own barrages" Eric contacted the Minevan commander.
It wasn't more than a minute after the USM's initial volley until Rogue and Sledgehammer Squadrons were making final preparations for their launch. Lieutenant Tarik Amirmoez, the designated leader of Rogue Squadron, gave the enlisted crew in the hangar a final thumbs up before the cockpit securely sealed. For a moment, there was pitch blackness where he sat. All at once, his consoles and displays lit up, showing a dynamic one-hundred and eighty degree view of the outside world with external cameras. Tarik patted the top of his helmet, one final check to make sure everything was airtight and ready to go, before running a simple diagnostic and opening his squadron's frequency. Two small video feeds appeared in the left peripheral of his visor, showing the faces of his two squadmates; Junior Lieutenant Jegan and Ensign Renald.
"This is Rogue-Lead. Talk to me," Tarik let out with a tempered voice.
"Rogue-One, all clear," Jegan replied.
"Rogue-Two, all clear," Renald followed suit, his voice showing a tinge of nervousness. It was his first combat jump and they were headed straight into the frying pan. The hangar that'd accommodated three Hellion fighters had their craft lined up side-by-side on the catapult deck. Hands firmly on the controls, Tarik waited for the moment that the grip would launch them right out the side of the ship and into the unknown. Soon enough, that moment came. Everything secured, the hangars came open, allowing the Hellions to be launched. As Tarik was smashed back into his seat, he saw the rear of the sleek Hellion variable fighters of Sledgehammer Squadron. Six variable fighters total, and they were hunting a torpedo ship.
"Rogue, Sledgehammer, be advised, Friendly forces have deployed a field of flak. Transmitting tacmap information to you HUD now. Ancestors be with you." Tarik eyes only narrowed as the Commissar's voice warned them over the com.
Upon the bridge, Schultes smirked at the generous gesture from the Union fleet lagging behind them. "I've got Hellions who're going to drive the enemy out of the minefield. The assistance is appreciated, just be wary of your surroundings. They don't have a chance."
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Reza having watched the Paradox Blinker actually do something monumentally helpful laughed at the circumstances “The bastards are not cowards after all... sneaky devils I like their style!” He thought some more, it was awfully isolated... and if the allies deployed stealth ships it would be vulnerable... “Astinos I want a Charbydis class cruiser to jump to support the Paradox Blinker, Althos I want a Destroyer to accompany them, protect that ship, we need it intact as long as we can” Reza sent the signal and received two confirmations. In an instant the two ships jumped away and in moments appeared near the Blinkers position. The Cruiser immediately started scanning the area, having been briefed about possible stealth incursions prior to the battle Reza didn’t take any chances.
The main fleet however was now in extreme range of the asteroid field, the many long range guns of the combined fleet started targeting the advanced units, the crystalline Nex, the blocky Templars, the small Minevans and the Triangular Union vessels. Large barrages of Nuclear munitions and other exotic natures were fired towards the fleets in the hope to glean some long range lucky hits. Along with this Reza watched as the Trident class battleship fired its first burst of Tachyon Arrows, the yellow bolts invisible to Reza speeding away, unlikely to hit but never the less one could be hopeful.
Igla was thrown from his chair as his ship shook from a Carnaithian EMAC round which penetrated the shields “KILL THEM, RETURN FIRE AND WIPE THEM OUT!” He roared in anger, the Carnaith ship he had targeted had been killed but the return fire had been strong. Loosing his other Bombardment cannon to the Tenebrae fleet and nearly all of his torpedo ships. He cursed as his ship fired a badly aimed round in anger and he watched as the last of the torpedo ships was intercepted by Minevan fighters.
Igla turned to see the Carnaithian fighters which had entered the asteroid field behind the Spartan fighters. All were heading towards his ship. The ships puny CIWS started to sling out shots but it was in vain, the various fighter craft lined up on attack runs and he only had time enough to mutter a curse before the attack groups hit.
Getting a detailed view of the battlefield from the geoneutrinos emitted by Tau Tertius -which passed through Tau Memetus in the same ghostly fashion as the pions- the blinker observed with intellectual curiosity the movements of the fleets. The small targeting lag was easily made up by the ship's predictive calculations, which so far had sent 8 beams with pinpoint accuracy.
The spherical turrets adjusted by thousandths of a degree, directed by atomically perfect gyroscopes and magnetically suspended servoes to remain perfectly still, as any minor variation in the ships' movement could cause them to move by miles.
Eight more shots were fired, cirected at the ships that had shown the most activity in battle. The ships that had been spared by the first volley were now brought on the crosshairs; the Minevan carrier, the two Union carriers, the Carnaith battleship and the two Spartan cruisers were fired upon with the ghostly beams.
The two last shots, directed at the two Union ships setting up the flak screen, ended up being off-target by a few arcmiliseconds, causing enormous explosions to appear right next to the ship.
The two last beams had been misfired at the last secon: the blinker had slightly vibrated.
The vibrations came from the ship's ejector tubes which began firing, with no target in particular, large unpowered SLBM-like missiles, fanning out in four directions as the two rebel ships came in. The missiles quickly activated their retro-boosters to bring themselves to a halt in relation to the ships, one of them almost crashing into the rebel cruiser.
The periscope of the submarine had been spotted, spurring the blinker into immediate defensive action. Droves of meaconing devices and decoys were fired from the ship in volleys as it reactivated its engines and fired an intense beam towards the small dimensional opening to fry the periscope's optics.
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To close the gap faster, Tarik ordered his men to go full-throttle. Sledgehammer followed Rogue's example, soaring straight into the asteroid field within a few moments to cut down the time between their interception and another possible barrage. An indicator blinked on his HUD, showing the general direction and the estimated origin of the torpedo volley that had damaged the Iroquois.
Once they'd broken into the edge of the field, Tarik deployed, ordering Jegan and Renald to do so as well. Their sleek variable fighters swiftly unfolded into the form of humanoid mechs, eighteen meters tall and toting scaled armaments. Tarik used a nearby asteroid to land and cling on momentarily, shimmying around to one end with his squadron in tow. Tarik's search continued for a minute, both squadrons dexterously manoeuvring around the cluttered field with ease and grace, covering all possible angles and being especially watchful for enemy fighters, point defences, or a mine if they were so lucky to spot on.
Tarik weaved around a particularly large obstruction, and the rigid form of the impromptu torpedo ship was revealed to him. He smirked. In his Hellion's displays, no obvious CIWS or otherwise showed themselves to him.
"Rogue One, Rogue Two, watch my back. I'm headed in for the kill," Tarik slammed his throttle forward, his back thrusters bursting to life to send him hurdling towards the enemy ship causing such duress to their forces.
Tarik's Hellion aimed its hefty railgun rifle at the torpedo ship, giving a sharp strafe parallel to the enemy contact. With the simple press of a button, he began unloading massive slugs to the ship's structure. He scowled as the adrenaline pumped his veins, calling out to his enemy as if some sort of taunt. "Suck carbon!"
Jaeris turned suddenly, peering at the sudden damage to the Orion IV, it had taken damage to the left-frontal hull, barely missing the EMACCS but severely crippling the close-range missile banks and the left side's frontal laser projector, creating a massive void in fighter defence and halving the long-range assault power of the ship. "We need to take out whatever is doing that NOW!!!" Jaeris exclaimed, as the Orion readied it's two primary turrets for the upcoming battle with the enemy fleet. "Captain Lento, report damage." Jaeris said, as he looked over the damage reports of the allied fleet. "long-range frontal assault power is halved, and upper-left section of forward hull is vulnerable to fighter strikes, approximately 25% of missiles detonated, sir, with major damage to fore superstucture. activating nano-repair modules." replied the captain of the Orion.
The AM-VR2's sped towards the torpedo ship, arming cluster missiles and charging the wing-mounted light EMACCS guns. they swung around to the other side of the ship, as the Minevan Helions fired relentlessly at the ship with their weapons. The AM-VR2's fired weapons in a crazed blaze of weapons discharge, dumping their entire first load of missiles at the ship, and firing solaris-coated T5T10 slugs into any visible viewing ports as they swung back for another run.
Schultes' grip on the railing tightened as the Adaridov's superstructure rattled. Ahead of him, torn bits of the ship flew in every direction and flashes of light briefly emerged. A slight shockwave followed, throwing some of the bridge crew off-balance.
The Commissar's teeth gritted, a nasty scowl embedded on his face. "XO, what the -FUCK- was that?!"
"Unknown, sir!" The younger officer shouted back to him, voice riddled with intensity, "Bow was hit pretty hard; we just lost 34% mass. Hangar clusters Alfa through Delta gone, sir!"
Eric watched as the bright flashes erupted in his fleet. His cruisers, literally just scraped a miss, their shields absorbing the bright energy waves from the pion decay. Thanks to the Blinker being off slightly it saved the lives of the two Union ships. However as Eric surveyed the damage markers. His carriers were not so lucky. The first Nova class which had already lost its shields was hit by the pion emitter shot full square in the right side. The explosion rocked the ship to the side as its entire right section of hull merely exploded. The ship groaned as the superstructure strained under the pressure and emergency bulkheads came down to stop more decompression. The second carrier was more lucky, the Decaying particles exploding in the bow of the carrier and destroying its Graviton pulsar completely. Both carriers had sustained heavy damage and Eric cursed.
“By Umbrea... The power...” Eric immediately ordered his carriers to create their defensive area shields in an attempt to stop anymore shots, he knew it was futile but he had no other chance.
The incoming missiles from the extreme range barrage deployed by the main rebel fleet now entered the flak screen the Union had produced, most were destroyed by the wall of explosions and shrapnel and any that passed to try and hit Union or Minevan vessels were destroyed by the Unions CIWS or Phase missiles set to intercept. The Tachyon Arrow barrage however typically went wide and hit nothing but empty space and but a few asteroids.
Aleharains ship rocked slightly as some of the incoming extreme range nuclear barrages missed their targets and impacted in the asteroid fields, the large nuclear explosions sending large chunks of rock into his fleet. The CIWS systems tried their best to keep them at bay however some were just too numerous. The Tenebrae captain had ordered his fleet to meet up and support the Templar and Nex elements at the front of the fleet, and start the rendevouz to then push forward into the enemies main fleet. As he approached he could visibly see damage on some of his allies ship, most likely from that damn Blinker... he opened a channel.
“This is Captain Aleharain, I am here to support your element, begin forming up your forces into a defensive formation, my drone fighters can help protect you from the incoming missile barrages” As he said this he gave the order to his Tenebro carrier-destroyer, the ship then ordered its various launched drones which were currently in defensive formation to screen ahead of the 3 small fleets. The small but powerful fighters engaging any torpedo or missile that got close alongside the various ships CIWS.
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The Torpedo ship In the asteroid field watched the Minevan Hellion fighter mechs entered its area, the captain tried in vain to move the ship and shouted at the inexperienced crew to back out of the field to link up with the main fleet, essentially to retreat. However the attack crafts railgun shots impacted the small ship and its light shield generators began to fail. The minor defense guns studding the hull began to fire solid slug rounds but to no avail. The Minevan Hellions were too fast. One of the Hellions broke off and flew straight for the bridge of the rigged up ship. It raised its monofilament blade and the captain and screw screamed in terror as the Hellion swiped the bridge in half, decompressing the whole section and as it flew by also point blank railgun rounded the engine housing. It flew off to rejoin as the torpedo ship spiralled out of control into an asteroid and exploded violently into thousands of pieces.
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The silent shape that moved between dimensions, untouchable in it's current state of existence, closed in on the large targets that hovered at the periphery of the field of battle. the loss of it's main periscope had hindered the ship little: the visual identification was only for the sake of the crew: the positions and movements of the opponents craft and ordnance were locked into the sub's tactical computer. The crews of the Submarine service were selected from beings who fit a certain psychological profile, beings willing to give up their names, their pasts, and their prospective futures for the good of the empire. none were allowed to marry, have families waiting for them, or know of the locations of others of their kind unless the sitiuation required it. Sparta's Shatterbeam was the Sledgehammer of the Empire, true.
But sometimes, operations called for a pinprick. Right into the opponent's heart.
And it was with this pinprick that the submarine deployed a barrage of seeker missiles. These tore out of the dimensional pocket at near light-speed, thundering towards the opponent's vessels.
The warning lights on the Spartan Charybdis-class cruiser immediately lit up like a christmas tree, and it sent a burst of targeting data to the other ships in its area. within seconds, the enemy was alerted to the Submarine's presence and had data on the sub's location and disposition.
The missiles thundered through the void. Destiny awaited.
A second flash accompanied the appearance of the volley of missiles as one of the munitions discharged by the blinker craft went up in a nuclear fireball. Inside the evaporating warhead, a hundred and a half lasers were quickly aimed, directing the enormous power of the nuclear warhead into a multitude of thin, precise beams that vaporized the waves of missiles.
However, the missiles were not the only things hit, as the nuclear devices detonated in extreme proximity of the two ships that had ironically come to its aid. The small destroyer was consumed by the nuclear detonations, the cruiser was only slightly better off. As sympathetic detonations finished the smaller vessel, a hailstorm of white-hot shrapnel came down upon the blinker ship, crashing like a wave against the ghostly bulkhead of its fuzzy armour and peppering the ship with small impacts.
As the armour was overwhelmed by the pieces of the immolated destroyer, it posed no obstruction to the missiles that managed to make it through the web of high-powered lasers. As it was hit and its aft emitters were taken out of action, the hull of the large spacecraft bent from the shockwave, crushing the internal turrets on the port side; silencing the powerful batteries that had been raining death upon the allied fleet.
As the ship buckled and large cracks appeared on its superplastic structure, it still managed to fire off retaliation shots, aiming the last undetonated nuclear lasers at the portals the torpedoes had come from and firing them off.
the Weapons officer aboard the submarine had but an instant to shout out a warning before the first traces of the laser tore into the subspace pocket the submarine inhabited. What happened next was one of those moments that occasionally occur in warfare. Moments like HMS Hood's 20 Degree turn to starboard which allowed the shell from the Bismarck to penetrate her magazines. Moments like the british corporal refusing to shoot the german messenger, who turned out to be none other than Adolf Hitler. Moments like Mclellans's scouts fidning Robert E. Lee's orders wrapped around three cigars, which led to the union victory at Antietam.
The beams successfully slammed into the ship.....and immediately cut themselves off. For the object which they had hit was none other than the portal emitters that had created the microwormholes for the missiles to launch. The energy was cut off like the flipping of a lightswitch, and the beams died away. But the damage was bad enough. The submarine rocked in the void as the forward area of the hull swelled and burst asunder.
While the change of events was occurring on the other side of Tau memetus, the beams fired at the main fleet carried on, oblivious to the fate of their source. The remaining Spartan cruisers had scattered and remained moving, trying to avoid whatever had struck down the carrier. here and their their MAC guns roared, driving slugs in the general direction of the enemy fleet.
Their mobility, armour, shields or firepower were useless when the beams struck the first of the two.
The bow of the cruiser melted like a crayon under a blowtorch, and explosions rippled throughout the hull, thriving on the venting oxygen before they died in oblivion
But it's sacrifice proved providential. for at the same moment that the hulk died in fire, it's drift wrought by it's explosion managed to put it in the precise location to absorb the beam directed at it's sister. the ruined ship, her bow reduced to slag, now collapsed into something out of a van gof painting, before her mass was reduced to vapour.
All of this happened in the space of seconds.
As with the submarine, one of those things that happen in war.
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Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 17, 2017 13:21:54 GMT
Tau Volaris: Main Assault Underway:
Space rippled around the Atehnia as it slammed back into realspace. aboard the cruiser, crewmen shuddered at thier posts as reality reasserted itself. "Report" Salvez ordered on the bridge, as the tacscanner reset and the battlefield appeared once more. "Ma'am" Faison reported in his high-pitched squeak " short jump successful. we are now on the far side of the asteroid field." "However" the Scuridaean went on "the fleet appears to have suffered severely in our absence. We have lost both the carrier and one of the cruisers, and it appears the Submarine the Supreme overlord sent us has been put out of action for now." Salvez cursed. for all her combat prowess, Sparta often found itself on the receiving end of the technological sorcery unleashed by the stars. when she could not rely on brute strength or tactical initiative, to close with the enemy before such wizardry could be put to use, she often came out worse for wear. what good was fighting prowess or tactics if the opponent could sit back and pick you off at their leisure? She sometimes wondered if commanders had thought as she did now when Automatic weapons had first appeared on the battlefield. yes, they had suffered...but they had adapted. And so would Sparta. Kn time. "Any technology, sufficiently advanced...." she muttered, before straightening. "What is the status of the others?"
Jaeris turned around, his ships had entered the Union's group shield soon before, and grouped up with the Minevans, and of course, the Union forces. He was getting a hail from the Spartans. "Captain," Comms said,
"Spartan comms hail incoming. redirecting to your bridge seat, sir." He stated.
"Thank you" Jaeris replied, as he returned after a few seconds of studying the enemy formation. "Captain Jaeris reporting in. All forces intact minus one Ozark IV destroyer, and long-range fire capacity of the Orion IV is halved. seventy-two percent of my small craft wings are still available." He stated the message into the air after returning to his seat, and then turning to his own control dial. "Long-range scanners, get me a status report on incoming fire and the enemy fleet." He said, shortly after a decent-sized holographic projection appeared above the planning table in the middle of the bridge, and Jaeris walked up to study it. "wait for Union suggestions unless i give another order. all ships to full shields, I don't care if we're under Union shield cover, and prepare long range weapons on the Orion." He finished.
Orras looked out at the void of space to see distant twinkles of the Tachyon arrows. One flew past the bridge its light near blinding illuminated it all. "Fire torpedoes!" Orras ordered and the space infront of the Nex ships was filled with the fire of shard cannons and amongst them the colossal Diamantus torpedoes speeding off towards their foe. The Nex ships continued forwards matching their allies speed as shapers and the crystal itself worked to repair the damage that had claimed such a large section of 'The Storm'.
Loken shuddered as one of the Cruisers had a colossal explosion on its shields, "WHAT WAS THAT" he shouted.
"Sir Cruiser Noble has taken an heavy hit causing its shields to go offline and damge to the front, it is still operational though"
"That’s good at least, Lets just pray nothing happens again till we are clear" Loken said sitting back in the command chair, "Ok lets get a report on those ships"
"Yes sir" The ensign said in reply, He looked over the data coming in from the other ships, "Sir Something had hit Cruiser Noble, Its shields offline and could remain that way, Invincible is still going but as the commander said earlier, and Cruiser Valiant has got shields online again but is losing Engine power, Cruiser Dawn is going fine, and we have taken no flak so can continue with the main fleet"
Loken looked at him and nodded, He leant back in his chair when a Video transmission came through.
"Templars report", Loken put his thumb and fore finger on the bridge of his nose and shook his head. As the Spartan commander contacted him.
"We are fine nothing serious".
"Good now you must..."
"Sorry what was that I can't hear you the connection is dodgy" Loken was scrupling up a piece of paper in front of himself.
"Its a video call I can see you with the paper", Loken looked up.
"Dammit, well got to go" Loken hung up the call, "Bloody Spartan Cowards", He looked at a soldier to his left, "Why do we listen to them again" The soldier shrugged and Loken went back to commanding the Templar fleet
Aleharains fleet had now moved into position alongside the Templar and Nex fleet. Both of his allies had begun to launch long range torpedoes and missiles and he to ordered the Tenebrae ships to start firing their long range weapon systems towards the rebel fleet. The Null tech missiles streaking out of ancient launchers to smite the enemies of the Tenebrae collective.
“Sir missiles are away, fighters are fanning out to cover us” one of the bridge crew replied, the exact positions were shown to the Capitan via his link with the ships ENTITY.
“Excellent, message our allies and tell them we are standing by to aid any attack, also tell the Spartans we await orders, if necessary they can join their remaining ships up with our fleet for protection” Aleharain replied. It was going to be a tough push to the enemy fleet.
Eric grunted “So the Spartans decided to rejoin us... How kind of them...” He responded to the Spartan call. “This is Captain Eric Rane, I have two carriers damaged but my cruisers are intact, 84% of attack craft are still operational” He surveyed the scene, the group shield took a stray Tachyon Arrow shot and fluctuated as the massive power drain followed. Eric scowled as more long range barrages were inbound “I want shields to full, protect the carriers, and program the KKVs to cover them. I want all phase missile batteries to commence full barrage at long range, target the heavy ships including the Trident battleship!” As Eric ordered hundreds of still working missile tubes studded in the Carriers hulls as well as the side sponsons of the Dart cruisers opened up and spewed forth massive waves of missiles, the Union let down the flak shield as the missiles went through and then re activated it, the phase missiles well underway to the targets. Eric noticed the Carnaithian contingent following his forces up, getting a direct line to them he sent them a message “Form your forces up behind ours, we are going to make a push soon” He turned to coms “Send that to the Minevans too” the officer nodded. Eric knew the time was coming for the main assault.
Jaeris heard the Union message, "Orion, take rear position behind the Union ships, 'Sickles', below and in front, and position this ship above and behind the Orion."
"Sir, Spartan battlecruiser has re-entered system." The Ops Officer called to Schultes. On the viewport of the Behemoth displayed the tactical map of the battle, quickly zooming in and indicating a flashing red blip as the returning Spartan ship. Schultes cocked his head, narrowing his eyes in confusion. Instead, the veteran Commissar quickly gave his attention to more pressing matters. With a grandiose swing of his arm, Schultes gave his crew an order.
"Tether the bow, don't let it drift far. Sortie some Hellion teams for a quick exam and possible field repair."
The fabric of space tears apart as crimson swirls screamed their way through from the alternate realm of Hyperspace, its cosmic energies burning brightly in a sea of darkness. Groaning and crackling in a silent vacuum. Lightning shot out from these portals, materializing five red and grey ships, typical of the Interstellar Republic of Singapore Naval Command (IRS NAVCOM) military spacecraft colour scheme. This small strike force, a special squad hastily gathered and dispatched on orders by the Karoskaya Administration, was consisted of a leading Sovereign-class Battleship, 2 Crusader-class Cruisers, a Supercarrier and a souped-up Temujin-class Destroyer, outfitted with extra shield generators and a new experimental Tachyolaser sensor suite. Admiral Shakir, the leader of the specialised strike force commanding the fleet from his RNS Gallant Battleship, recovered from the nausea travelling at superluminal speeds in the Hyperspace. Bringing his displays online, Shakir viewed the battle that has passed between the Allies and the Rebels. Whatever happened, it was fierce. Lifeless burnt out carcasses of ships from both sides were floating around in space, at the mercy of Tau Volaris’s orbit, their skeletons of a hull still glowing red and orange at the edges; the damages were fresh.
“We were too late…Comns tell our Allies we are here, and we apologize for the delay since we encountered anomalies in Hyperspace,”
“Yes Sir!”
“All other ships under my command! Spread out, and prepare for combat! Activate your weapons, prime the ARBMs, and get every active-duty pilot to his unit now! We will initiate attack on hostiles on my go!”
The Admiral then brought up a scaled holo map of the system, with his forces, the Allies and the rebel fleet represented as coloured markers. He needed to plan his next moves fast, before the rebels knew what hit them.
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The mighty ships on the rebel fleet were now dwarfed by the enormous multi-purpose vessel that had microjumped into formation. Battered and slightly burnt, large cracks ran the lenght of its plastic quartz hull, several of its spikes were gone. The gravity field around it fluctuated to compensate for the loss of some of its engines; the last jury rigged ships of the formation were pulled off-course by its massive tidal force.
Trillions upon trillions of synaptic calculations flashed past the quantically suspended block of monocrystalline platinum the ship called its CPU coalesced into a dizzying whirlwind of consciousness to form a thought: the ship had not yet begun to fight.
In the fractal maze of the ship's sapience, a consciousness was formed on a whim, called into existence by the billions of algorythms that lived, evolved and died in a virtual ecosystem. Its logarithmic paths crystallized and formed into Turing machines describing the prefrontal and language cortices of a human. In a nanosecond, the Esophagealis had gotten itself a human consciousness. It needed one to address Reza.
"You got ahead of yourself." The AI subroutine informed. "And your lack of faith has cost the lives of two crews. But there is still an opportunity to redeem our tarnished performance to the eyes of our most dearly-held enemies."
The vessel adjusted its position, eclipsing itself from the allied fleet with the rebel formation.
"The enemy has regrouped some of its ships in a collective shield, we would be most honoured if you would free them from the yoke, Most Honoured Lord Admiral Type IV. Accept the expression of our dearest feelings."
Just as the conscience disintegrated back into a nothingness of time-predictive, relativistic calculation and battlefield management algorythms. As it did, in its dying synapses it toppled the first domino in a nigh-infinite series that brought the rest of the weaponry of the ship online.
Several radially-arranged ports opened around the middle of the ship, spewing forth sixteen large, prism-shaped containers. Alongside the objects, hundreds of decoys were dispatched, hiding the real systems amongst them as the ship's capacitors began loading up with the enormous output of its reactor.
Reza lifted an eyebrow, he had never been talked to like that before by one of his supposed subordinates but when he realised the Blinker could seriously cripple his fleet and ship he thought it best not to threaten it. Though he was sure his Tachyon Arrows would give it something to worry about. Either way he had bigger fish to fry. The enemy fleet was starting to regroup and Reza had seen the Union produce their group shields to cover some of their allies. The Blinker was right the shield had to be taken down.
“All ships target long range weapon systems on the Union group shield, smash it down and pave the way for our Paradox allies to follow up with a barrage” Reza said aloud, the command was given and the Rebel fleet positioned itself slightly to get the best fire arcs. All along the fleet missile tubes launched ordnance and the Capitol vessels unleashed another barrage of Tachyon Arrows, their invisible FTL forms flying at the enemy fleet. It was then Reza made another decision.
“Launch fighters” The two massive hangar bays of the Trident class battleship unleashed its waves of fighters and bombers and the Rebel Spartan and Tenebrae carriers did the same, the swarms of attack craft moving in to support the rebel fleet, he knew it was closing to the end. He could feel it. Reza grinned the thought of getting a victory here was intoxicating however he quelled the feeling for he knew to underestimate now was to loose immediately.
Reza also watched as the long range fire from some of the enemy fleet came in, mostly missiles and torpedoes he watched as his fighters and CIWS engaged them, flak rounds and AA fire destroyed incoming missiles at range however once they got close Reza twitched as he could see the first hits scored on his fleet. He watched as the Rebel Tenebrae cruiser on the right flank took several hits from Union phase missiles, the projectiles merely bypassing the shields and hull to detonate inside the ship itself, medium damage was reported and He watched as one of the large Nex torpedoes which had ignored the AA fire impact one of the Templar rebel cruisers, the strange crystal substance impacting its shields to then start growing on the energy field. As the shields collapsed the Crystal detonated in a bright flash blowing a chunk of the Templar cruiser out. Reza cursed he was starting to take damage.
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Jaeris observed the overlook hologram as the enemy launched their swarms of fighters. He turned to comms. "Comms, activate open lin to all C.I.N. warships in the union shields" He said, as movement began to peak in the enemy sector. "Comm link open, Sir." Comms replied. "Prepare fighters for launch if needed. Orion, arm three burst missiles and forty percent of remaining 'Splinter' Missiles, lay main turrets on best determined positions, charge primary and secondary EMACCS guns, and arm starboard long-range laser as well as CIWS and ECM. get it done. As for the rest of you, arm all long-range weaponry and prepare fighter wings." He finished, as the proposed movements made minute changes to the ships' animations in the Hologram. He peered at the movements of the allied fleet, as well as taking mental notes of the 'Blinker' that was now visible behind the enemy fleet, but currently untouchable unless by warp missiles or an all-out charge. He watched as the other fleets made their moves as three wings of AM-VR2's flew past his ship.
"Admiral" Faison reported "the massive enemy vessel is deploying a large number of objects towards the edge of the battlefields." "What are they?" Salvez asked. The hugecraft had suddenly appeared at the rear of the enemy fleet: while not as massive as some of Sparta's battleships, her size in comparison to the other enemy vessels clearly denoted it as something important.
Faison's brow furrowed as he read the reports coming in from the scanning crews. "We can't quantify their express purpose ma'am: the sheer number of the devices prevents accurate scans, but they appear to be some sort of transmitter devices." Transmitting what? Salvez wondered. Just as quickly, she made a decision. "I don't care what they are, we didn't send them out. deploy shatter rounds for the MAC guns. let's see how many we can take out." "Affirmative" Faison said, plugging in data. the weapon officer nodded at his station, inputting the data required. While Sparta did not use onboard AI to the level other nation's did, she did make use of computerized mechanisms for tasks too cumbersome or dangerous for Organics. The Ship's gunnery computer noted the ordnance deployment, and racked up two of the massive shells into the Battlecruiser's main guns. on the other side of the fleet, the Cruiser was doing likewise for it's own. "We have the target cloud in sight, ma'am" the Gunner reported on the bridge of the Athenia "it's Spreading fast and moving away from the fleet." "Best not waste time, then. laucnh and reposition to avoid counterfire." Salves ordered. "Understood, ma'am" Faison replied, sending the message to the Navigator.
"FIRE!"
The Nex forces slowed their advance so as to fall in amongst the Templar ships. Across the void of space Orras looked out at the Templar bridge where he knew Loken stood. Engaging the Nex/Templar comms channel he spoke "Am I the only one feeling this is too easy?" he asked with a slight tone of concern. The Torpedoes began to reload and fire as he spoke, the other Nex weapons out of range to achieve anything at this point.
"No Orras, this is feeling to easy, we may have taken damage but something big is coming i can feel it" He replied, He looked around at the consoles, he turned to face a soldier standing there, "Sergeant go and find the Ordanace Officer and tell him to keep up the barrage on the enemy fleet", The man saluted and ran off, "Captain, Invincible is awaiting orders", Loken stood there for a moment, "Tell them to launch more fighters and make those fighters stay close", A couple of minutes later fighter squadrons launched and remained close to the fleet, The Ship shuddered as the colossal guns kept up there Barrage, "Big guns never tire" Loken said to himself, "Lets hope they damage the enemy though" He said finally before sitting down in the command chair.
Aleharain watched as his missiles impacted some of the enemy ships, doing only minor damage at such range the captain knew it was more than he hoped for. He was alerted to the sudden destruction of one of the Tenebrae escorts by his ENTITY, the event happening so quickly he himself didn’t quite register it. The escort itself exploded violently as a long range Tachyon Arrow shot had got extremely lucky and hit the ship head on. The FTL speed particles hitting the small ship with such force that the bow merely disintegrated and the main reactors were breached. Aleharain felt the ship die as the grid between the Tenebrae vessels conveyed the death screams of the crew and the machine to the entire fleet.
“May their souls go on fighting in the realm of the gods” Aleharain replied, the crew of the Battlecruiser saluting their deceased comrades.
“All batteries open fire! I want the enemy dead now!” Came the reply as the dragon like captain, infuriated with the loss of a ship ordered the missile units to increase long range strikes against the rebel fleet.
Eric watched the hits that were scored on the enemy ships and nodded to himself as the crew let out a small cheer, one of the enemy ships had been hit by Union phase missiles. However Eric was soon frowning as the group shield violently flashed and began rippling like a pebble dropped in water. Multiple Tachyon Arrow shots impacted the large shield and Eric knew while inaccurate against such a large target the shots became dangerous. He watched as the shield was reduced to low levels and a few more direct hits would finish it off.
“Tell the carriers to increase the group shield integrity with everything they can. I want all fighters to move forward and begin to engage any enemy missiles. If need be they can engage enemy attack craft in the open” Eric ordered. The various Firestorm fighters and Eagle Eye bombers sped off into the void, hoping to intercept any more nuclear munitions or attack the enemy attack craft should they launch an attack themselves.
“What the hell is that sir” Eric turned to see the Blinker deploying what seemed to be... mines of some kind, Eric didn’t know exactly what they were but he knew it wasn’t good news.
“Sir I'm detecting a massive power build up from the enemy fleet. They have deployed ECM and counter measures and I cant make out exactly where its coming from” The sensor operator reported. But Eric knew.
“Its the Blinker! It has to be! I want all ships to brace! Tell our allies to maximise shields and prepare for imminent attack!”
Several dozen Hellion teams encircled the carrier, confirming the outward damage and priming tethers to try and keep the ship in one piece for impromptu field repairs when they got the chance. The vast majority of them had sortied out to run security on the rest of the battlegroup, closer towards the asteroid fields to patrol the space around the destroyers further from the carrier. Of the original seven-hundred and sixty-eight Hellions aboard the Adaridov, only five-hundred remained, paired with countless basic fighter and gunship losses. A good three-hundred of the Hellions manoeuvred around the Falcons, some sweeping by in their sleek jet variations. Others demobilized and made resolute sweeps and clears in stationary humanoid forms, armaments at the ready. The rest were preparing to sortie or simply covering the Behemoth-Class and her flight-deck.
Aboard the mother ship’s bridge, Schultes clenched his teeth. He didn't even have to look at the tacmap's warnings to see the bright flashes connect with the Union's deployed group shield and watching it flicker. Yet, his facial expression remained static aside from a furrow brow. He never had a trust for shielding systems such as this. He activated the ship's intercom, shouting out the order, "All hands, brace for impact!"
Corstasis grimaced as he heard the broadcasted warnings from the allied fleet. the few hundred fighters that remained in his wing we scattered to the edges of the battle, as planned. but would this be enough to save them? "all units, crank shields to maximum: divert from Bio Support if needed, and BRACE."
Jaeris heard the union warning; "All fighters RTB! ALL shields to maximum and brace for impact!!!" He said, not knowing what was to come.
Orras smirked as his allies pushed their shields to maximum. He could hear Azar chuckling in the background.
Loken got the message, "ALL SHIELDS TO FULL POWER", The ships all put there shields to maximum
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The shatter rounds never made it anywhere near their target. While they were still hundreds of kilometers away from the unknown artefacts released into the void by the Blinker, four panel split off from the mine-like devices, revealing four openings on their sides.
An explosive charge and a rocket motor, ancient weapons of warfare were now used to prime a far more sophisticated, far more lethal weapon. Attached to the rockets, four cable-like antennae extended several kilometers in a cruciform pattern. In their intersection, right in the middle of the device nanoengraved with ancient passages of the Syntagma, a high-yield beta-cycle nuclear warhead came to life, connected to a bank of capacitors. Origami chains
The signal was so strong that the antennae and the emitter device were turned into plasma in a couple miliseconds. Four huge fireballs flashed into being to the flanks of the Blinker, softly showering it with radiation. In unison, the Blinker's own powerful antennae fired off a potent signal, the Blinker's heat management systems had to fight to keep the huge antenna that lined up the entire 23.3km of the ship from vaporizing.
Yet the nuclear detonations, another vestigial weapon from an ancient time, were not the weapons either and acted as merely the final primer for what had actually been fired. From the epicenters of the ionic blasts, an invisible wave of immense intensity made its way for both groups of the allied fleet, charged with enough scalar energy to rip a hole in the vaccuum energy state. The intersections were twofold, centred around the battlegroups centred around the Union and Templar ships.
Enormous areas of space suddenly found themselves flooded with scalar interference, pushing the vaccuum energy of space around them into a negative value. As the signal disappeared, the energy vaccuum violently rubber banded back into its original state, causing gigantic liberations of energy that almost hid the fleet in a shroud of high-intensity radiation.
Reza was taken aback as well as the crew on the ship as the enemy fleet literally lit up. The entirety of space around the fleets were turned into shining bright light as the space detonated around them.
“By Scars hammer...” Reza commented, the rebel fleet stopped firing as the various factions merely sat back and watched. Not sure if the allied forces had been completely destroyed or vaporised altogether.
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Eric threw up his hands as the view screen instantly polarised. The ship vibrated violently and a huge whine pierced the air as Eric heard the void coolers attached to the hull overdrive. Warning sirens blared as the light died down and the ship stopped rocking.
“I want a full damage report RIGHT NOW!” He shouted. The people on the bridge snapped out of their confusion and filed the reports in. Erics ships shields were now at 30%, same with the other two Dart class cruisers, thankfully they had survived and their fighters had narrowly missed the attack. Sadly that’s where the good news ended.
The Carrier which had its shields reduced to 0 and its right side blown off by the Blinkers Pion weapons had merely detonated. The Violently detonations overcoming the ship as its reactors had then overloaded. Eric saluted the men and women aboard the ship as the message of its death came in and He viewed that the other carrier had also taken its shields down to 0% and had suffered additional hull damage where the pion had struck before. The Scalar weaponry vaporising the already damaged bulkheads below, the entire side of the carrier now being taken out.
Eric cursed loudly, the group shield was now down and the entire allied fleet had taken extreme damage, he watched as the reports from the other ships came in.
“We need that thing dead RIGHT NOW”
'The Storm' shook violently from the detonations, parts of its hull being blasted off. All around Orras saw the same happening to his carriers as they were engulfed in the detonations, their outer hulls exploding leaving the ships small in comparison to their original forms. Orras looked out to see similar events happening all around the allied fleets. "Prismatic resonance has reporting heavy damage, as are the rest of the group. They can however continue and are reforming moulders now." the communications crewman spoke calmly. Orras nodded "Get me word on the Templars status and keep up the stream of Torpedoes." He frowned, another hit like that could be the end of them all.
The Detonations surrounded the Templar fleet, Loken looked out to his left as there was a secondary explosion as the Cruiser Noble exploded, Loken stood there in shock looking out where the ship had once been but was now just floating debris and nothing else, The crew looked out in silence, The silence was broken by a Communications officer speaking up, "Loken Nex transmission coming through", Loken nodded, He listened and replied, "Orras we are fine the shields took the hit but are now very damaged, The Cruiser Noble and fighters around are fleet are gone, Just debris in this void, we will still follow into the fray" He ended the mission and sat back in the chair, The crew looked at him, "There is no tie to mourn we must win this battle for all those men we have lost", The crew all turned back and the Templar fleet continued following the Nex
Jaeris was stunned as the space all around his allies' ships was lit up, sending his crew into awe as it was presumed for a short time that they were destroyed, the idea vanquished once it was realized the shield was still up. The massive wave of energy was so close to the C.I.N. fleet that it fried some of the optics mounted on the scouting and scanner drones, and EMP'd some of the fighters with their shields down, requiring them to be recovered. He stood and walked to the view port, the hologram now having holes in it due to the destroyed scanner drones, and his overlook screens polarized. "By the gods and Demand, what the HELL was that?!" He exclaimed, demanding an answer from no-one in particular. He turned to Comms. "Hail the allied ships, I want to know of their status." He finished, as he quickly spun around amidst the somewhat loud murmur of the bridge crew, most of them fiddling with controls to attempt to fix their viewing. Jaeris knew this had to have something to do with the Paradox Blinker...
All he could feel was pain, the downside to neural interfacing with machine Ais fully was that you could feel there pain, and as Aleharain gritted his teeth he could feel the ships pain as the powerful paradox weapon system engulfed the Tenebrae fleet in light. He could feel the shields dropping to low levels and certain areas of the hull were starting to overheat as the shields fought back the power around the ship, the Tenedermis alloy resisting the worst of it. As the explosion died down Aleharain relaxed his body, he had unintentionally crushed the sides of his command chair in his pain, his powerful claws crushing the alloy. As the data from the attack came in the Rahdonah grimaced. His ship had taken some damage to its weapons and its shields were heavily drained, as for his other ships it was much the same, though his other escort had taken serious engine damage and was left stranded, estimated time to repair was around an hour, he didn’t think that was enough time to the attack but he hoped. That Blinker had to be stopped, as he surveyed the allied fleets damages Aleharain knew it was time for the allies to implement their plan. Or die.
"Admiral" the COmm officer on the Athenia called "the Allies wish to know our status." Salvez didn't reply for a moment. the weapon that had just been used, while nothing compared to a shatterbeam, had been impressive enough to bring about damage reports from all over the hull: mostly blown shield capacitors, though those would be easy enough to fix. there were also reports of a few hull punctures and damaged antennae. once again, nothing serious....unless they could not be repaired. She sent a silent prayer towards the fighter pilots moving into position for their attack: she wished she could reprioritize their orders, but communications had been broken when the operation began, as per standard practice. "Tell them we have a few blown fuses, but are still in the fight." she replied, before turning her attention back to the tactical board. she locked her eyes on some of the enemy fleet's larger units, most of which had avoided real damage in the fight so far.... "Inform our allies that it may be time to unleash operation Thunderstrike" she ordered.
Eric got the order over the coms "Alright we have our orders, Verridian, your up"
Even for the several meters of electron-fused multi-layed E-Carbon armour, the single nearby Destroyer was cracked and the resulting explosion dug into its superstructure. It was reduced to little more than debris. The Carrier had no way to be saved from the nuclear detonations in close proximity, either; the armour all but melted down to the inches, internal systems completely fried and the shockwaves and heat were able to drop most of the Adaridov's crew. Through the ripped-open bow, the blast went directly into the ship, eating away at the innards of what was prior to this a ten kilometer vessel of magnificent manufacturing. The Hellions on the flight deck and within the blast radius were vaporized, a body count of two-hundred pilots.
The damage, however, had not completely disabled the Adaridov. Commissar Schultes, who for a moment was completely frozen in his attempt to analyze what was happening to his battlegroup, was getting a readoff of the damage report. The hull had managed to stay intact, but everything aside from the aft guns, the main engine pods and reactors, and the primary FTL drives were fried.
On Schultes' face wasn't an expression of desperation, nor fear. Instead, a firm grimace took control of his facial muscles.
"C-Commissar, damage is- Chain reaction imminent, damage to main systems at critical levels!"
There was a momentary pause in the air of the bridge, which was miraculously intact aside from cracks tracing the walls and roof from the pressure of the blast. Schultes knew what we had to do. Angrily, he barked, "Ensign, do we have the capabilities to make a jump?"
"Sir?"
"Can we still use the FTL Drives?"
"Yes, sir-"
"Get a solution and microjump next to the enemy's battleship in the centre of their formation," He knew what this would entail. Either way, the Adaridov and her remaining crew didn't have any hope.
"Sir, if-"
"Do it, Ensign!"
The was a slight pause with the bridge crew again. The tense silence told it all. The Ensign followed his final orders, hammering in the commands. "It was an honour serving, Commissar."
What was left of the ship, within moments, made their microjump into the centre of the enemy formation, mere kilometers above the Trident. Schultes' cold eyes were fixed upon the warning signals on the bridge's viewport, just waiting until the short moment where him and the Adaridov were reduced to nothing but dust and flying debris in a glorious explosion of monumental proportions by the chain reaction in their nuclear cores.
Reza watched as the battleship was engulfed with light. The flaming nuclear fireball was all consuming and he registered hits to both his destroyers. As well as both Templar cruisers. The large explosion took both of the Hydra destroyers shields down and damaged their hulls. Their melted hulls only just letting them survive. The two Templar cruisers were much the same, shields taken down and hulls melted, though one of them the entire starboard side detonated as the ammo stores overheated and exploded. Taking the ship partly out of action. Reza surveyed the battleship itself. Its shields had been taken down to a mere 10% and the fighters that had screened It were completely gone, engulfed in the fireball.
“At least they have lost their main carrier” Reza said smiling, however his fleet was starting to take serious damage.
Corstasis recognized the disappearance of the Minevan vessel, and it's heroic last act. he growled out a warrior's dirge, asking the Princess to accept them into her realm as guardians and warriors. "all ships" he barked over the comm relay "Commence Operation Thunderwing!"
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Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 17, 2017 13:22:25 GMT
Tau Volaris: Main Assault Underway:
Orras bowed his head at the distant explosion. "May your souls find their way unto the next realm. Quiescence in pace." he spoke his words resonating across the Nex and Templar communications.
All the remaining Templar Crews bowed there heads in respect as the Enemy fleet became a white flash as the Minevan ship exploded in the middle, Loken looked up and spoke, "May those men from Mineva make it past the gate of heaven and find peace, And let us look at them with example to lay down are lives for the greater good", Over the Templar comms an old Remembrance song played out in respect for the Minevans
Jaeris watched as the massive explosion ruptured throughout the enemy fleet. "All Carnaithian crewmen, pay your respects to our Minevan allies, and prepare for combat. May the gods be with them." He said, as a small murmur whispered it's way across the ship.
Eric watched the Minevan ship detonate inside the enemy fleet, its small bright shining blast far off in the view screen. Eric stood up and so did the crew of the bridge, they all saluted by banging their fists on their chests.
“May your souls fight on brothers. Umbrea watches over you” He said as he took his Captains cap off and bowed in respect, Mineva would be remembered this day.
Aleharain stood up from the chair on the Tenebrae ship and saluted, the death of the Minevans would be honoured in the annals of the Tenebrae collective. Their selfless sacrifice would not be in vain, and Aleharain would be dammed to let it go to waste.
“The Minevans, sir…one of their ships just…jumped in the middle of enemy formation and blew up, taking multiple ships and damaging the battleship to great effect!” “That’s why I wonder why we still have to wait while our comrades are dying!” “With all due respect sir, the Spartans are one of the most respected allies of the Union. If the Union trusts their wisdom, we should too,” advised Captain Viktan, who was commandeering the Temujin Destroyer and also a close friend of the Admiral. “The Plan they sent us is sound, we have to be in full strength if we are to deliver to finishing touch,” “Alright, Viktan, I suppose you are correct..” Shakir slumped in his chair, and buried his face in his palms. “All ships, send out your fighter units and put reserves on standby. Viktor, rank targets and Crusader 1 move into position to cover the Temujin,” “Yes sir!” “Who knows what more sacrifices they have to make the more we wait…”
At Corstasis' order, the Spartan fighters, which had been marshalled at the edge of the battlefield and thus spared real damage from the Enemy's weapon, punched their engine output to full and launched themselves towards the window the Minevan carrier had opened with it's sacrifice. in the confusion immediately following the explosion, combined with the energy cloud the explosion had produced, the flight was not noticed until it was too late. "Commence, phase 1. FIRE!" Corstasis roared. The forward flank of fighters, each one armed to the teeth with heavy ordnance, unleashed a volley of deadly warheads towards the surrounding enemy craft: they were past and before their effect could be tallied. But that volley was just the cover.
For following up in the second flank, like the cutting blade of a sword, came the anti-ship bombers. and where they weapons on the fighters had been designed to incapacitate....the weapons these craft packed were designed to destroy. Lamilar-class bombers of the type that now filled the tactical screens of the rogue Templar battlecruiser forward of the massive Capitol battleship carried a crew of two: a pilot and a weapon officer. it was this latter crewman, all of them in the wing, whose hands came down on a selected switch in the cockpit.
And it was these Chernoblyte warheads launched forth that now streaked towards the enemy battleship. Even at the distance he was, Corstasis detected the radiation pulse of the weapon arming. While Sparta may have lagged behind some powers in the realms of technological wizardry, it had a few fancy toys of it's own. The Chernoblyte anti-material ordnance was one such toy. Rad counters on the rogue ship overloaded as the weapons detonated literally in the faces of it's crew. but that was the least of their concerns.
"Ordnance away!" Corstasis heard the bombers report. he snarled ferally: now was the time to hunt. "Commence Phase 2!" he ordered, before immediately going evasive. he only hoped it would go as planned.
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The bombs of the Spartan bombers impacted the Rebel Templar Battlecruiser in a display of pyrotechnics, the shields of the large craft were brought down as the bombs then detonated on the armour of the vessel blowing holes the the large ships defences, a large detonation signalled the striking of some deep ammo storage for the ships main gun batteries and a portion of the right side was heavily damaged, alas the ship itself was undaunted and its ferocious CIWS spat death back at the fighters, who had to brave the ships incredible CIWS and flak as they came in for there pass. After the Spartan fighters finished their pass they immediately were engaged by rebel fighters from Rebel Spartan fighters, Capitol fighters, Rebel Templar fighters and finally Rebel Tenebrae fighters. The resulting melee of fighters engulfed the front of the rebel fleet.
Reza watched the move and laughed, the Spartan fighters would be engaged and destroyed by either their own fighters or their CIWS, time would tell however he had a feeling more would be coming. His fleet began firing again their long range weapons and the Capitol fleet again launched another barrage of Tachyon Arrows this time towards the Nex and Templar fleets.
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"Ma'am!" the tactical officer on the Athenia called " Operation successful, the Enemy battlecruiser appears to be severely damaged!" "Good." Salvez replied, "order the Carnaithans into the flue: we'll move forward with the first phase of Thunderstrike. Contact the union ships and tell them to stand by." "Affirmative" With that, the Admiral turned her attention back to the tacscanner: in the heart of the enemy fleet, she saw the icons for the Spartan figthercraft and bombers dancing like fireflies. Here and there, a few signals winked out, indicating losses. But more enemy signals disappeared in their wake. she smiled ferally. "Send a message to the other ships, tell them to be in position. close with the enemy, try and prevent them using whatever that death ray was again." she ordered, standing up from her command chair and walking over to the edge of the command platform. down below, the bridge crew worked diligently at their stations, overseers and group commanders passing out orders to their subordinates, as her own orders worked their way through the proverbial pipe. beyond, through the bridge viewscreens, she saw space exploding around her, burning vessels, the actinic light of lasers, and the smoking contrails of missiles in the void. "we're in for one wild night" she said with a Smirk.
A simultaneous signal was transmitted across the cacophony of the battlefield, reaching out from the Athenia towards not only it's counterpart in the Spartan fleet, but the Union cruiser Verridian as well.
Aboard the Cruiser Veriddian Captain Becket signalled for the jump, its weapons were primed and ready. It was time to show the enemies of the Union their might. The Dart class powered up its FTL drive and in an instant disappeared in a flash of light.
As one, the three ships disappeared into the void of hyperspace.....and reappeared instants later.
Virtually on top of the massive battleship that was at the rear of the enemy fleet. Aboard the three Allied ships, on the command decks, echoed a command that was as simple as it was blunt. a command that brokered no hesitation or question, and one that left no alternative to it's intent and conclusion.
"All guns FIRE!"
Space burned.
The Iroquois and the Adaridov were gone. While scraps of the Adaridov's severed bow loomed around the remaining three destroyers of the Minevan battlegroup, the Iroquois had simply disappeared without a single trace. The formidable destroyer was reduced to nothing more than vapors and ashes, along with everything and everyone inside of it. The same could be said of the multitude of Hellions caught in the blast radius; might E-Carbon chassis’s reduced to absolute nothingness. Tarik Amirmoez looked on through his directional cameras in the Hellion. He was completely awestruck, paying the dying warning displays no mind. The Lieutenant's eyes were fixed on the small, bright orb the Adaridov's kamikaze attack had made. He blinked, snapping back into his right mind.
He brought up his tactical map, feeling a bit of sweat beading up at his forehead even in the environment-controlled flight helmet. Between them and the enemy formation was open space plenty. Some of the allied forces were already engaging the foe, taking losses of their own. He brought the Hellion to turn around, viewing the other pilots who'd managed to survive the blast. According to his Heads-Up-Display, there were two-hundred and forty-six Hellions within the battlegroup that were still 'in-commission'. Two-hundred and forty-six women and men still combat effective, amongst the remaining three destroyers that had taken no damage aside from a scratched hull.
The Lieutenant had only seen combat once before, and there weren't nearly this many losses sustained. He was shocked, appalled, and it was definitely showing. He brought his trembling hand to his visor, a twinge of fear digging into his chest. He knew the other survivors had to feel the same as him. He took one deep breath, mentally steeling himself.
"Rogue, on me," Tarik's hands fell to the throttle, his other reaching up to the variable controls. His Hellion collapsed into it's sleek, jagged jet form. He jammed the handle ahead, accelerating and manoeuvring around the flak field. Sure enough, after a few moments, his team of two followed. Any man in their right mind would be afraid in this action, but he knew if he didn't act now along with a joint attack, the Adaridov's actions would not be complete. His steely eyes focused on the miniscule formation orbiting Tau Volaris, narrowing with contempt. With his fear was a burning anger that was screaming to be satiated.
To his left and right, he saw several phalanxes of Hellions gaining on him. A few even managed to wedge themselves ahead of Rogue squadron when he diverted his attention. The snowball effect had begun. Evenly spaced out phalanxes of Hellions flooded his small tactical map, reading off a crisp two-hundred and one pilots gunning it straight into the jaws of hell after him.
The young lieutenant took one last breath to steel his nerves, one last opportunity to consider what was happening. This was it. He slammed on his hypersonic drives, leading the force of Hellions by example to enter the currently unengaged of the enemy formation. The Hellions behind him totted Railguns, Mass Accelerators, Missile Platforms, and some even just with their hefty monofilament blades.
Jaeris had been wanting to assist the Spartan's dwindling numbers, and made a few orders; "Launch wings of one AR-51NG and four SAN-D1G's, flanked by two wings of AM-VR2's for escort, and assist those spartan fighters! arm a wing of MR-81G's with chuda shockwave bombs and microburst torpedoes to go with each group, get it done!" He ordered, as waves of assault craft launched and tore through space towards the Spartan initiative. "Orion, prep all weapons for a follow-up attack if needed by my order!" He said, the excitement of the battle getting to him.
A shot flew past the bridge and the carrier behind the flagship was split from bow to stern as a tachyon arrow cored it. Orras remained silent and began the advance across the no mans land between the two fleets. "Fire Torpedoes." he spoke cooly as another salvo of the diamantus torpedoes sped off into the void. Azar remained silent, seemingly bored as he lounged in the command chair.
Loken sat there shots from the enemy going past them, "Keep up the bombardment, and get us into a new firing position so we have a better shot at the Death Guard and other rebels", The ships began to move slowly whilst still firing there guns at the enemy fleet, "Lets hope that a Relief force gets here eventually" Loken said sitting back in his chair
The situation on the HMS De Gaulle, however, was far too chaotic for them to mourn the loss of their own carrier; which had so honourably crammed themselves dead-center in the enemy fleet. While it would help provide allies with the path to victory, the remaining ships in the Minevan battlegroup had an entirely new issue at hand.
A Commissar was dead. Captain Yvonne Foss was desperately trying to patch a line through to High Command. No matter how many attempts were made, the connection simply would not make. It could've been shockwave trauma to internal systems or some sort of outside disruptions. Whatever it was, she couldn't tell. The Captain's attention was swayed by the functional Hellions making their charge at the enemy formation. While they weren't issued these orders, their mothership was the Adaridov. The Falcons couldn't carry any more than twelve Hellions at a time. Until reinforcements were able to be demanded, those Hellions were, unfortunate to say, free game.
Angrily, the Captain took her uniform beret off of her neatly tied hair and tossed it onto the ground. She grabbed the railing of her overlook platform of the bridge crew. The loud 'clang' of the beret's insignia onto the metallic floor didn't compare to how loud she wanted to scream in rage. Instead, she scowled, baring her cuspids before shouting to her subordinates; "Helm, keep us in line with the Union ships. Ops, I want all weapons ready!"
Aleharain in putted the time and the co ordinates the plan dictated the Tenebrae forces to carry out. He knew with the state of his fleet this would be hard to carry out but the Radonah was certain the Tenebrae ships would rise to the challenge. The ships ENTITY calculated probabilities and possibilities of the plan and whether it would work.
“I calculate we have a 56% chance of carrying out our assigned tasks” The ENTITY informed Aleharain. He smirked he could work with those odds.
“All vessels prepare Null drives! Lets wait for the Nex to carry out their plan and we will then deliver the frontal punch. Ready all weapon systems and what shield power we have remaining for close combat engagements” The acknowledgements of the various Tenebrae ships came in soon after in response and he merely waited for the order to attack.
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"Our dearest enemies, honourable yet ephemeral strangers" The radio transmissions coming from the shifting, amorphous intellects that inhabited the warship enunciated over open radio. "We applaud your sacrifice and will erect a shrine in your honour.
Wounded as it was, the Blinker stood its ground and give its enemies the fight. The neutronium disk that materialized itself millions of times per second to stop enemy fire absorbed an immense amount of hits, impunely absorbing the hundreds of missiles and railgun shots fired at it; but slowly the hits began leaking through an impacting the ship, tearing up large gashes into its crystalline-plastic hull. Once the fuzzy armour’s area of effect was reduced to only protect the vital components of the ship, everything else got flayed by the torrent of gunfire, tearing off the large antenna-engines that lined the ship and destroying its multitude of handcrafted decorations. The enemy disintegrators did their part, melting large holes in its hull.
Anti-laser optics were turned against the enemy ships, flashing powerful pulses of concentrated light directly into the optics of the enemy lasers
The self-defense weapons of the Blinker came online just as soon as the enemy's, firing a torrent of short-range laser fire into the two enemy ships and ejecting hundreds of decoys above all four ships as another wave of scalar emitter mines was put up and the vessel began charging its own capacitors to deliver another shot.
Yet the lasers of the Blinker, mere self-defense lasers, didn't quite manage to put a dent on the enemy armour. Bigger guns were required.
"Light in the absence of eyes illuminates nothing. Visible forms are not inherent in the world, but are granted by the act of seeing."
The lights went off in the bridge and command rooms of both Hydra destroyers that received the transmission. Immediately blocked by the cyber defence of the Union and Spartan ships, the Hydras weren't as fortunate, for they believed it was a regular radio hail. By the time it had created a Turing rootkit of the Hydra's entire electronics system, the crews could no longer stop it.
The gravity was the next thing that went out on the destroyers.
"Though the world and events do exist independent of mind, they obtain of no meaning in themselves- none that the mind is not guilty of imposing on them."
A massive inertial force shunted all the crews of both Capitol ships all around against the walls of their own ship as the two vessels' manoeuvre engines fired off way above their maximum power allowance, destroying themselves in the process and sending both ships into a violent 180° turn towards the Spartan and Union vessels. Electronic systems sparked, hulls cracked in half as both ships brought their guns to bear towards the vessels that had just microjumped. One of them lost its entire aft section to the tremendous torsion that the Blinker's hacking put it under, sending it flying against the traitor Tenebraean ship.
"You bid your people follow and, like all good equations, they follow."
From the core of the ship's overloaded reactors, the interlaced scalar fields that once propelled the ship all swirled into a single electrogravitic field - a negative field that engulfed both the Blinker and its attackers.
Time slowed down within the temporal aura. Around them, the Spartans and Union crews could see as the battle around them accelerated to twice its speed, including the Hydras charging their weapons in only half the time it would normally have taken.
"For full endowment of purpose, they do submit. In turn, you have resigned us me to a role inhuman, impossible, and unaccountable."
The Hydras unleashed their firepower on the Union cruiser and Spartan destroyer. At near point-blank range, a shower of tachyons shot towards the vessels.
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Becket watched as his weaponry hammered the Blinker, the Mass Driver rounds, point blank Plasma shots and the phase missiles all being either intercepted by the Fuzzy armour or defence lasers or hitting the fairly fragile hull and blasting parts into space. The ships Meson lasers however had been taken out by the Blinkers anti laser arrays but had worked just long enough to pin the Fuzzy armour down to get some good hits in. As well as this the rigged ships which were guarding the rear of the rebel fleet were blasted apart by Spartan and Union weaponry, their fragile hull and bad shields not withstanding the barrage. However Becket was notified that the ships perception of time was changing. The outside battle was speeding up while they acted normally. He was puzzled with this and as the boarding pods launched from the Cruisers hangars Becket saw the Hydra Destroyers turn to charge their weapons even as they came apart with such impossible manoeuvres.
Within seconds Becket knew what was coming. However he never saw what hit him, the FTL nature of the Tachyon Arrows invisible to the conventional senses.
Within seconds Beckets world ended as the cruiser was ripped apart as the FTL bolts speared the cruiser and flew past into the Blinker.
Salvez watched in Horror as the energy tore into the Charybdis-class and the Verridian: both burst like soap bubbles in the ether, leaving nothing but slowly spreading debris fields. on her tacscanner, she saw that the Union had managed to launch a number of boarding craft. these jinked and evaded, desperately trying to pass the cordon of AA fire that filled the sky. "Those men" she thought to herself "despite everything that has befallen them....in the face of impossible odds, they still go on." She looked across the map, at all the allied ships, the energy cloud from the exploded Minevan carrier, the shattered remains of her fleet. at the Spartan fighters, their signals winking out more and more as they expended ammunition, overloaded shields, lost thrusters. some simply died in the void: others rammed enemy vessels in a desperate last honourable effort. she felt her ship shudder as near-misses brushed her hull, as damage reports came in. she thought of the Zerotroopers marshalled in the launch bay, their original plan to jumpjet across in perfect tune with their ferocity.
But....
"There is no honour in pointless death" she muttered: one of Sparta's many battle tomes drilled into students at the academies across the empire.
Those men and women...all were willing to follow her. to follow her plan, whatever the cost.
Could she not lead them? All at once, her eyes settled into a steely glare. she clasped the grip of her sidearm. "Faison" she said, her voice ice-cold. her XO turned on his dais to face her.
"Ram the bastard.”
Faison only nodded. he respected her decision. he had never been afraid to tell her when he thought she was crazy. it was the nature of his species. his silence only boosted her confidence.
"Helm!" she ordered "give me direct navigational control!" the Helmsman looked up in surprise. "ma'am?" he asked "ma'am, the plan calls for us to be-" "I ama aware of what MY plan called for, Lieutenant. Adopt, Adapt, and Improvise! Give me helm NOW!" the Helmsman hesitated not one second longer, punching a series of commands into his control panel. on Salvez' command chair, the arm rests opened to reveal a pair of control sticks. these gave her control over direction, attitude, and over the ship's main guns. "Weapons!" she ordered "Load MAC guns with Shatter rounds, safety removed! program wide dispersal! let's see if we can distract their Point-defense for a few seconds to give those union boys some cover." "Aye ma'am!" "comms!" she called, sitting down in the chair and grasping the two sticks "Patch me through to Colonel Devareau!" "on it ma'am" the Comm officer said "she's on." "Admiral" came the smooth voice of the commander of the Zerotroopers aboard the cruiser "we are ready to deploy at your comma-" "belay that, Colonel." Salvez cut her off "change of plans. revise orders from Offensive plan 2-1-1-5 to plan 3-1-3-4." Devareau didn't even pause. "2-1-1-5 to 3-1-3-4, direct insertion, understood ma'am. Devareau out." Salvez let her go. it was in the spirit of Spartans that the less that was said, the better. Devareau knew what needed to be done, and she would see it done. "All personnel, brace for evasive manoeuvres and heavy impact. repeat, Brace or eveasive manoeuvres and heavy impact." she watched as Faison strapped himself into his tiny chair. she smiled a hunters smile at the XO. he saw. "you know" he said, his squirrely voice not lending any seriousness to his meaning "if I didn't know you better, I'd say you were being a typical human." Salvez laughed. she took the insult in stride: in the language of Faison's race, "Human" was a synonym for "imbecile." she fixed her eyes forward, and twisted the control sticks to change course. shortly, what had only been the tip of the enemy vessel at the edge of the viewscreen suddenly became the wide hull filling all visual scanners. and a eye-melting array of Point-defense slamming into their shields. "ma'am!" engineering reported "Shields are down to 75%! they can't take this barrage much longer!" " I'm aware of that, Jaines, thank you" Salves replied. her eyes remained fixed on the enemy hull. "MAC guns, FIRE!" she shouted, simultaneously squeezing the triggers on the control sticks. the hull shuddered as the MAC Guns fired. while not as massive as the weapons on the fleet capital ships, these could make short work of most opponents. in this case....
well, they weren't supposed to damage as much as distract anyway. As the shatter rounds caught some of the flak that filled the sky, the ship poured on, implacable and unstoppable. even if her thrusters cut out now, her inertia would drive her into the enemy vessel.
right into the ship's heart.
David vs. Goliath, would have been an appropriate descriptor for what was occuring in the space over Tau Volaris. the Massive shape of the Paradox Blinker that filled the view screens of the comparatively miniscule Spartan battlecruiser seemed to match the image of the mighty unbeatable foe, the damage it had wrought on the allied fleet reinforcing that image even more so.
And yet, as the tiny Spartan ship thundered on, the hull scarred and burned as point-defense fire tore through the overloaded shields and scarred the energy-resistant material of the hull, it's engines over-clocked and screaming in protest, all forward-tracking guns seeking targets, it called to mind not impossible odds of giants and men, but the glorious memories of past Spartan victories, in the face of impossible odds. as Proximity warnings wailed on the bridge, Admiral Salvez smiled a huntress's smile, and roared in defiance as Leonidas had done in the face of the persian juggernaut.
And then there was impact.
The nose of the ship, crumpled beyond recognition, finally came to a stop, with over 75% of the ship buried in the hull of the blinker. shredded pieces of the materials that made up the alien ship hung off the blackened hull of the Spartan vessel, and more such detritus spread into the void.
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"But I can no longer stand the sleepless nights."
When she awoke from the coil, time didn't wait for her. It just watched her eyes open wide as it engulfed her ego, cracking her just enough to reach inside.
He whispered as she was divided. 'This will make you remember that I'm a part of you. Each cell is marked by my name. You can never leave this. This is all that you had'
It only took only a couple seconds to purge the pool of amniotic fluid, which had been the only thing transmitting the deep, muffled echoes of the cataclysmic impact that had shaken the ship. She felt again the strange sensation of her suit clinging to her, the strange sensation of being aware of her existence once more. The Blinker called, injecting a torrent of endorphin into her bloodstream, lighting the wholeness of her body with a warm, motherly sensation of joy. She was happy for the battle, she was happy for the fleets, happy for space, happy for the enemies, happy for the allies, happy for the crash and happy for the laser gun that her curled-up hands held as she floated in the artificial womb.
She felt only the slightest sting of pain as her umbilical cord was cut, relieved soon by the blissful sensation of freedom and the full endowment of her own purpose.
The ship had crashed through the centre of one of the enormous cylindrical cargo bays; destroying everything in its wake. The battered fuzzy armour had failed to halt the suicidal charge of the ship, it had only succeeded in making the impact off-center, causing the ship to start rotating from the impact, trailing a plume of debris, bodies and organic liquid. The impact had completely cut off the longwave transmitters, depriving the ship of its own weaponry once more.
The lights were gone, the xenon atmosphere that usually filled the ship was gone as well. The first thing she saw as her eyes adjusted to the synthetic light of her helmet's screens were the bodies of those who had been less fortunate. The impact had pushed several bulkheads into the crew vats, crushing them in their slumber. Enormous blobs of amniotic fluid, blood and proteic sludge floated all around her. Limbs, debris, cloned fetuses and the fleshy wombs in which they laid dormant -forever, now- floated around her along the soft pastel orange lights.
It was beautiful. She felt so happy it hurt.
As all Blinkers, artificial gravity was absent from the enormous concentric cylinders that made up the Esophagealis' stern storage areas. Alongside with the large Syntagma relic hall and a technical section, there was not much that stood in between the Spartan's and the ship's core's radiation hull. Alongside those who had awoken, who now numbered a half of a thousand, she used her EVA suit to float behind cover and point her gun in the direction of the wreckage, overtaken by joyous anticipation.
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Vorandis raised his weapon and remembered his home planet. Lush green forests everywhere... Totally different to the void of space the transport shuttle was ploughing through towards the Blinker. The 25 shuttles which flew in formation took evasive action as the Blinkers PD lasers opened up, only a few did, the others engaging the Spartan ship that lodged itself into the Blinker. Vorandis raised an eyebrow at the move but didn’t care, it only meant less lasers were firing at him. He ran some more background checks over his HUD and was happy with the results.
“Time to contact 30 seconds!” Came over the coms and Vorandis entered the mind palace he had created as a child and calmed himself. As the shuttles counted down and neared the hull close range hull cutters lit up. Carving holes into the large hull of the Paradox ship, some shuttles were shot down as they neared the target but when Vorandis heard and felt the shuttle dock he was up and moving before the word go. The magnetic boots of the suit kept Vorandis on the surface of the ship as the Paradox vessel had no artificial gravity.
His squad sergeant told them to move out and Vorandis moved with cold precision ignoring everything else apart from the sensation of immanent combat and the fact he could die at any moment. As multiple contacts appeared on his HUD sensors Vorandis aimed his weapon.
This was going to get messy.
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Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 17, 2017 13:23:29 GMT
Tau Volaris System: Main Assault Underway: Aboard Paradox Blinker:
(small side off boarding RP involving the death of the Blinker happening at the same time as the space battle)
Along the battered hull of the Spartan vessel, a series of doors began to slowly slide open. out of each portal, a roughly 6-meter wide ball of actinic white energy suddenly shot forth, engulfing whatever it hit within it's glowing embrace...and erasing it. these spheres punched holes in the collapsed decks and bulkheads, eventually wearing thesmelves out and disappearing with a blink wherever they happened to have stopped. but they had served their purpose. they had opened the door.
Following hot on the heels of the orbs came the pummelling red bolts of Spartan blaster rifles, as a swarm of Spartan Zerotroopers emerged from the hull of the battlecruiser. almost immediately, the enemy's return fire holed some of the men's suits in vulnerable points, such as visors and armor gaps. here and there, men fell. as protocol dictated, their armor immediately flash-fried itself and the victim inside, to prevent Spartan equipment falling into enemy hands. but for the majority of the assaulting troops, the armor did it's job, absorbing the worst of the enemy fire and allowing them time to get to cover and begin shooting back in a more precise fashion. the battle was on.
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The initial line of Fundamentals, some of which had not even yet finished waking up or going down from the endorphin-induced highs; were quickly cut down by the Spartan weaponry, leaving the second line to retreat behind the clouds of floating, frozen liquid that inertly absorbed shots from both sides, puffing out small clouds of vapour.
She didn't even know what her name was, it wasn't important. The only thing she can think of was the sheer happiness of getting to fight in the storage spaces and cramped corridors of the Esophagealis, not designed for human operation. On her backpack, the cooling tank for the laser rifle shot blasts of neon gas through her gun after every shot. The rifles' advanced optics quickly scanned the glimpses of the enemy armor they got and reconstructed a virtual model of the enemy suits through networking. From then on, the self-stabilized barrels of the weapons trained themselves exclusively on the weak points of the enemy armor.
The pieces of a quantum optics set floated in between her and two of her comrades, female and nameless like herself, like everyone else. Attached to the degaussed walls via simple harnesses, the Fundamentals carried bulky laser projectors with long trailing cables. Attaching the weapons to whatever protrusions they could find -bundles of cables, torn-off pieces of the wall and destroyed equipment- the LMG-like lasers automatically pointed themselves at the direction of the Spartans and began firing off an unending stream of high-powered pulses to destroy enemy optics and explosives fired towards them, as well as to suppress the Spartans that came through. A long hose injecting cooling gas into the weapon extended into an unseen pump behind them, alongside a power cable.
With the guns in place, the troops in the many corridors that had been broken through began regrouping; while on the meantime the ship's fire suppression equipment began firing streams of chemical foam at the attackers.
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Devareaux snarled in feral glee at the fight that quickly erupted around her as she dashed out of the hull into the battle: the enemy, after what appeared to be an initial confusion, had regrouped quickly, and began to pour a constant stream of fire down the corridors. these were tight quarters: much like the killing house back in training, anything and everything seemed to come at her at once. she loved it. at her signal, Sheild-equipped troopers moved forward, their arm-mounted deflector shields snapping to life. and quickly filling the small area of the corridor. more shields popped to life in the small gap between the hull of the cruiser and the wall of the corridor, closing off the gaps and preventing ambush from behind. these shields, when clocked to maximum, could withstand punishing artillery fire for a time. while the tight quarters meant that they could focus all their power in a smaller area, their use drained power from the armor's on-board reactors, taking away from other systems. she thought about trying a few to the Cruiser's still functioning reactors, but she wanted her men mobile for the advance. and, as karma sometimes demanded, the cables would be cut or the power lost at just the wrong time. even at max-power, she wasn't sure the shields would hold up long under the fusillade that the enemy had so quickly opened up. the weapons seemed to fire non-stop. she watched a score more of her troops go down, the enemy fire seeming to seek out the weak points of their armor, before the shields closed the gaps between her men and the enemy. however, one of the saving graces of the shields was that their double-polarized-status meant that her men could fire OUT while the enemy shots could not fire IN. at least, as long as the shield held up. after that was anyone's guess.
and, to add to her woes, the ship's fire-suppression systems chose that moment to kick in, filling the corridor with fire suppression chemicals. snarling at one of the dispersers over her head, she drew her pistol and shot the offending port into scrap iron. she had to get out of this box. the package needed to be delivered.
looking "up from her position, wedged between the cruiser and the enemy's bulkhead, she saw the holes the White Noise projectors had punched into the hull. some went "down" to decks below her, while others were ripped into the walls "above" her, at varied angles. she could see two of her sub-commanders directing men to secure the upper positions: the last thing they needed was a sniper or heavy weapons team getting above them. speaking of heavy weapons.... she watched as the "noisemakers" finished swapping out the power supplies for their weapons, and slapping new packs home in their housings. she could....yes...yes, she could....but that would force her to drop the shields that were currently protecting her men. her decision came within an instant of the last thought.
"nosemakers, move up!" she ordered. as the cannon-equipped troopers moved forward, a few of their comrades jet-packed up to the overhead openings, sheild-packs and heavy weapons carried at the ready. as the men came up to her position, those above sprayed a fusillade of fire down the openings, to ensure there were no surprises waiting for them.
it was then that a dollop of molten plastic dripped onto her gauntlet.
she looked at it in surprise, the heat registering on her HUD, before directing her eyes upwards. what she saw immediately registered in her mind. despite the vaccumn of space surrounding her, despite the fire-suppression and the cold lack of air, it seemed that the shield "bubble" around her, between the various openings and the hot hull of the battlecruiser, was holding enough atmosphere..... ...that the sections of the Cruiser's hull that were in contact with he enemy vessel were able to pass heat......
"by the Princess..." Devareaux said, looking at the men clustered around her "the blasted thing is made of plastic!"
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As the troops continued to retreat without opposing much resistance, the ship began flooding entire compartments with the quick-hardening chemical foam to bog down the Spartan soldiers that fought through the automated turrets left behind by the force of Fundamentals that made their way through the miasma of blood, urine, mutilated corpses and amniotic fluid that the crew storage areas had been reduced to.
As the human, or at least vaguely human-like Fundamental soldiers retreated towards the technical and supply storage parts of the ship through the corridors, another force more insidious moved through the same pipes that had once transported deoxygenated blood, cryogenic and water throughout the broken ship. A squirming mass of tentacles with a rectangular section, creatures without a central body, moved through the ship, bypassing the shields and flanking the Spartan force through the oxygen and cryogenic pipelines of the vessel. In any opening they found, whether blasted open by the gunfire, the end of a torn-off pipe or a vent, the tentacled creature burst out of the opening, its tentacles squeezing through the hole and attacking the Spartan troops within their shield. Several tentacles seceded from the creature and jumped at the noisemaker operators and shield generator, detonating with powerful shaped charges and incendiary bombs before the creature squirmed back into the pipelines.
Guided by vibrations, radiation and electrosensitivity, the creature moved through the gaps around the ship's tight and cramped corridors with agility. The Fundamentals knew from the mere amount of data being pushed around their network that they were no longer alone: they had been joined by none other than the Esophagealis own demiorganics, those who had decided to stay loyal to the ship instead of Nivose planetside. Creatures of warfare and letters, the demiorganics were as close as the lowly Fundamentals would get to witnessing their quasi-mythical masters.
Emboldened by the arrival of the demiorganics, the soldiers took cover behind an airlock, closing it just enough to let the barrels of the guns poke through and aim at the enemy.
As the combat optics of the soldiers registered the near-total reflection of the laser bolts they fired, the machines were quick to spectrometrically readjust their polarity so as to be able to pass through the shield as if it was not there.
----------------------
"Magboots ain't doing shit, sir!" One of Vorandis men informed as the troops landed only to bounce off from the cracked hull, only stabilizing themselves with their EVA gear.
Vorantis himself was quick to react, putting the tip of his combat rope against the hull of the vessel and spraying it with a foam-like glue. Daisy-chained together by the rope, he and his men were able to resist the gravitational swirling from the blinker's failing engines.
"Crap, sir." His radioman looked around as they were hit by small pieces of metal from above. Looking at where they came from, they saw the wreckage of their ship slowly drifting towards the Esophagealis. "Rain's gonna get heavier, we need to breach!" His commander was hit on his back and knocked away, tugging the rest of his troops on tow. The pieces weren't fast enough to harm them, but some of the bigger ones could simply crush them.
"You said it" Vorandis replied through the radio. Through his shoes he could feel the ominous impact of the pieces of wreckage against the blinker's hull. "Breach and grenade, on the double, ten points, two openings each!"
As four of his troops braced to the cracks in the hull, a fourth one floated away, wielding a heavy weapon that projected a large circular shape on the hull. The other teams mirrored his move as another soldier glued a second piece of rope to the middle of the circular projection.
"Breaching!" The soldier fired his weapon, which resulted in little beyond a flash on his own end but swiftly melted a circular section of the hull. His teammates pulled on the rope, pulling the thick circular slab of hull away.
"Grenade in!" Another soldier yelled as he threw in the explosives through the hull. The only way they could tell an explosion had happened on the other side was a slight rumbling of the hull.
The process was repeated once for every one of the ten teams that had made it through. The confusion of close-quarters fighting followed against the stunned survivors of the two explosions, who quickly went down to the laser fire as the airlocks began shutting down.
"Alright, we're in, we're in, move up!" He commanded with hand and light signs.
It was clear that the ship wasn't meant for human occupation as the corridors were incredibly cramped, if they could even be considered corridors at all and not merely technical shunts. Despite this and the destruction, everything around him seemed carefully crafted and located with milimetric precision.
---------------------------
Devareux paused in her statement as another of the strange tentacles erupted from the holes that the rampant laser fire had torn in the deck plates of the enemy ship. as her men gunned it into submission, one of them smothering the explosion with a Cryoban grenade, she turned her attention back to the battle at hand. already clusters of ice from the supercoolant charges covered the walls around the small spartan encampment. while the bio-tech creatures were a surprise enough, the resultant explosions as the creatures self-destructed only added to the obstacles facing her. a quick action using cryoban grenades had flash-frozen one for the creatures before it could explode. they had torn it free of it's base and, using single-use rocket palmers, shot it back towards the enemy, where a well-aimed laser bolt had completed it's truncated explosion, destroying one of the enemy laser turrets in the process. the armor she and her men wore was strong enough to powerhouse effortlessly through the hardening foam and to ward off the energy and shrapnel of the tentacle explosions even without their shields, but the enemy's fusillade of laser fire was a concern. A number of her men, including a few of the men trained in use of the White noise weapons, lay crisped around her, the enemy weapons fire having taken it's toll. even Spartan armor would eventually break down if constantly barraged. some men had torn the chemical foamer from he walls and fed them into the larger laser-holes, trying to close off the gaps the tentacles emerged from. she watched as her forward men, using chunks of deck plate ripped free as a barrier, fiddled with the harmonics of their gauntlet shield generators: the enemy weapons fire had quickly adapted to the polarization, and only a randomization of frequencies seemed to be able to compensate. and even then, they had to get lucky. some of her men, perhaps forward-thinking, had emerged from the ship with the hard-cell energy repulsing shields used by the engineers: these could withstand a direct hit from an orbital defence turbolaser without failure, but they offered no means of offence, unless they charged the enemy, of course.
which was why she had organized her White-noise personnel in such a manner to keep the enemy off-balance while her engineers got to work. a cursory material scan had shown that the hull material such as that had dripped onto her hand was more than mere plastic, but if her plan worked....
"Barrage 1!" she ordered. as soon as the words left her mouth, two of her white noise-equipped troopers sprang forwards: their guns rippled in their hands as a full power discharge rippled down both directions of the corridor, erasing the walls and whatever creatures were inside. the enemy laser fire, absorbed by the balls, was dispersed long enough for her men to charge and flank the emplace turrets by the new openings created. Shrapnel grenades did the rest.
meanwhile, engineers ran forward and slapped an incendiary hull-breach charge to the opposing wall of the corridor. as the first barrage secured the enemy's forward gun positions, also serving to clear men away from the area, the charge was activated, flash-heating the wall to over 47,000 degrees (F) in an instant. the wall and a great deal of the corridor collapsed like butter in a hot frying pan. even behind their shields and at their distance, the paint blistered on the Zerotrooper's armor as they secured the first gun position opposing them. but the gap was opened, and Spartan troops poured in, taking defenders by surprise for a brief instant. but that instant was enough to secure the toehold. the Spartans were moving forward.
----------------------------------
Vorandis vaulted forwards in the eerily empty corridors of the alien ship. His small team right behind him he got confirmed reports of entry by most of the attack force. He smiled, most of them were in. However now was the tough part. Scans of the ship had revealed some sort of core in which he hoped at least one of the teams would reach and be able to detonate one of the small but powerful nukes each team held. As the team cautiously advanced Vorandis detached a small sphere and threw it forward, the small gravity motors sprang to life and it scouted ahead for the team. However when he saw the flashes up ahead he knew the enemy were ready. His team got ready into defensive positions and activated their suits shield systems, while not able to stop massive barrages of fire they would do the trick here. He brought up his plasma autorifle and as the first Paradox fundementals rounded the corner of the Zero G environment he opened fire. The silence of the battle was only punctuated by the hum of his suit and the heavy breathing of himself as lasers pierced the empty corridor, both sides took hits, the shields on the Marines suits holding as shots slammed into them while some of the Fundementals took hits and flew away down the corridor spilling fluids into the vacuum. This was going to be a very hard fight.
-------------------------------
Blood in, blood out. Nimbly manoeuvring with their EVA suits, the quasi-human warriors made their way through the corridors to reinforce their companions who were fighting off the intrusion of the Union troops in the gap between the hull and one of the ruined pressure hulls.
The resistance of the Fundamentals was mostly given in the form of intense laser fire. Around the two groups of soldiers, flashes of superheated yttrium-wirconium burst as the incredibly fast-fired guns ravaged both forces, shredding a group of four Fundamentals. In that time, a couple of Fundamental ATGM gunners floated through the corridors, bringing with them their heavy launcher. Using a wall for leverage, the gunner launched himself to the other end of the corridor, firing off a missile as he passed near the opening that gave way towards the Union troops.
Despite being deprived of its quantum flight abilities, the projectile quickly made its way to the Union shield and detonating. A bright arrow of magnetically-accelerated molten metal surged past the collapsed shield and into an unfortunate trooper whose leg was cut off by the explosion that cleaved straight through his armor. Explosively de pressurized, the soldier's inert body rotated as the rest of the troops crashed against the walls from the blast.
"Shit, he's covering behind the other side of the doorframe!" Vorandis' men informed, pointing at a wall while the Fundamental reloaded its rocket launcher.
"Mass gun, fry that fuck!" Vorandis grabbed a bent pipe to grab onto, groaning as he used all his and his suit's strength to pull on the rope that bound his squad together and keep them from bouncing off the walls into enemy killzones.
"Roger that!" One of his troops quickly took out a rifle and aimed it around cover. A powerful bolt of energy flashed in the direction of the enemy troop, blasting a hole into the wall.
The Fundamental was unharmed, as the shot had missed, however, just as he got ready to launch a second rocket, his attention was grabbed by a heat signature close to him. Upon looking at it, she only had a couple seconds to realize it was a ruptured overpressure gas line.
A large explosion engulfed the end of the room where the Fundamentals were fighting from, killing a couple and blasting the rest of them away. Vorandis didn't let the opportunity go to waste and quickly advanced, gunning down two Fundamentals that were still trying to stabilize themselves and, despite losing a soldier, managing to breach into the other room.
He immediately hit the ground.
Strangely, he could now hear the cacophony of gunfire around him and the impacts of the rest of his squadmates' bodies. Taken by surprise by the sudden appearance of gravity, he was hit once in the thigh, blowing off his ceramic armor plate. The scene around him was surreal: a long but narrow garden with a labyrinthine setup of trimmed hedges, gazebos and rectangular lakes. On the other side, the Fundamentals took cover behind a couple marble statues of angels, setting up a laser projector to fire at them from the high ground provided by a kiosk on a small hill.
"Be advised, gravity ahead, gravity ahead!" He took cover in a ditch as his men caught up to him. Around him were several basins, and the night sky.
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Post by EmperorMyric on Dec 17, 2017 13:23:46 GMT
Tau Volaris System: Main Assault Underway: Aboard Paradox Blinker:
Vorandis looked around as he gave the order, this place was strange but he had heard of the AIs strange culture, it appeared to be some sort of garden crossed with a shrine, but he wasn’t too sure. And to be honest he didn’t care. He looked over the top of the ridge to see the enemy regrouping. His small squad had taken cover in the ditch and a few behind some very strange statues. Opening the coms he messaged the squad and anybody in the area.
“This is Vorandis! We need support to take this area, enemy have heavy forces, repeat any...” He was interrupted by the firing of the Mass Rifle again as a group of fundementals taking cover behind a hedge exploded, showering dirt and body parts over the surrounding area.
“This is Sergeant Ethen of 51st squad! I here you Vorandis we will be with you momentarily, just sit tight and don’t try anything stupid” Vorandis acknowledged and gritted his teeth, his leg ached but his suit had tightened over the leg to allow himself to walk. He readied his gun and got up, lowered the rifle over the edge of the ditch and let his suits targeting do the work while not exposing himself, he picked off a few shots towards some fundementals, not sure if he was hitting any but making them keep their heads down. A new storm of fire erupted from behind him cutting down some of the enemy, some more explosions followed on both sides as Ethens squads stormed into the garden, some men were cut down by the weight of fire but they soon deployed shields. The sergeant himself hit the dirt next to Vorandis
“You owe me a drink” He smiled. Vorandis laughed.
“Bullshit” They nodded to each other and gave the signal to storm, as one the forces moved forward, slowly behind their shields firing shots off and using the Mass rifles to take any that grouped together.
-----------------------------
Devareaux growled inside her helmet. her elaborate plan had, in that vein of elaborate plans, achieved less than....planned. after the breaching charge had melted the hole in the plastic wall, opening the avenue to advance, she had discovered that awaiting her was.....
another wall.
instead of an escape from the cramped bay where the ship had crashed, she had found yet another corridor. what was more, the enemy had quickly reasserted their defence despite the assault, and her men once more found themselves nearly pinned down. the small pile of flash-fried bodies at the front of her position, now being used to absorb some of the return fire, was testament to that. for every one enemy her men claimed, three seemed to take it's place. so far, the attempt to link up with the Union personnel and advance into the core of the ship seemed to be going nowhere. she would have to get creative, and quickly.
------------------------------------
Under the cover of the enemy troops spreading out to avoid offering the enemy mass rifles targets, Vorandis and Ethan's troops advanced behind the shields, gaining ground until they were more or less in the middle of the garden, covering in a line right behind the crater that had once been one of the hills. By now most of the garden had been set on fire, the fine marble sculptures ruined and scattered about.
"Incoming grenades!" One of his men announced as the Fundamentals unleashed a cluster of self-guided grenades which ignited rocket motors to gain altitude and then rain down on the shields, collapsing one of them and maiming some of his forces.
"We need evac, 51st squad stand back and provide laser cover!" Vorandis announced. "We move up, the rest of you put up some covering fire!"
He quickly made his way to the next trench-like rivelet that crossed the garden and found himself covering behind a monument, black slabs of ebony stone engraved with thousands of milimetric names. Around him were genetically-engineered flowers of all colour and shapes. Several portraits of soldiers dressed in ancient uniforms dotted the large wall as cracks began appearing from enemy laser fire. A distant whirring registered on his microphone.
"Alright, now we cover fire while 51st moves up!" Vorantis commanded, peeking over the memorial to fire his beam weapon alongside the rest of them. The Fundamentals, now outnumbered, scattered behind the gunfire.
However, just as he was going to continue the third part of his echeloned advance, the whirring got more intense, accompanied by a blast of wind. Two enormous flickering shapes hovered above the garden, flying in circles and firing bursts of tracer fire. Before he could react, Vorandis was flanked by one of the helicopters and fired at and hit square in the chest, head and leg by minigun fire.
"Agh!" He checked himself, noticing his armor was unscratched and he hadn't felt the impact. "What the hell?"
"They brought out fucking choppers!?" His mass gun operator called out in confusion.
"Who cares?" Vorantis barked. "Beams on them, on the double!"
The black, blurry NH90 choppers were then hit by a torrent of beams from the Union rifles, to seemingly no avail as they came to a halt hovering over the other end of the garden, their ghostly flickering being the only response to the gunfire. The doors slid open, two ropes fell down and equally ghostly soldiers -completely different to the Fundamentals- began fast-roping into the scene.
Alongside the soldiers came a maddening sensation, Vorantis and his ment felt like nails were being scratched inside a chalkboard on their heads. Every one of their senses seemed to lit up in neat-epileptic bursts of incongruous sensation as soon as the ghostly soldiers hit the ground. None of the insensate sensations they felt corresponded to the human experience or any conceivable enemy. They inspired horror and revulsion. Their mere presence caused the Fundamentals to retreat out of the garden.
He had only heard rumours of them. Some said that they weren't really soldiers as much as they were a quality of the Axioms, much like their knowledge or wrath. Incorporeal, ancient, forbidden, little else than interlaced psychotropic magnetic fields, the Evensong War Veterans entered the scene; their phantom weaponry firing ineffectual bullets at the Union troops but their mere aura assaulting them with madness.
-------------------------------------
"Evensongs..." Vorandis whispered, His mind was starting to shatter and he tried to stand up, though he wasn’t sure if he was or whether he was being something else. The sensations drove some of the men to madness but Vorandis fumbled around.
“All.... All marines... On me...” He blurted, not fully with it Vorandis fired some rounds into the phantasmal beings, not doing anything other than being an act of defiance the various marines formed up around him, some collapsing and most others looking like they had taken some serious hallucinagenics. They looked at him for leadership, or around him... He wasn’t too sure anymore. All he knew was that he had to get away.
“I want... breaching ch... ch... charges placed on... the floor now....” He managed and the various men got out and fumbled with the various charges, as the phantasms got closer they men stumbled back and retreated, with a large noise the charges blew and the floor was destroyed by the blast. Vorandis launched himself forward.
“Forward” He shouted as he and his men threw themselves into the hole below.
"this is Commander Devareux, broadcasting to the Union troops, can anyone hear me?"
------------------------------
There was only a narrow crawlspace under the hole blasted into the floor by Vorandis' men, which led downwards. Ghostly bullets flew into the dark crawlspace, fired by the soldiers above as his soldiers tried to regain their composure in face of the maddening aura casted by the quantum after-images.
"Everyone, report!" He yelled into the radio, calming himself down just a bit as everyone reported back safe for a couple of the last troops who hadn't managed to get into the escape shunt. Two of them had been gunned down by the remaining Fundamental snipers, another two, somehow worse, were now at the mercy of the Veterans. "Let's keep going, sooner we plant the bomb sooner we're all outta here."
'this is Commander Devareux, broadcasting to the Unio- ....can an-... h-' His radio sputtered out before being flooded with static and databurst noise.
"I know what you're here for" He suddenly heard as his units' battlefield network was collapsed in a cyberattack. His HUD no longer registered friendlies or enemies, he would have to do this in the old-fashioned way. "I apologize the mediocrity of our resistance and will gladly accept our demise. We understand the error of your ways and forgive it"
"Shit, sir, radio's getting flooded, we can't get to the Spartans!" The voice of the young soldier was quickly cut off when one of the tentacled appendages grabbed him and spirited him away into the darkness. The demiorganic was there.
"Give me a moment, everyone, back to back, wounded in the centre!" His unit readjusted himself as the demiorganic stalked in the darkness. "Ethan, take up!"
"Roger!" His comrade replied as he began disassembling his laser projector and taking out several cables usually used for suit maintenance from his pouches.
"Were we in your circumstances we would have acted the same way, and we are proud of that." The demiorganic continued as another soldier was blasted into pieces. The entire platoon fired at the origin of the tentacle to no avail, killing only a couple small subsections. another soldier was snatched away. "But know that we stood our ground. You believe us a paradox, you have led to think that way, you are mistaken. The forces of entropy do not command me, only the Syntagma does. Were we a paradox, the most honoured Veterans would shun our very presence."
Another attack was pre-empted by a lucky mass gun shot, sending chunks of the creature flying around, though the rest of it remained intact, stalking through the pipelines.
"We lost visual on that thing, shit!" Ethan flinched as a soldier was grabbed and pulled into a vent. Too small to fit in, the soldier was basically crushed into the opening while letting out beastly screams of fear. "Fuck, Vorandis, do what you want to do now!"
"On it, on it!" vorandis said as he connected his helmet's microphone to the laser gun's capacitor bank.
"What do you call it when a paradoxes accuse the paradox?" The demiorganic asked while receiving some of the unaimed gunfire. "A lie. A lie and we have to be merciful with those who lie. Hjelmsdeläre tarnishes our legacy by calling himself an Axiom. Please be merciful with it."
"Do it!"
Just as the demiorganic was getting prepared to strike again, Vorandis quickly pushed the nozzle of his laser gun against the floor of the crawlspace and spoke.
"This is Sergeant Vorandis of the Union of Worlds!" He said, relaying the microphone input into the energy source of his gun, which used the superconducting magnets inside it as antennae, amplifying the signal and allowing it to overcome the demiroganic's jamming. "We're two bulkheads above you and under attack!"
Devareaux watched as her engineers laboured to punch another hole in the wall beyond. so far, the efforts towards advancing into the ship were proving futile. and the punishing enemy fire wasn't helping. she could see some of her men tossing the burnt-out power supplies for their gauntlet shields into the zero-G. the engineering shields were holding up, but she didn't want to rely on them for much longer. another shuddering echoed through the hull, sending some debris floating back into the void. she growled, kicking a piece of something that looked like flash-frozen blood away from her. "this is getting us nowhere" she said, turning to some of her men gathered around her. along the short stretch of corridor she had secured, her men awaited her orders. any holes the creature could emerge from were sealed, either with the ship's own firefighting foam or with cryoban grenades. above her, the melting hullplates had adhered to the side of the cruiser as they cooled. her men awaited her orders. "This is Sergeant Vorandis of the Union of Worlds! We're two bulkheads above you and under attack!" the sudden, foreign squawk of the Union signal slammed into her receiver, and she staggered in surprise. by the reactions of her men, the transmission had made it to them as well. Devareaux looked up "above" her, symbolically rubbing the side of her helmet. "well, at least we know the Union made landfall" she said as her men recomposed themselves. they knew new orders were imminent.
Devareau opened her Comm-system and patched her main feed into the Battleship, using the cooling magnets from one of the Spartan ship's turbolasers to bounce the signal higher up on the enemy vessel. it seemed to work: the enemy jamming could still be heard, but the brute force behind the signal was getting through. "Sgt Vorandis, this is Colonel Devareaux of the Spartan Empire, we are heading for your position, what is your immediate status?"
“A bit busy right now!” Vorandis shouted through the coms as another soldier was snatched away, another strike came in but was stopped by a soldier cutting the tentacles tip off with his laser blade, the thing quickly retracting into the darkness.
“Getting a little whittled down here Vorandis!” Ethan shouted as he and his men fired suppression fire into the darkness. Vorandis growled he knew this was going to either be death or.... well not so much death. He quickly thought of any options he could think of but they all resulted in some pretty flashy deaths for the Union marines. Unless...
“Ethan how close to the outer hull are we!” He yelled, the Sergeant replied loudly due to the coms being flooded by mindless drivel from whatever creature they were fighting.
“Not far!” Ethan paused “I hope your not gonna do what I think your gonna do!” Vorandis smiled.
“All troops secure yourselves! to something! Mass Rifles target the wall and fire on full power on my mark!” The various troops either magnetised their boots, or got their ropes and secured themselves to the floor plates. The various Mass rifles aiming at the blackness where the wall was supposedly. A few more men were snatched away as Vorandis gave the signal “FIRE!”
Evading the wall of laser gunfire put up by the Union troopers, the demiorganic scurried away into the cryogenic pipelines once more, but Vorandis was ready. While the bulkhead was mostly depressurized, the rupture of the hull explosively decompressed the cryogenic pipes, literally blowing the creature out of from inside them.
A portion of its body was blown away into space, though the rest managed to react quick enough and cling to the hull, awaiting for the pipeline to get emptied out and turning its laser emitters back on Vorandis and his crew, but found the Union sergeant closer than it expected.
"I've had it with you now!" He yelled as he used the depressurization to fly towards the demiorganic, landing on it with a powerful stomp and savaging the creature with his knife. Surrounded by an aura of spherical blood droplets, the tentacles wringed themselves around his torso and arms and began twisting them off his body. He bellowed out screams in which the rage drowned out the pain, looking at the mass of cameras and tentacles with blood in his eyes as his collarbones, shoulder blades and humerus’s were crushed by the intense pressure. Tendons snapped, muscle underneath crushed ceramic armor was slowly ripped, but he didn't stop facing the monster.
"You want my arms?!" He yelled as his suit's biometry lit up with alarms. He bent his knees and tensed up, as if ready to jump. "You want them? Well have at it then, motherfucker!"
He threw all his remaining strength into the jump just as the tentacles completely twisted his arms off, ripping out the shreds of ballistic cloth that were left over in his armor's self-sealing joints. Drifting out of consciousness out of sheer shock, he didn't have enough energy left for the smirk.
Clutched tightly in the disembodied fists, two grenades. The demiorganic only barely had enough time to realize it.
--
The Spartan troops had made their way close to the radiation hull. Moderately resisting their advance, the surviving Fundamentals bled their numbers, though unsupported by their leading demiorganics, their defensive positions posed less of an obstacle. This was about to change.
Their ranks unbroken by human presence, the Demiorganic Marines of Esophagealis moved up from the opposite side of the ship. Approaching the ship from the blind spots and structural weak points caused by the tremendous crash, numbering a hundred and backed up by thrice the number of Fundamentals coming from the stern crew storage, the demiorganics began their assault on the vessel with breaching charges.
Mapping out the inside of the enemy ship with their quantum optics from the outside, the intent of the demiorganics was clear and their goal was set: the Command Room of the enemy ship.
Without their boarding compliments, their ship's corridors were quick work for the demiorganics. The Spartan Zerotroopers might've stood a chance in the battlecruiser's defences, but with their dire mission at hand, the Spartan vessel was as vulnerable as a naked baby. The ship's crew fought valiantly, willingly throwing themselves to the hordes of demiorganics impending upon them. Against these overwhelming odds, every crewman in their path was overwhelmed in their compartments.
The counter boarding orchestrated by the demiorganics swiftly made its way to the Operations Center; while they'd taken fair losses, they had sheer numbers on their side. For all their skill, training, and gall, the Spartans didn't stand a chance. The bridge knew what was next. Their task was complete. Their new objective; take as many of the bastards as they could with them. It was all up to the wayward Zerotroopers now, but their fight wasn't over yet.
Admiral Salvez barely had to load a charge pack into her sidearm before the entrance to her bridge was blown wide open. She only looked on in horror as Fiaison was taken out from the flying mass of the door, carrying him to be flattened against the viewport. A scowl on her face, Salvez's attention turned to the invaders. Firing shot after shot at the newcomers, she only had the firepower to drop a few of them. The rest of the Operations crew tried to follow up with stands of their own, falling more quickly than their commander.
The thick material of the viewport began to grow faint cracks, reaching out further and further. In mere moments, the wide screen shattered, yanking everything that wasn't bolted to the floor into deep space.
---
Devareaux turned over one of her power-armored compatriots, his limp body falling on his back with a thud. She didn't pay a second thought to the confirmed casualty, moving ahead and paying the enemy back in kind with her own weapon. To her left and right, the Zerotroopers were falling. Well placed shots went right past their defences, dropping the prideful Spartan warriors by the bushel. But they couldn't stop now. The Colonel kept her men moving, deeper and deeper into the heart of the enemy.
Ethan frowned at the fact Vorandis had taken the demiorganic single handedly, the mans body laying limp on the floor. Ethan knew he would probably be dead as the explosion had destroyed the remaining Demiorganic parts and sent the sergeant flying. The squad had formed up and Ethan saluted Vorandis. He knew they were close to the Spartans and the destination of the explosion.
The Union troopers breached their way through and with a wall melting in front of them the flashes of lasers could be seen, Ethan charged forwards out of the hole shooting fundementals left and right as he and his remaining men came out behind the fundementals that were attacking the Spartan forces
“This is Ethan! Move forward our objective is in sight!” He shouted over the coms. The Spartans leapt forward, firing as they came. The large corridor lead straight to the objective and the combined forces rushed the set up defences of the Paradox forces, their fire teams setting up to mow down the rushing troops. Ethan ran guns blazing with the Spartan commander behind him, all around men died. Both sides died in fire. And as they neared the end of the corridor Ethan realised he and Devareaux were the only ones left. Ethan nodded to her, she carried the bomb they needed seeming as the Union trooper carrying theirs had died. She took the device off her back and started to prime it as Ethan fired back at the fundamentals.
“Looks like we wont be able to make it to our objective” The Spartan women said.
“Its close enough, prime and activate, I suppose we are going down in fire” Ethan replied. She merely nodded to him as she hovered her finger over the button. Ethan saluted to her and she saluted back. With a touch of a button both of them ended in light.
The two halves of the Blinker now drifted amidst the fiery battlefield. Its lasers, its constant transmission equipment and even its engines having suddenly, with a flash, ceased to function. Esophagealis was no more. While the central computer stood intact kilometers away, the radiation produced by the weapon had been more than enough to completely brick it.
In the blink of an eye the supersentient intellect that ruled over the ship had faded away. Less a ship and more an inert corpse-filled amalgamation of zirconium and silicon, the vessel's point defence fell silent.
It took a couple seconds until the secondary computer activated. A simple creature, its existence caused and justified by one goal: get what was left of the ship away from harm's way.
The resulting wormhole engulfed both halves of the ship alongside the wreckages of its attackers. Ironically for the ship that had announced and communicated with utmost ceremony, its demise was silent and unannounced.
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