Chapter 116 - Variant Hunt

(BSN Shinokage, Nuevo Edo System)

“RED ALERT! RED ALERT! ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS! MULTIPLE X’THARI ANCHOR TRACES DETECTED! ALL HANDS TO BATTLE STATIONS!”

It was fifty-four hours exactly after the Hunt used as scouts had issued their final communication. Fifty-four hours was not a lot of time for rest and recuperation, and certainly not enough to replace the dead pilots we’d lost. The fighters had been replaced, and Giant Leader was fresh out of medical (thankfully, his injuries weren’t as serious as the blood implied, head wounds are like that sometimes), but we didn’t have much choice except to use the best of the Nuevo Edoans who had signed on with Black Star as pilots to fill in. At least they’d had SOME stick time before this launch. This would be their trial by fire, it seemed.

Running onto the ‘flag bridge’, I called out, “Report!”

Raven looked up at me, “Commodore, X’thari anchor drive signatures detected in four areas around the system. Estimated time to transit, ten minutes. Unknown number of ships, but estimates are at one hundred ships and climbing!”

It was going to be a True Hunt, then. But why four locations? That wasn’t in line with normal X’thari doctrine. Could we really have been so unlucky as to find ourselves the target of a Variant True Hunt? No time to think about this. I had to cut down the advantage, and fast. “Show me where the staging points are.”

The four staging points for the X’thari were at the Gateway, the location of their former Sentinel probe, and… yeah, the Lagrange points to put them at L1 and L2 for Nuevo Edo and her moon. Close enough that those two could support eachother but not get caught in crossfire. Sneaky bastards.

I hit the command console. “All Assassins, All cruisers, this is Commodore Mollen. Target the X’thari Anchor Points and fire so that your projectiles hit just after the projected emergence. Remember, their drives disintegrate any matter in the space they occupy when they appear, so it is better to be a couple seconds late than early to this party. Fire as your computers dictate. Black Star Group One will take the group at L2. Group Two will defend the Gateway. Group Three and all NEN forces will attack the group at L1 and defend the planet. All fighters, all bombers, scramble!”

Raven looked at me, and said, “That still leaves the group at the Probe site.”

I nodded. “You know what to do. Send the message. Area will be free of friendlies, weapons free.” Raven nodded to me, and turned back to her work.

I touched another command, and began broadcasting to the fleet, and the planet below. “Attention, attention. This is Commodore Mirikon Mollen of the Black Star Navy. X’thari Anchor signatures have been detected in the Nuevo Edo system. At least one hundred and seventy confirmed signatures incoming. All civilian ships are ordered to land immediately or clear the system. Gate travel is now suspended. All civilians to designated shelters.” I closed the channel.

The strength of the X’thari drives was also its great weakness. They could go insane distances (no one really knew how far) so long as one endpoint was within thirty light-seconds of a Gateway, but they were about as subtle on exit and entry as throwing a piano down the stairs. If you had any sensor abilities at all, you could easily pick up a X’thari ship entering your system with their Anchor drives. Worse, the energy their system threw off meant you could tell they were leaving for half an hour as the drive charged up, and you knew where and approximately where they were entering for almost fifteen minutes if you were scanning their target system. That was the reason X’thari scouts coasted into systems, despite the fact that they could literally drop directly in on someone’s orbit. The disturbance was identifiable up to several light hours out. The only currently used drive that was less subtle was the Terran ‘transition’ drive, which gave off a tachyon pulse that was like a signal flare telling people they’d arrived, which you could see for LIGHT YEARS! The best part? The technorganic systems the X’thari used seemed to have ‘issues’ with their jump technology, meaning they were incapable of jumping in with shields raised and weapons primed, and their relative velocity was zero coming out of the jump. That meant that if you could hit a X’thari the moment it came out of jump, you could kill it easily.

“Sir, Premier Fukuya is calling, General Akagi is with her.”

“On screen.” The main screen changed from a tactical plot of the system to showing the Premier and General in a bunker, probably the same one they contacted us when we made first contact. I nodded to them. “Premier, General, good to see you’re already under cover.”

Premier Fukuya nodded. “Commodore, what is the situation?”

“We have 230 confirmed drive signatures of X’thari Anchor Drives, penetrating in… 3 minutes. Almost a hundred of them are concentrated at the entrance point at the planet’s L1 Lagrange point with the moon. Friendlies have been moved out of the area, so any defense platforms should engage immediately when ships enter realspace.”

The General nodded. “Already set up. Do you think you can hold?”

I paused, and then said, “I don’t know, General. The majority of the combined fleet is now centered around the planet, and will be in position to defend against the first group. With the planetary defenses, they should make a good fight of it, if nothing else. We have ambush groups set to take on two of the other three attack groups as they exit, hopefully giving us an advantage in the short term.”

“And the third group?”

“I’ve made a call. We may be able to keep that one from reinforcing the other groups, but I’m not sure right now. Ambush groups are going to try and bait their targets into playing cat and mouse, preventing them from joining up with the planetary assault group. That is as best we can do at the moment.”

Fukuya nodded. “Should we initiate the evacuation plans?”

I considered, and then shook my head. “Negative. The numbers are wrong for standard X’thari attacks, which means we are dealing with a Variant Hunt, which makes them entirely unpredictable. Civilian craft will get in the way. And I need every ship and fighter capable of fighting defending against this group. Keep them in the shelters, and make sure the ground forces are prepared for possible invasion.”

“Commodore! They’re coming through!”

“I have to go. We’ll talk more when this is over. Mollen, out.” I cut off the transmission. It was rude, I know, but I didn’t have time to deal with the niceties. Going back to the tactical display, I looked over the data as it came in. Two hundred and thirty was a strange number for a X’thari group. “Raven, what is the breakdown of ships by class and jump point?” A list came up on my HUD.

Point Alpha (Gateway):

9 Aeh-class Hunter-Scouts

18 Photh­-class Frigates

9 Mothak-class Light Cruisers

1 Purryg-class Dreadnought

Point Beta (Probe Site):

9 Aeh-class Hunter-Scouts

18 Photh­-class Frigates

9 Mothak-class Light Cruisers

1 Purryg-class Dreadnought

Point Gamma (L2 Lagrange Point):

9 Aeh-class Hunter-Scouts

18 Photh­-class Frigates

9 Mothak-class Light Cruisers

1 Purryg-class Dreadnought

Point Delta (L1 Lagrange Point):

18 Aeh-class Hunter-Scouts

36 Photh­-class Frigates

18 Mothak-class Light Cruisers

1 Purryg-class Dreadnought

1 New ship class, probable designate Carrier

“FUCK! Raven, make sure all squadrons know about the probable carrier. Send to all flight commands, Black Stars to take the lead in engaging enemy fighters, where present. Planetary fighters and bombers are to focus on enemy ships. Send to all groups, as soon as you finish pacifying your area of responsibility, move to reinforce Point Delta.”

“Enemy has deployed system-wide tarpit.”

“Deploy our own.”

“Done.”

“Time to kinetic strike impacts?”

“Three… two… one… Impact!”

Fifteen seconds after the X’thari ships reentered realspace, kinetic strikes began going off across their formations. Lights began going out, signifying dying ships, but not enough. There were only twelve Assassins and two cruisers in the system, after all. The Alpha and Gamma points lost four frigates and a cruiser each, while Beta was completely untouched. Delta… flooding the entry point with kinetics from the Assassins and the planetary defenses had worked a minor miracle. All Hunter-Scouts and twelve Frigates destroyed, with four more badly damaged and leaking atmosphere. Proof positive that the shotgun approach was still bloody effective in space combat.

Moments after the kinetic strikes, the Dragon bombers announced their presence. The Demons of Second Group struck a brutal blow, twelve anti-ship kinetic missiles striking their dreadnought simultaneously, ripping it to shreds. The Inferno Squadron, however, spread the love, striking with the NEN’s Akunoshi Squadron. Eight cruisers fell to the new pilots’ missiles, while the Infernos scored several hits on the dreadnought and carrier, leaving both dead in space, at least temporarily.

Those would be our last easy kills, however. Their shields came online, weapons began warming up, and ships began moving. But 230 ships were now down to 181, and three of their most powerful vessels were either dead or temporarily disabled. The ‘overwhelming first strike’ approach worked wonders, but now we had to fight it out, and the X’thari were all kinds of pissed.

(BSN Breath of Hades, Point Alpha, Nuevo Edo System)

Captain Enlen whistled softly as she saw the X’thari Dreadnought go up. “All power to shields and engines! Recharge the primary weapons! Have the gunboats focus on the remaining frigates. Hammer Squadron, start in on those Scouts, don’t let them cloak and shoot us in the ass! Demons to focus fire on the cruisers! Take them out, and we can overpower the rest!”

The X’thari were moving now. “All gunboats, all Assassins, stay with your cohort, don’t let these hunters drive you into a trap. We have to hurry and kill this group so we can try and reinforce Gamma and Delta points!”

(BSN Thunderfury, Point Delta, Nuevo Edo System)

Captain Am’rica stood stoically on her bridge as she watched the enemy forces enter the system. By the gods, there were so many of them! Certainly, the initial strikes had been devastating to the X’thari, but they would not be able to pull off such a strike a second time. Even now, the enemy was beginning to react, and she could see the first fighters appearing on her screens. Those were a problem for the Thunderbirds.

“Priority message from Shinokage!”

“To me.” Captain Am’rica read the message on her tablet, and nodded slowly. Moving over to her command chair, she sat, and pressed a button. “Major Khan, are the Marines ready?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Marines are suited and ready for combat. Do we have a target?”

“The Master requests that the Black Star Marines be the first to capture a completely unknown class of X’thari warship, the carrier on your screens. We have zero intelligence on this ship, its schematics, or its capabilities. Full recording is permitted and encouraged. Priorities as follows: 1. Disable self-destruct system; 2. Prevent erasure of technorganic computer core; 3. Gather any and all intelligence possible on the X’thary vessel; 4. Capture the ship; 5. Do not die, except in direct pursuit of objectives 1-4. He wants intel, not a ‘Marines dying blooper reel’, as he put it.”

“Understood. Marines ready to deploy. Get us to the carrier, and we’ll make their lives hell.”

“We launch as soon as Fleet removes the Carrier’s shields.”

(NEN Santiago, Point Delta, Nuevo Edo System)

Captain Ana Gonzalez was proud to be the first captain of a warship in the brand new Nuevo Edo Navy. The Black Star officers had put her through grueling tactical simulations ever since she’d first joined the officer track in training, and now she was seeing why. Space combat was all about planning your moves three steps ahead, and the weapons you were fighting could sometimes have been launched ten minutes before they got to you.

As Captain of the temporary flagship of the NEN, she was the leader of the four Assassin-class vessels and twelve gunboats that they were able to field. The weapon platforms were a great force multiplier, but only until the X’thari vessels got too close to the ‘friendlies’ for the attacks to be safely delivered, not unless the battle got far closer to the planet than they wanted it to.

“Time until primary weapon recharge?”

“Five minutes, twenty-six seconds!”

“Get us within secondary weapon range. Prepare to fire according to the Black Star target data. Watch out for the big ships. Our shields are supposed to better than average for our type of ship, but that dreadnought can smash us like a grape if we aren’t careful. It looks disabled, but I don’t want to find out that it is only playing dead the hard way!”

“Fighters incoming!”

“Point defense, target the fighters! Helm, keep us moving, keep us evasive. I want us in our target zone by the time the Primary is recharged, so we can shove it down some X’thari’s throat!”

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