Frozen Soul, and other works: Chapter 194

(Flag Bridge, CNS Wrath of Gadran, Interstellar space near Coldana)

Admiral Kasyx Rizazzi shook his head. This was the kind of battle that any Navy man wanted to be a part of. No uncertainty about who was right and who was wrong. No wondering about the motivations of the other side. Just a simple, black and white battle between a terrifying foe and entire worlds of civilians. If there was ever a righteous fight for someone who wore the uniform to be involved in, it was this one.

From the moment that the Treaty of Helbizore had been put into effect with the news of a Harvester appearing, everyone knew that Coldana was dead. The Swarm that accompanied it was simply too large to defeat normally. There was no way that the forces in place would be able to fight their way through and defeat the Harvester. The planet was doomed along with all the civilians living on it. The best they could do was to avenge them.

But, through some conjunction of desperation and insanity, the Consortium Navy had managed to hold longer and deal more damage to the swarm than anyone had believed possible, in part thanks to those Black Stars with their Starhunter scout ships playing the X’thari’s habits against them to draw off the swarm. The tenacity with which the Consortium fought off the X’thari in space was worthy of all of his respect. They had even managed to wound the Harvester enough that the thing had not yet moved to consume Coldana. However, that didn’t mean he had to like the implications of what they had done. Turning Navy personnel into what amounted to suicide bombers stuck in his throat. But it had allowed the Firebringer pilots to give Coldana a fighting chance.

Now, the combined fleet had a plan, and a chance to not only save the people still on Coldana, but to destroy the Harvester altogether. The problem was getting the ships into place so that they could strike. The Swarm still encircled the Coldana system, and they would need to punch through if they hoped to attack the Harvester directly. Punching a hole would fall to him and the Confederate Navy’s Twelfth Fleet.

Looking to his aide, he took a deep breath, and said, “Give me fleet wide. Copy to the combined fleet.” There was a nod, and he looked into the camera that would send his image to the fleet. A battle like this was something a Naval Officer always wanted to be a part of, and yet hoped would never come. Such a battle needed words beforehand to rally the troops, and to be remembered by those who came after.

“Men and women of the Twelfth Fleet! This is Admiral Rizazzi. As you know, we are fighting here, as one part of a fleet of over a thousand ships, from six different star nations. We are far from home, in space that belongs to a people that are sometimes our rivals, and sometimes foes. We have fought each other, bled each other, lost good people, military and civilian, to each other. Now, we fight side by side in common cause!”

“I will not lie to you and say such foolish things like how this is the dawn of a new era of peace and understanding between all peoples, or that we will all return home after this battle to join together as a single people, no longer needing to fear the specter of war between us. You are not kittens, who have yet to know the way of the world! You are warriors, defenders of your people! You know that such a future, despite what we may desire, is not something a single battle can bring about.”

“But here, today, we face a foe that is beyond any one nation’s power to defeat. We face an enemy that threatens all life in this galaxy, an enemy that consumes entire worlds along with their peoples, to create more of these vile creatures! Once before, the peoples of the galaxy joined together, as soldiers against a common enemy, and they bled and died together to push back the threat, delaying the death of all things for a day.”

“The Consortium’s Tenth and Fifteenth Fleets refused to lie down and let the people under their protection be destroyed, and they gave everything they had to push back death another day, another hour. The people of Coldana, the men and women who live upon that world and call it home, have stood against the swarm! Even now, they fight to keep back the hordes unnumbered that wish to kill and consume them! They looked at Death itself, coming for their friends, their families, their children, and they came together and answered, ‘Not today!’”

“The people on the ground have not driven off the invaders, for they do not have the strength to compete with such numbers. And yet, they fight on, unconquered still! Their fleets above did not bring down the great enemy, for they were too few to do that, but they made it bleed, and showed that, yes, we could hurt these abominations! And if we can hurt it, then we can kill it! They pushed back the death of all things for a day, and now it falls to us to push it back another day! But I am not satisfied with a single day! I say we ensure that this threat is destroyed, now and forever, so that this Harvester will never again be a threat to the civilized species of the world! Never again will a planet die, consumed by this abomination!”

“Know this, not all of us will survive this battle, but that does not make it hopeless! The X’thari have only numbers on their side! We have the collective will of six peoples on our side, with the cleverest minds of the entire galaxy coordinating our strategy, aided by the Nomad communications networks, so that we know where the enemy is, and how they are situated. They think mere numbers can defeat us! Twelfth Fleet, you are hereby ordered to prove to these damned bugs why numbers alone will never overcome the fighting spirit of the Confederate Navy! Third Group and Second Group, to the front! First Group, when the tarpits hit us, pave the road for our allies that follow! Drive it directly into their teeth!”

He cut the feed, and took a deep breath. With a deliberate air of confidence that he only half-felt, he watched, and waited. Thanks to the Nomad who was part of the Consortium Navy, they had an idea of when they would hit the tarpits that the X’thari had set up to interdict relief forces trying to enter Coldana. In fact, Third and Second Groups should be running into them in three… two… one… now!

Two thirds of Twelfth Fleet hit the tarpits right on time. Half a second later, First Group followed them, slamming back into realspace as the warp bubble collapsed. This was the critical moment. This was where the Consortium’s Tenth Fleet had met the X’thari, and had most of their forces wiped out as they valiantly tried to press on, despite all odds, to reinforce Coldana. Rizazzi held his breath as he watched the sensor readings.

“All ships, report in!”

“First group reporting in, ready to fight. Second and Third groups… we’re starting to get status reports on a ship by ship basis. The Kil’jaeden, Archimonde, Sargeras, and Stormrage are all drifting in space, no power! All ships in Second and Third groups reporting massive damage from the energy spike! Computer estimates we’re down to 45% combat effectiveness!”

Forty-five percent? That meant that over half of his ships were out of the fight, or compromised in some fashion. He knew it was going to be bad, but this bad? This was beyond anything he had ever faced before. With bated breath he asked the question that he had to know the answer to, but wasn’t sure he wanted to hear. “And the enemy?”

There was a pause as the Gadran’s tactical department analyzed the sensor data, trying to make sense of everything. “Accurate readings are difficult to attain, given the levels of high energy particles in the area, but we are looking at over five hundred enemy ships crippled or destroyed by the strike, Admiral! That’s the low estimate! Confirmed numbers climbing higher! Tarpits have fallen in Sections 7 through 15!”

Rizazzi let out his breath, and said, with a calmness he truly felt, now that he was committed, “First Group is to move forward and cover Second and Third Groups while they initiate repairs and reform their sections. All ships, fire at will. Take out any X’thari ships you can, and see if we can’t open that door a little wider! Send word to the combined fleet. Tell them that Twelfth Fleet has kicked open the door. Sprained our ankle doing it, but we’ve got it open for them!”

It had been an inspired bit of insanity, to be honest, built off the success of Fifteenth Fleet’s Operation Firebringer and the Black Stars’ Starbolt torpedoes. There were two main points of failure in the safety systems built into anything with a warp engine. Firebringer focused on removing the hardware interlocks that prevent a warp engine from accelerating into the surface of a planet. The problem was that, unless ships were designed with the ability to become the most massive missile in history in mind, those interlocks were buried in the middle of the hyperdrives for a reason! Starbolt, while a purpose-built platform now, was apparently originally just a civilian engine on the back of a solid mass. Instead of removing the hardware interlocks, the original Starbolts removed the software that interfaced between the sensors and the safeties, so that, if they were headed towards something solid, the Starbolt’s sensors wouldn’t relay that information to the interlocks, and the hardware never got the alert signal to shut down. It was a frighteningly simple solution to the problem.

That kind of suicidal maneuver was fine for attacking single point targets with maximum force, but Firebringer had shown that, in the cold of space, those methods wouldn’t work against groups of ships, like the Swarm. To deal with them, Rizazzi needed something that could strike in a wide area. He needed to compromise not the safeties on the hyperdrive, but the safeties on his shields.

A ship traveling through space using a warp drive is essentially moving in a little bubble of spacetime moving through the rest of the universe. Problem is, space, empty as it is, still has particles all over the place, and the shields of a ship at warp pick up those particles and carry them along for the ride. The longer the jump, the more particles you acquire.

This is normally not a problem, since the ship’s shields are designed to reroute the energy from the particles from the shield to rechargeable batteries that help provide emergency power, or supplement main power temporarily when it comes time to fight. Rizazzi had ordered the engineers of Second and Third groups to disable the pathways that siphoned off the energy, causing everything to be stored in the shields, building up more and more of a charge as the fleet flew for Coldana.

The result was… energetic, to say the least. The ships of Second and Third group came out of warp right in the middle of the X’thari tar pits, with the X’thari lying in wait, ready to strike the moment they entered the area. The clouds of high-energy particles that had stuck to their ships during the travel were suddenly unleashed with all the (localized) power and fury of a supernova. When the ships exited warp, the particles exited with them, and were shot out in front of each ship like a shotgun.

The shotgun blast from hell may as well have been an actual supernova, judging by the results of the event. One hundred ships, spread to form as large a ‘splash’ as they could, and, suddenly, things weren’t looking quite so bad for Twelfth Fleet from a strategic POV. For the first time anyone had ever intentionally attacked with ‘damaged’ shields, it had certainly proved why doing such against anyone but the X’thari would be considered a war crime of the highest order.

Rizazzi shook his head, clearing those thoughts from his mind. This was the time for desperation plays and leaving everything on the field of battle. He just hoped that the rest of the combined fleet would be able to make the most of it.

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Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
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Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4

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