(Flag Bridge, BSN Hrunting, Sol System)
Commodore Keh Draka stood tall on the flag bridge of her
flagship, the Hrunting, it was an odd name, not one she had heard
before. But a search through the info net revealed that it was a reference to a
very old Terran story of a hero who defeated a great evil. It was the name of a
sword given to that hero by a warrior king, so that he might slay the enemy of
his people, a sword that the warrior king had carried himself, in his day. It
was a good name for a ship.
Her sister ship, Nægling, was also worthily named. Another blade carried by the same hero in
his battles, it was clear that the names had been chosen deliberately, to allow
the two blades of the hero to fight together once more. She promised herself
that, before she was through, there would be tales told and songs sung of these
two blades renewed!
Hrunting’s name was fitting, too, as this ship was
given to her by a man that could be called a warrior king, as he had fought
battles, and carved out a place of his own, which he held by force of arms.
Yes, the Admiral of the Black Star Navy could be called a warrior king, like
the stories of old. Unlike the fools who ran the Ihm Imperium, who had not seen
real combat in their lives. Her eyes focused on the screen in front of her, as
that warrior king spoke his commands.
“Commodore, we’ve got the enemy in disarray. Focus your
fire ahead, and punch a hole for the Marines. The Tiamat will not be deploying
drop ships, but will be using the more… low tech entry method. Get them to the
big fucker. We’re officially classing it as a ‘Leviathan-class’ warship until
we have something else to go on. I want it either captured, or destroyed, and
if you have to kill it, I want anything you can get off it, so we know who and
what we’re fighting.”
Draka smiled toothily at the screen. “As you wish, Admiral.
It is time for these enemies to learn what fear is.” As the connection closed,
she turned to her crew. “All batteries, forward fire! Target any ships in our path!
Bombers are to concentrate fire on the corvettes and frigates, while our
gunships and assassins take out the cruisers! Battleships, cruisers, and
Destroyers are to charge the Leviathan!”
She took a moment to examine the scans they had of the
massive Leviathan. The bow looked to be incredibly armored, and absolutely
littered with guns, and the engines were, frankly, absurdly huge. But there, on
the top side of the ship, was what looked like an exposed bridge? The
foolishness of such a design knew no bounds!
She looked at the plot. Hrunting was slightly out of
position for a run like that. She’d placed her command on the left-hand side of
the formation, while Nægling was on the right. They would have the better angle, without cutting
across fields of fire.
“Targeting orders
for the group. Hrunting is to target the Leviathan’s engines. I
want that thing dead in space! Nægling will strike the exposed bridge there. Killing off their leaders will
hopefully spark chaos in the ship, as it has done in these warbands. Cruisers
and Destroyers are to sweep the ship, taking out point-defense and anti-ship
weapons. Make the road as smooth as we can for the Marines!”
(Flag Bridge, BSN Gugnir, Coldana System)
Slave-Commodore Hirata Konomi grit her teeth as her flagship
shuddered under another series of blasts from the enemy vessels that had poured
out of the rift that formed where the Harvester had been destroyed. The enemy
ships were light and quick, looking like some kind of dart you’d throw in a
game, with what her analysts told her were solar sails, and some kind of
cloaking device. They were fast, and damned hard to hit.
Worse, they had powerful forward-facing weapons that passed
through normal shields like they were made of paper. The Black Star ships were light
enough to keep pace, but they didn’t have the armor that the Consortium ships
had, to take a hit. Right now, the whole situation was devolving into what the
fighter pilots called a furball.
“Commodore, we have energy readings from the rupture! Much
larger than before. I think we’ve got a massive enemy ship coming through!”
She looked at the plot. Gram was closer to the
rupture. “Tell Gram to launch a full broadside of Starbolts into the
rupture immediately!”
“But ma’am, the distortions—”
“I don’t care about the damn distortions! We can’t let that
monster through, especially if it has upscaled versions of these aliens’ weapons.
Tell them to fire at once!”
“Gram acknowledges. Firing now.”
(Bridge, BSMV Tiamat, Sol System)
Captain Dih Chex
unknowingly mirrored the Commodore’s posture as she stood on the deck of her
Heavy Assault Transport and watched the battle unfold. Calling her ship a ‘transport’
was only technically true. Yes, it was true that they transported Marines to
where they needed to go, but this ship was so much more than a mere conveyance,
something that would be proven beyond all doubt in the coming battle.
“Final report on
the Energy Distributors?”
“All systems in the
green, Captain. The system will be ready on command.”
“Very well, begin
feeding power to the distributors. Marines to the boarding tubes. Keep us in
formation with the Navy for the time being, use their shields as much as we can
to keep the bombardment off us until it is time to charge. Keep the Crows in
our shadow until we get into engagement range, as well. Fighters to attack enemy
fliers, bombers to work on targets of opportunity.”
Chex moved to her
command chair, and began fastening her harness. As she worked, she watched on
the main screen as Second Group drove hard at the Leviathan. Their weapons hit
true, but there was simply too much mass there, and, for all the fact that it
looked like welded together scrap metal, the fact was that, even on the
sidewalls, the ship carried an impressive amount of armor. But there was only
so much armor could do against the weapons of the Black Star Navy.
Rail gun rounds and
Dragonbreath torpedoes reached out and impacted the shields again and again, with
the two battleships focusing their fire on relatively small areas of the ship.
The Nægling did not fire its four massive rail guns at
once, but in sequence, rapid-fire style. The first two impacts strained the
bridge shields to the limit. The third one shattered them. The fourth shot
destroyed the bridge.
Hrunting, too, was putting up a good showing. She’d
managed to get several hits on the engines, but destroying them was going to take
some time. There were simply too many engines for a single hit to take them all
out, not while Starbolts were off the table.
The Destroyers, known
as the Sin Squadron, since they were all named after sins from an old religion
worked on clearing the point-defense. Meanwhile, the Four Horsemen, as the Cruisers
were known, lived up to their dark namesakes, and brought destruction to the
anti-ship weapons. There was still some incoming fire, but nothing they couldn’t
handle.
It was not without
loss, however. Many ships in the fleet were damaged. None had been destroyed
outright, not yet, but that had less to do with the ships themselves, and more
to do with the decision to decapitate the groups in front of them, sending the enemy
into disarray. And the fighters and bombers were so fragile that, if the
frigates they were targeting got a clean shot, they were done for. Losses
mounted.
“We’re within
effective range!”
Chex leaned forward
as much as she could in her harness, a feral look on her face. “Ramming speed!”
(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Sol System)
“Sir, the Tiamat is beginning her attack run!”
“On screen!”
I took a moment to
look away from the ongoing battle, as the various groups of the Black Star Navy
and Imperial Navy took on the enemy forces. They were more numerous, but they
didn’t have the discipline of actual military. However, the sheer number of
weapons being used meant that my ships were being pushed to the limits. I didn’t
doubt that I’d probably have to scrap some ships altogether. And the number of
dead and wounded would not be pleasant to consider.
The Tiamat was made to get my Marines into position where they could do the most
damage. Sometimes that meant a hot drop onto a contested site. Sometimes that
meant ship to ship combat. But drop ships were weak, and easily targeted, when
compared to the transport. So the designers gave the transport a way to get
into the fight against larger foes.
Modern warships
simply didn’t ram other ships except as a final act of desperation. Anything
that your ship could survive ramming into could probably be destroyed with means
that didn’t hurt your ship as much as it did the enemy’s. Tiamat was not like other modern ships. The High Energy Distributor Array
projected a spinning energy field in front of the Tiamat’s hull, like a
drill. The ship accelerated towards the Leviathan, even as the Second Group
hammered away at its shields, and reduced its attack abilities.
And when it hit,
the drill ripped open a hole in the side of the Leviathan, which the Tiamat quickly filled. I couldn’t see from here, but I knew what was
happening. The boarding tubes would extend, and my Ihm Marines would charge
onto the Leviathan, intent on causing all manner of mayhem, and securing the
ship. I had no idea what they’d face over there, but if anyone could take that
ship, it was the Black Star Marines.
“Admiral! We’re
detecting a surge of energy from the rupture!”
I barely had time
to curse the news, before everything changed.
(Throne Room, Aurum Throni, Terran Orbit, Sol System)
Empress Merida
Vaughn watched the screens from her throne in the center of the Terran Empire’s
might. If there was to be a battle fought in Sol, the least she could do, since
she was no longer allowed to captain a ship herself, was to watch the battle,
as sailors sacrificed themselves to protect the Empire. That was her duty as
Empress.
The battle was
going well, but it could easily have gone the other way. Without the warning
from the Black Stars, the Home Fleet would have been on its normal patrols,
rotating crews for shore leave, and the like. The time to respond to an attack
would be too much, and they would have been seriously outnumbered by the enemy.
Even if they were a rabble once their leaders were culled, she was under no
illusions about how this could have gone the other way, with only a little
change in circumstance.
The news from Pluto
was concerning, but there was nothing she could do about it, except hope that
the Marines saved all they could. For now, she watched as the Black Star ship
used its energy drill to ram into the Leviathan, and shook her head. “That man
has gone and changed the face of war in the galaxy, yet again. And I doubt he
even realizes it.”
“Empress, sensors
are detecting a surge of energy from the rupture!”
“Cityshields to
full! Reinforce internal bulkheads. Prepare for—”
She never finished
her words.
In Sol System, at
the height of the battle between the defenders of Sol, and the invaders from
the chaotic realm beyond the veil between worlds, a massive surge of energy
blew out through the rupture. Faster than light itself, this light traveled,
like a wave across reality.
There was fear, of
course, as the wave approached. But there was no damage as the wave passed, not
even a strand of hair pushed out of place on a young child’s head. Which is not
to say that there was no effect. Indeed, there were quite a few very pronounced
effects! Most pronounced, however, was that in the throne room of the Aurum Throni itself, the Empress of the Terran Empire began to shine as brightly as
a star from within, overflowing with power.
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