by Ivan Kal
Beth dropped her head to hide the emotions on her face. She had hoped that they might move forward from where they’d left off years ago. But she knew that it was unlikely. She stood up and stepped around the table to stand in front of him. She extended her hand to him. “Friends?”
Adrian smiled and took her hand in a handshake. “Friends.”
Chapter Six
December; Vanguard Fleet – Trans-lane to Sowir system
Adrian sat in the command center of the Harbinger, three lead balls floating around him, and watched as the big timer in the middle holo ticked down, indicating the remaining time until they entered the Sowir system. It had taken a great deal of planning to coordinate the attack so that all three fleets attacked around the same time. The fleets would arrive within a half hour of each other. And Adrian’s fleet would reach its target first.
His fleet included ten Vanguard ships, one hundred Kraken-class warships, one hundred and fifty Furious missile ships, and ninety-three battleships that had survived the battle for Nelus. But in addition to those, he had thirty auxiliary ships, and also forty drones constructed by Warpath, designed to be the support for the Vanguard Fleet. And with the knowledge from the People, they had managed to upgrade their original designs significantly.
The drone ships were remotely controlled by the flagship’s AI, in this case Iris. But she only controlled their propulsion systems outside of combat. In combat, the ships themselves would be controlled by the Watchtower interface remotely. The new version of Watchtower was much better than the one Adrian had used at Nelus. With the tech from the sphere, they’d managed to lower the load and increase effectiveness by 580%, making it safe to use for anyone.
The drones were a radically different than anything they had built previously. Each drone was five hundred meters long and was a purely offensive ship. The drones had no indoor room delegated to crews, so that they could have more ammunition and weapons. They weighed almost as much as an 1100-meter-long Kraken-class warship.
Adrian checked the timer once again, seeing that there was only around two minutes until they would arrive. He got up from his command chair, pocketed the balls, and turned to his ship’s second-in-command, Paul Isaacs.
“You have the ship, Paul. Try not to break her,” Adrian said jokingly.
“I won’t. Unless you order us to ram something, then I can’t guarantee anything,” Paul answered, deadpan, as he took Adrian’s chair. Adrian shook his head as he exited the CC.
While Adrian used the Watchtower, Paul was in command of the Harbinger, as Adrian couldn’t really command a ship while he was in charge of the entire fleet and the drones. Adrian did realize that in the future they would need special command ships for their Fleet Commanders. And he suspected that soon the Empire Fleet would undergo another drastic change in structure—with all of the tech coming out of the sphere, it was a given.
Adrian walked towards the Watchtower room, followed by Akash and Sora. Once inside the room, he sat in the chair and felt the connection with the access point on his neck as the two wolions got into sitting positions in front of him. He closed his eyes, and a moment later he was floating in empty space. They were yet to exit the trans-lane, so there was little for the interface to show.
On his command, the timer appeared in front of him, with the last ten seconds counting down. Once the timer hit zero, the space around him started changing. First to appear was his fleet, and then as their sensors went active, the Sowir defenses. The system had a Sowir presence on two planets out of four, and their military ships were mostly spread between the two, with a couple patrolling the hyperspace barrier of the system.
The Sowir still didn’t know about his fleet, as it had entered the system through the incoming trans-station close to the system’s sun. But from his position, he could see the two Sowir worlds. One was high above the system sun’s plane, while the other was close to the middle. There was enough distance between the planets that the Sowir had no chance of reinforcing the other planet if Adrian chose to attack one of them. Too bad for them that Adrian had no intention of engaging their defenses from within their effective firing range. He designated the planet high above the plane as target A and the other one as target B.
With a thought, he spread his fleet in a wall formation. “Iris,” he called, and within moments, the shape of a human-sized fiery woman appeared beside him.
“Yes, Adrian?” she asked. She was connected to the interface through the ship itself, and while this space was in fact in his head, she could enter it through his connection to the Watchtower.
“Can you check my targeting calculations on this?” He sent her the targets through his implant. A moment later, he had the firing solutions for all his warships. With a thought, he sent out the order.
His ships opened fire with their kinetic weapons, firing from far outside the Sowir range. Massive 900mm tungsten rounds, both grav and explosive shells, blasted out of his ships on their way towards the Sowir stations, defense platforms, and stationary ships. Another timer appeared, counting down from thirty two minutes—the time it would take for his attack to reach the Sowir at target B.
He moved his entire fleet towards target B, the closer of the two planets. According to his calculation’s, the Sowir would detect his fleet just before his attack hit. And by that time, they would be just inside his ships’ maximum range. He prepared targeting solutions and sent them to his ships. Then he used the Watchtower to move his drones above his formation, and he adjusted the fleet’s formation to that of a concave lens, allowing all ships to fire on Sowir targets.
Then he settled to watch as his previous attack neared the unsuspecting Sowir, even as his fleet grew ever closer.
***
The Sowir sensory net at target B detected the Empire ships as they moved towards their positions. Immediately, alarms sounded throughout their positions around the planet. Ships started firing their drives, and their defense platforms brought their weapons online. In all the confusion, as the Sowir focused their sensors on the incoming fleet, they missed the danger about to reach them until it was too late. The Sowir sensors discovered the incoming hail when it was just a minute away. Immediately, those ships that had their drives already primed hurried to get out of the way, while the ones in the initial phase realized that they had no chance. Desperately, they turned their point defenses towards the Empire’s attack, but it was futile; their lasers had no hope of stopping the sheer mass of the Empire’s main weapon.
Tungsten explosive shells ripped into their ships, shredding their armor, which made the following effect of the 900mm rounds of metal that much greater. The massive rounds struck their ships with such force that they smashed them inwards and punched through, leaving mangled messes in some cases. But more often than not, a hit resulted in complete destruction of the Sowir ships, with short-lived explosions appearing by the dozens in the span of a couple of seconds as the air inside the ships burned out.
Their defense platforms and station didn’t fare any better. Massive grav shells hit the armored hulls of the defense platforms and the gravity generators inside activated, creating powerful gravity fields that resulted in small, contained implosions that tore their armor apart. Following them, explosive shells hit, resulting in the platform’s complete destruction in most cases. Thirty-two defense platforms out of thirty-seven were destroyed completely, with explosions so powerful that massive debris pieces flew outwards, only to impact nearby stations and ships docked with them.
Stations, too, suffered enormous amounts of damage, but they were too big to destroy outright. The debris from the defense platforms and destroyed ships was sticking out of the holes in the stations made by explosive shells previously. Six large stations were wrecked to that extent that most had lost all power. One of them had a lower part of one tower missing, leaving the station open to space where it had been ripped off by a grav shell.
In that initial attack, the Empire had smashed every defense platform, with t
hirty-two destroyed completely and five battered so much that they were no longer operational. All six of the stations were disfigured to the point that they no longer looked anything like what they previously had. None of them had power, and their weapons had all been destroyed.
Of the one hundred and twenty warships spread in various orbits around the planet, sixty-two were destroyed before they managed to move out of the way, and another thirty-three that did manage to move suffered various degrees of damage. Only twenty-five managed to move out of the fire, as their drives had already been primed.
The attack had also cost the Sowir hundreds of cargo and transport ships that had been docked with the stations when the attack hit. Those that had been on their way from the other planet or from outside the system were now quickly changing course and fleeing.
On the other side of the system, at the other planet, the Sowir managed to detect the incoming hail sooner and had their ships moved out of the way. But their stations and defense platforms suffered the same.
***
Adrian watched as his attack decimated the Sowir forces at both his targets. He wasn’t surprised at the effectiveness of the attack. It was extremely had to defend stationary objects in space against kinetic weapons, even if you knew that they were coming. There wasn’t much defense other than moving out of the way, and stations and platforms rarely could do that. All of the Empire’s stationary assets had specially designed defenses for those kinds of attacks. But the Sowir had none.
Seeing the effectiveness of the attack, Adrian changed his plans and issued new orders. His fleet changed course towards target A, while his Furious-class ships fired enough missiles towards target B to destroy every remaining military asset that the Sowir had left. He didn’t care at all for their nonmilitary ships that were even now running towards the hyperspace barrier. They also had assets on the ground, but most of them were mining operations where they used their agents for work. There might have been a few actual Sowir on the ground, but it was just as likely that they’d been on the stations in orbit. Either way, the ground was insignificant; if there were Sowir on the ground, they had no means to get off it. And if there were not, then their agents would lose control and either kill each other or die without the guidance of the Sowir.
Once enough missiles had been fired, he put target B out of his mind and focused on target A. Eighty Sowir ships were charging towards his own, in their usual suicidal manner. The eighty ships were mostly heavy cruisers, but there was a couple of battleships in their formation. With a thought, Adrian sent out orders, and one hundred Kraken-class warships pulled in front of his formation just as his Furious-class missile ships fired off missiles ahead of them.
***
The eighty Sowir ships saw the missiles speeding towards them and assumed the formation designed to defend against the Empire’s missiles. They moved close enough to each other for their combined defense systems to assess and provide firing solutions to their point defense. The last time that the Sowir had encountered Empire’s warships, their new system had proven very effective against the Empire’s missiles, but since then three years had passed. The Empire had upgraded their missiles accordingly.
One hundred Enforcer Mk 2 missiles speed towards the Sowir ships. As the Sowir ships opened with their point defense, the missiles engaged their evading protocols and their field generators just in time to negate the point laser fire from the Sowir ships. By the time the missiles crossed the distance to the Sowir ships, the enemy point defense had managed to take down only fifteen; the rest reached their targets and exploded against the Sowir ships’ hulls.
Fifty ships died outright. A couple more managed to survive the initial explosions, but succumbed to the secondary explosions from within their own hulls. Just as the survivors recovered, limping and damaged, the Vanguard Fleet’s Kraken warships opened up with their long-range particle cannons. Within moments, the remaining Sowir ships were eliminated. The Kraken-class warships then turned their sights on the remnants of the Sowir stations in orbit of the planet, followed close behind by the rest of the fleet. With their laser and particle weapons, the Fleet systematically reduced the stations and platforms still standing to dust.
At the second planet, target B, five hundred missiles reached the still standing Sowir stations. Without any defensive fire from the Sowir, three hundred Enforcer Mk 2 and two hundred MAHEM Mk 1 missiles reached their targets. The first to hit were the MAHEM Mk 1 missiles. Just before hitting the enemy hulls, their magnetic force generators shaped the liquid core of the missiles into a spearhead, which then punctured deep into the hull and delivered the explosives inside. The resulting explosions created vast, gaping holes in the stations, allowing the Enforcer Mk 2 missiles to get much deeper inside the stations. The result was the complete destruction of all Sowir stations.
***
Adrian watched as his fleet annihilated all their targets. The few surviving Sowir non-military ships were running towards the hyperspace barrier, along with a couple of their warships that hadn’t been at the planets. Adrian ordered his drones to follow them out of the system, but not engage, as his fleet regrouped and the ammo ships resupplied his other ships. He would need to wait to hear from the other two fleets before he decided what systems to hit next.
Adrian looked around him. In the Watchtower, he was floating inside a scaled-down system. He looked at the two planets and the destruction he’d wrought there. In no more than a couple of hours, he had destroyed what the Sowir had spent a hundred years to build.
With a thought, he disengaged the interface, opening his eyes to see Akash and Sora watching over him attentively. He got up, gave each of them a head pat, and then made his way to his quarters.
Chapter Seven
Third Fleet – Nuuar
The Third Fleet dropped out of trans-space at the system’s incoming trans-station. Four hundred and fifty ships—one hundred of the older Mark Two dreadnoughts, accompanied by two hundred Kraken-class dreadnoughts and one hundred Furious-class missile ships, followed by fifty auxiliaries entered the system very close to their target. Almost immediately, they were detected by the Sowir.
Fleet Commander Nair Hakeem was already in the Watchtower interface, and as soon as his ships entered the system, they started moving at his orders. He instructed the fleet to split into three taskforces. Within minutes of their arrival, the three taskforces opened fire on previously decided targets. The fleet fired thousands of shells and missiles and hundreds of particle and laser beams towards the Sowir ships, stations, and defense platforms, catching them unprepared. The Sowir managed to return fire briefly before the onslaught reached them, which meant that they had been on high alert already. They had probably received word that the Vanguard Fleet had attacked one of their systems on the opposite side of the border.
The Sowir, like the Empire, had FTL communications, but thankfully they did not possess the trans-travel technology and were forced to use much slower hyperspace. And while the trans-space was very limited in the way one could use it, it was also a huge advantage. Trans-travel allowed for ships to enter a system very close to the star, depending on where the trans-station was, as they were natural, while one could only use hyperspace a certain distance from the system’s star, which was usually in the outer reaches of the system.
But even if the Sowir had some advanced warning, they had no way of knowing where the Empire’s fleet would arrive in the system; they had no sensors that could detect trans-stations, which gave Nair a huge advantage.
The short defensive fire from the Sowir slowly waned and disappeared as the Third Fleet’s fire destroyed their defense platforms and stations. The Sowir warships were sadly able to move out of the way, and had set a course towards taskforce one. He formulated orders and sent them to the fleet.
***
Force Leader Altsoba Smith received the Fleet Commander’s orders through her command board, and she immediately relayed them to her crew. Altsoba’s ship, the Kraken-class dr
eadnought Gauntlet, changed course, followed closely behind by the rest of the taskforce she was in command of.
The turrets on her ship swiveled and targeted the incoming Sowir force consisting of some two hundred Sowir light and heavy cruisers, battleships, and even five of their dreadnought class, none of which were up to par with the Empire’s ships. Altsoba gave the order and the ships in her taskforce opened fire.
Lasers reached out and burned the Sowir ships’ hulls, forcing them into spins to dissipate the heat, but the Empire laser weapons were too powerful, with far longer firing time. The lasers burned the ships as they rolled, cutting wide stretches of their hulls apart and leaving gaping wounds. Many ships were cut in half by the fire from Altsoba’s ships; others, the ones that didn’t manage to get into rolls before the lasers burned through their hulls, had holes burned right through the ships. Then the particle beams hit and pulverized the Sowir light cruisers almost instantly with each hit.
Altsoba saw the Sowir try and get their dreadnoughts close, but she was not going to fall for that trick. The Sowir had modeled their dreadnoughts on the first dreadnought class of the Empire, with their main weapons being kinetic. But those weapons, while extremely powerful, had an obvious weakness. If you saw them coming, they were simple to evade, which was why you needed to close the range as much as possible in order to minimize the time your opponent had to react.
