Scents of so many different Clan members. Scents of fear and concern. The chamber was rife with the smell and feeling of many emotions packed in together. Along with various drinks being served.
Both Generals Ingersol were present, glaring at Naero with veiled contempt. Several admirals and vice-admirals. Numerous strike fleet captains, like Naero and Hashi. Even a few other Mystics that Naero did not know. Almost a hundred officers in all.
Updated holo display screens continued to tell the dreadful beating the Spacer fleets took each day. For anyone who wanted to Stare up at them and let the blood sink down to their feet.
Despite the circumstances, Naero happily rejoined her friends and her merchant fleet, now attached to the strike forces directly under High Admiral Klyne.
She quietly sent her greetings to them onboard their ships by punching orders through on her command pad, linked to her fleet. Struggling not to let her pleasure show across her face. At such a dire meeting.
In three months time, she was happy to see that Klyne had made a full physical recovery.
Naero fidgeted at first when they met again for their initial briefings. Yet Klyne seemed genuinely happy and relieved to see her again, and bore no apparent grudges or ill-will against her.
For nearly killing him and his two adepts.
While they discussed the war and argued points of strategy and tactics, all of the strike fleets assembled passed through the fixer clouds to refit with the new modified shields that Naero had proposed.
Shields she and Om had conceived, thanks to several teknomancing insights gleaned from the KDM.
Klyne gave them the go ahead to test them immediately.
“I hope these new shields will afford us some defense against those enemy ion cannons,” he said. “The Corps are mauling us in every engagement. We can’t stop them. All we can do so far is slow them down. With heavy losses at every turn.”
General Tobias Ingersol grunted. “It can’t get much worse.”
“In theory,” Naero said, “we’ll need to experiment with these shields more to pweak and perfect the tek. They should at least withstand several hits, giving our people a chance to do some damage and get away. Hit and run. But I’ve been talking with Captains Chaela and Saemar. We think we have a devised a few other strategies that might work also, in combined arms scenarios.”
Klyne nodded. “I’ve read the tactical reports. Good work, captain. I think it’s a bold strategy. That’s why we’re going to try it out. Massed fighter waves to soften them up and keep them busy.”
General Thadian Ingersol knitted his fingers together. “Similar strategies have been attempted, with little effect. Waves of fighters cannot win battles on their own.”
“The enemy’s ion guns can only fire so fast. We’ve calculated their rate of fire. There’s no way they could take out that many small, individual fighters. We’ll be like piranha attacking whales. Death by a billion little bites.”
Klyne nodded. “I agree with Captain Maeris; we must try something. First we weaken and confuse them. Then we hit the enemy with an all out assault by our strike forces and big ships, protected by the new shields. If we get in fast enough, and do enough damage, we can halt their advance. Perhaps even turn it back.”
Over the next several hours, fresh Spacer fleets took up their positions near their sector of the broad battle front.
Hashiko took a back seat to Naero in fleet matters, although she still quietly fumed about it.
Let her.
She remained on the Kathmandu with Klyne.
An enemy assault wedge of thirty Gigacorps fleets came straight at them, in stacked arcs of massed formations to maximize the effect of their ion cannons.
The enemy almost swaggered in, hungry and overconfident.
As was usual now, the Spacer Navy retreated, staying out of range.
An entire fleet of Spacer Intel Carriers suddenly uncloaked right behind the Corps formations and launched waves of fighters right on top of them. Saemar’s The Dragon’s Teeth right with them.
The resulting chaos and destruction were instantaneous.
Several Spacer carriers got hit and floated dead in space while others jumped out immediately.
Tow ships and escorts limped most of the powerless carriers into jump before they could be destroyed.
Thousands of advanced Spacer fighters swarmed over the enemy in either direction like angry hornets.
Naero commanded a heavily reinforced Ghost Dragon squadron of ten fighter wings and went on the hunt.
Hashiko monitored their progress with High Admiral Klyne on his flagship. Studying the tactics of the battle as they unfolded.
Captains Chaela and Saemar more than mixed it up with the Corps fighters and big ships, doing lots of damage.
“Good work Chae. Keep it up Saemar. Back on the hunt. If we can do enough damage, Klyne will send the big ships in to finish them off up close!”
“Put it on ‘em!” Chaela shouted.
“Let’s show ‘em how it’s done, sweetie!”
Saemar’s heavy squadron nearly swept the enemy fighters out of the sector. All of her ‘guys’ protecting her closely, without fail.
At least the Spacer fighter jocks were still the best, and Saemar knew how to pick and train them to become the elite.
Chaela’s squadron rampaged up one side of the enemy line, pounding the Corps ships, disrupting shields, and setting many of their targets ablaze.
Naero and her people went after key targets, neutralizing ship after ship.
They even sent waves of fast attack bombers and close-in missile ships to attack the ion guns on the enemy fleet directly, disabling a good many of them as they went along.
After a quarter of a standard hour, and several attack runs, the Corps forces reeled in total disarray.
Yet something was wrong. Even Hashiko noted it and called out to her.
“Maeris, get your people ready for something. None of the enemy ships are jumping. Losing this badly, they should have fled by now.”
“I agree. They should be running,” Chaela noticed at the same time.
“I don’t like this,” Saemar chimed in. “Chae’s right. After a pounding like this, they should be turning tail in panic. Their just taking it and standing fast.”
“Great work,” Admiral Klyne said. “We’re coming in full-on to wipe them out.”
Naero cut in. “Hold off, Admiral. Hold your position and get our reserves ready for an all out expanded engagement. Strategy Twenty-three Zulu.”
“Twenty-three Zulu? Are you certain?”
“Affirmative. I’m expecting we’ll see their heavy re-enforcements charging in any second. Most likely right behind you. Order half the fleets to come about and prepare to fire. Now hurry. Re-position those reserves!”
“How can you be so certain?” Klyne asked.
Naero half-smiled. “Because that’s what I’d do if I were them. They want to trap us and take us all out. Give the orders now, before it’s too late, sir.”
“Already given.”
Even worse. Fifteen more enemy fleets jumped in close to Klyne and his forces. The Spacers opened fire immediately, shredding the first wave.
Enemy attack wings arced in on optimized vectors.
The two forces crashed together, nearly right on top of each other.
Then a dozen more enemy fleets flashed into the sector from far out. Bad luck for them. It would take them precious time to join the fight proper from that far away. But she also knew that the Spacer forces could not hold against numbers like that all at once, reserves or no reserves.
Klyne sent in all of his fighters against the new enemies, but they only fought with the enemy fighters ship-to-ship.
Spacer reserves poured into the mix.
Twenty-three-Zulu called for the reserves to split up and then focus on attacking the enemy where they were weakest.
The remaining carriers and fighters swarmed the new arrivals like before.
The big ships went after the original enemy fleets, most of which were damaged or crippled by then from the Spacer fighter swarms.
It quickly evolved into an enormous brawl. A close-up slugfest.
The Spacers disabled and destroyed enemy vessels as quick as they could.
But the new Spacer shields only took three to seven hits from the ion cannons before disrupting. Worse than expected.
“All fighters, all fighters!” Naero commanded. “Those ion guns are killing us. Focus all attacks on knocking those guns out close-in. Take them out!”
They lost warships too fast. Once the new shields went down, the Corps murdered them. Not allowing any Spacer ship to get away. Blasting them to dust wherever they floated helpless.
Spacer towships and support vessels bravely struggled to zip in and limp the stricken warships away into jump. But they were also vulnerable, and many of them got zapped as well.
With more enemy heavies barreling into the battle in a little over ten minutes to finish the job.
A final distress call in from Captain Lucia Ruiz on the bridge of The Obsidian.
She and her crew floated trapped and helpless behind the enemy advance without power.
No help could reach them in time.
Their fixers helped them broadcast their last words.
Lucia smiled bravely in her command chair while enemy ships cut her vessel and her people to pieces with concentrated heavy fire.
“We’re done for, Captain Naero. Bad luck for us. My crew fought bravely to the end. We took out four enemy ships before they got us.”
Haisha.
“Good work, Lucia. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. The final journey comes for us all. Tell the fleet to avenge us. Win this battle!”
“We will.”
Lucia smiled. Her link began to fragment.
“Not long now.”
In the background, the good crew of the Obsidian took up a Spacer battle song.
Race Into The Fire.
Naero only caught a verse when the link went dead.
Along with all of their voices.
The Obsidian carried almost seven hundred souls.
All hands lost.
Just one ship in an enormous, chaotic battle. This was Chaos indeed, and things did not look good at all for the defenders.
Then a hodge-podge of ships jumped in all around them without warning, confusing the battle even more.
“Who the hell is that?” Naero demanded.
Streaks of blazing light and fire erupted from the new arrivals by the hundreds, then by the thousands.
Close up, they slammed into the enemy ships and blasted them straight to perdition in entire waves.
“Wahoo!” Chaela shouted. “It’s the miners! Bless those crazy kamikaze bastards!”
“I could kiss them!” Saemar shouted. “As long as they’re not too dirty and greasy of course. Maybe just some of the cute ones.”
Naero smiled sadly, realizing again what they were witnessing. Courage beyond measure. And more horrible loss. Locked in close formation combat with the Spacers, the Corps warships were sitting ducks.
Within minutes, most of them got annihilated.
“Re-set the formations,” Klyne commanded. “Damaged ships to the fixer clouds to the rear. Get ready for the rest of them. Here they come.”
“Admiral,” Naero said. “I’m getting very strange energy signatures from a few of the lead elements in the approaching enemy attack wave.”
“We see it too. We’re gathering data as fast as we can. On visuals.”
“Admiral, a couple of those bogeys are putting off immense amounts of energy. Almost like small singularities. Energy signatures that make the enemy ion cannons look like pop guns. What the hell are they?”
“Unknown,” Klyne said. “The Corps’ alien allies must be showing themselves. Everyone frost up.”
“Sir, readings and analysis reveal that these new warships are doing their best to shield and conceal those energies. No ship known could sport intense energy fields like that without exploding, or irradiating their entire crews.”
On screen they spotted a jet black ship shaped like a squid, but with hundreds of writhing black tentacles fore and aft, and bristling with weaponry. It was the size of a dreadnaught, and dwarfed the Corps battleships behind it.
The other craft was just as strange. A flat gray octagonal cylinder with several sections and multiple armored hatches. Was the huge central bore some kind of massive spinal gun? Immense, it was still half the size of the black squid ship.
Yet both alien vessels gave off energy signatures that were off any known scale.
Where was the enemy getting such massive sources of energy?
And more importantly. What could they do with all that power?
The enemy drove straight at them at full speed.
“Five minutes until engagement,” Chaela said.
Corps Fighter screens way out in front.
Some type of Cosmic phenomena formed right in front of the gray, alien octagonal warship. It’s intense energy levels dipped heavily.
“Impossible.” Klyne said. “It’s forming its own wormhole!”
The gray ship vanished in a flash.
Then it re-appeared. Slamming right into The Kathmandu. Ramming it.
Every Spacer ship in the vicinity opened fire.
Whether shielded, armored, or both. No known weapons affected the gray ship or did any damage.
“Our best weapons aren’t even touching them!”
“We’re under direct assault!” Klyne yelled. “Repel boarders. They’re transporting in!”
Admiral Klyne stood right in the middle of an erupting fire fight, cutting lose with his own blaster.
“We’re being boarded!”
Naero saw Hashiko draw out her Chaos whip and launching herself at the attackers. Some type of weird creatures roared off-screen and lashed the very air with whip-like tails.
They looked and sounded exactly like the strange alien killing machine that had slain Naero’s best friend Gallan back in the mining caves on Egano-4.
An Intel agent in combat armor got cut in half right before her eyes just in front of Klyne. A strange, thick purple-gray vapor swirled throughout the bridge.
“Gas attack. Gas!” Klyne shouted, choking and pulling up a respirator. He kept firing and flung the enemy back with a mindblast. The air in front of him warped with the customary psyonic wave of the attack.
The vid feed from Klyne’s bridge cut out.
Naero called to her wing leader.
“Strauss, take the formation in on the attack. Just like I did before. I’m heading back.”
“Yes, sir. On it. Light ‘em up, Ghost Dragons. Follow me in.”
Naero raced back to The Kathmandu.
She went in, just as it looked like the entire front section of the bridge pod exploded, rocked by small blasts and multiple sprays of intense small arms fire from within.
A heavy battle still erupted down there.
She shot into a service docking bay just behind the bridge on top of the warship, one used for transport vehicles and loaders. She leaped out of her Ghost Dragon as it still auto-hovered down to the deck and powered down.
She ignited her gravwing and shot forward.
Activating a blazing red Chaos energy katana in each hand.
She used them to cut through two hatches and a bulkhead to make her way forward. Her respirator filtered out smoke and enemy stun agents.
First she passed stunned crew and intel agents along the decks and halls.
Then casualties from the battle. Bodies torn and shot up, in puddles of blood.
Then the gravity cut out.
The blood orbed up into clouds of red bubbles.
Her gravwing adjusted for zero-g and kept her racing forward.
She scooped up a bandolier of energy grenades from a dead agent. His head ripped off.
She entered the bridge just as the enemy boarding
tubes withdrew from the shattered blast screens in the thick mists.
The entire chamber de-compressed.
Naero activated the grenades and allowed herself to be sucked forward.
Before the end of the hatch could seal on one of the retreating boarding tubes, she hurled the full bandolier of grenades up the tunnel.
The gray enemy ship retreated.
Naero allowed the de-compression to draw out most of the stun gas. Then auto-shields sealed the breaches.
Klyne floated above his captain’s chair. Naero secured him in it, and then activated the console to restore the internal gravity fields.
Spacer dead and dying lay everywhere.
“All medical teams. All medical teams. Report to the bridge immediately. Bring medbeds. Heavy casualties. Reserve officers, get up here. We still have a battle to fight. This is Captain Maeris. I’m taking temporary command of this flagship.”
She got a tactical screen up.
The enemy gray ship retreated under heavy fire. Yet the Spacer weapons still couldn’t even scratch it.
“Stop that vessel!” she commanded. “Destroy it. Pour fire on it! Don’t let it get away!”
“We’re trying, sir. No effect. Repeat. No effect.”
“Look out!” Chaela cut in. “That huge black alien warship is preparing to fire!”
On screen, the Spacers had the upper hand overall. But the two alien ships were both invulnerable and unstoppable.
“All ships!” Naero commanded. “We’re too close. Wide dispersal. Concentrate all batteries on the two alien ships!”
Amid a hail of withering fire, the gray ship continued to pull away, back toward the other.
The black alien warship cut loose.
A sphere of jet black energy formed around the end of each tentacle, by the score.
Beams of dark energy shot out and ripped through the engaged fleets. Shredding and vaporizing friend and foe alike.
One barrage hollowed out the core of the entire battle. Destroying between fifty and sixty total warships in a single instant.
The burning wrecks and listing hulks cooked off and exploded in the aftermath. A disaster for both sides.
Then The Darkstar swept in, joining the fight late.
“Alala and Captain Tyber at your service,” he announced.
Rapid-fire from Alala’s optimized ion guns rocked the gray ship, doing damage finally, but still not putting it out of commission.
Spacer Clans Adventure 2: Naero's Gambit Page 23