by Dalo Lorn
“Let’s hope that’ll be enough,” Poteran told him. “Stay on course, recall any damaged fighters for emergency repairs - make sure they’re all launched again by the time we enter the second orbit.”
“Piluams has finished moving into position. Soscut, I recommend we attack the same location simultaneously.”
“We’re ready to engage, Piluams.”
“In that case… Commencing attack.”
The two groups led by the Piluams and the Soscut suddenly started moving at full speed towards the imaginary line that was the flow of Xargan reinforcements to the main group.
Chapter 13
Endgame
Roughly thirty-five minutes after the Petrans attempted to cut off the Xargan reinforcements, the Tarhedia was torn out of hyperspace to witness them retreating towards the inhabited planet closest to the Xargans.
“It would seem we have not arrived a moment too soon,” Hatos noted. As they did in the previous timeline, the Eagle and all the fighters the Tarhedia’s crew could man sped out of the ship’s hangars, and several bombs were beamed into strategic locations to weaken the Xargan fleet.
“We are being hailed,” the Tarhedia’s comm officer reported as the bombs detonated, destroying several large Xargans. This also had the unintended side effect of outright vaporizing Lurvat, preventing him from requesting their surrender like he did in the previous timeline.
“Put them through and link them to the tactical network.”
The holoviewer quickly changed to display the bridge of the Hippasrus. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” Poteran jokingly commented. “Great timing.”
“We could always leave and pretend we weren’t coming, if you would prefer that,” Hatos answered, trying as hard as he could to look as if he had taken the Petran’s comment seriously.
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Poteran hastily told him; his point was reinforced by his tactical officer reporting that the ship’s shields were down to ten percent. “We’ve managed to evacuate most of this planet’s population, but there are still a few transports on the surface. We’ll cut power to the hyperspace disruptor for a few moments; you’ll only have a brief window of opportunity to jump to our location, so you should sync up to our tacnet and recall your fighters.”
“Very well,” Hatos said, and the Tarhedian fighters turned around and headed towards their mothership. “We should be ready in a minute or two.”
The Eagle also turned away - Lanis had decided to use the Tarhedia’s hangars instead of risking missing the chance to jump to the Petrans. “All fighters have returned to the ship. We are ready to perform the jump,” Hatos said as the last fighters entered the hangar a few minutes later.
“Disabling disruptor in three… two… one… Now!” Poteran told him. With the disruptor field deactivated, the Tarhedia jumped into hyperspace, reappearing with all guns blazing a couple of seconds later near the Petran fleet as the field was restored. The superheated plasma from the ship’s weapons melted large chunks out of the larger Xargan ships while the Petrans focused on the rest of the fleet; naturally, their fighters engaged the swarmers. Within minutes, the Xargans were retreating and being pursued by the enemy they had come to destroy.
However, it was not to last. A massive Xargan fleet began emerging from - not being forced out of - hyperspace near the edge of the system, just beyond the hyperspace disruptor’s range.
“There must be thousands of them!” Rotgen said, watching in awe as more ships kept joining the swarm. “Did they bring their whole species?!”
“Even with the Tarhedia’s weapons, this is not a battle we can win. We must retreat,” Hatos told Poteran.
“You’re right,” Poteran answered. “All ships, take whatever station modules you can and prepare to jump to Petra. Soscut, take a few ships and head to the hyperspace disruptor to pick it up.
“That might not be an option,” Lanis said. “Some of those ships are interdictors - if they decide to turn on their disruptors, we’ll be stuck.”
“Transport bombs to all the interdictors,” Hatos quickly ordered. “This does not look promising...”
After a brief pause, some of the interdictors started exploding. “Why aren’t they all blowing up?” Poteran asked.
“I do not know,” Hatos answered.
“The remaining Xargans are emitting some sort of interference; it is scattering the transporter’s targeting beam, as if though they were shielded.” one of the Tarhedian officers told him.
“It would seem this is yet another example of Xargan adaptability. I am generally not an impatient person, but I believe it would be wise to make an exception here.”
“We’re almost ready,” Rotgen told him. “Estimated time to field deactivation: thirty seconds.”
“Let’s hope they want us to leave…” Lanis said to himself. Some thirty seconds later, the fleet started jumping towards Petra. Within moments, the hyperspace disruptor was completely dismantled and towed into hyperspace by the Soscut and its accompanying ships as more Xargans kept emerging from hyperspace.
A couple of hours later, the Tarhedia and the Petran fleet emerged from hyperspace into a stable orbit around Petra. The Petran officers met with Hatos and the others in the Tarhedia’s briefing room to discuss what to do.
“The Xargans will be here soon - fifteen to thirty minutes at most, more if they stay to fortify Vaanle before moving on - so we’d better make this quick,” Poteran started. “The hyperspace disruptor from Vaanle is in perfect condition, so we’ll have that going for us. But…”
“There’s simply too many of them,” Lanis finished. “At this point, I think a desperate last stand is the only thing we can do. That or give up, but I can’t see that working out for us. I mean, we could run, but we wouldn’t get too far before we broke our hyperdrives trying to get out of our little pocket of space.”
“How did you even get out of your cluster?” Fanra asked the Tarhedians.
“The same way you presumably reached Cartha. Persistence and patience - we’d send probes to nearby systems to search for resources and interesting anomalies - this is how we first discovered these natural barriers as the probes were immobilized. Over time the data from the probes would be sufficient for us to find out how to configure our hyperdrives. That or we would stumble upon the correct configuration, causing one of the probes to successfully pass. Unfortunately, we do not have enough time to pursue either option, and the Xargans would likely do it faster,” Hatos told her.
“Not to mention that we don’t exactly have a fleet of fast interstellar arks lying around,” Lanis commented.
“Hold on. Those probes have hyperdrives. I’m guessing they also have jump capacitors?” Poteran asked Hatos.
“Yes,” he confusedly answered.
“How many do you have onboard?”
“Around twenty of them. If you are contemplating what I believe you are contemplating… It could work. However, the probes are far too fragile to survive anything beyond close-range insertion - whoever launched them would not be coming back.”
“We could always drop them right where the Xargans are expected to come out of hyperspace,” Barnes proposed - as the Arcamil had not yet formally revealed themselves in this timeline, he had joined the meeting posing as a Terran they picked up during their travels.
“No, that wouldn’t catch as many ships as we need, and they might not bring all of them in one go,” Fanra told him.
“Then we’ll rig up a ship to be run by as few people as possible,” Poteran suggested. “Take it straight into the Xargan formation and launch the probes, overload the hyperdrives, and see what’s left.”
“We might be able to route all vital functions to the bridge - one person should be enough,” Fanra explained, “but that’s the best we can do with the amount of time we’ve got. Remote control would be too risky, and there’s not enough time to overhaul the ship’s computers and configure it to time its launch correctly.”
; “Then I’ll do it,” Poteran said. “I know how Petran ships work, and I’m not going to order anyone to sacrifice themselves. I’m my only option.”
“Wait a minute, can’t we jump the probes into position instead?” Lanis asked. “Put them outside the system and all that?”
“Actually, that could work - the Xargans came out of hyperspace just beyond the disruptor’s range at Vaanle, they’ll probably be busy organizing their armada long enough for the probes to jump in,” Barnes noted. “And if they turn on their interdictors’ hyperspace disruptors, our sensors will detect it, and we’ll have the option of going with the kamikaze plan.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. As for the rest, I think we’ll have to make it up on the spot, as usual,” Poteran concluded. “Let’s get to work.”
As expected, the Xargan vanguard arrived at the edge of the Petran system some twenty minutes after the briefing; presumably sent to discover the edge of the disruptor field, they chose to hold their ground until the main fleet arrived. This, however, could only last for so long, and several minutes later, the rest of the armada started emerging.
“Now?” Poteran asked.
“Not yet - we should know when they’ve all arrived; they should decide to attack,” Fanra told him. Still, she was worried - if the Xargans didn’t wait for all their forces, they would detonate the probes too soon. Ultimately, when their ships stopped emerging from hyperspace, the massive Xargan force started moving into the system. “Now! Send the probes!”
Ten of the Tarhedian probes rapidly emerged from the left side of the Petran frigate selected for the operation, correcting their course before jumping into hyperspace. A second later, they were forced out of hyperspace as they reached the edge of the hyperspace disruption field; before the Xargans could react, the probes exploded in a violent explosion as their hyperdrives were deliberately overloaded. “Casualties?” Poteran asked.
“Looks like we got a few hundred of them - mostly medium and small ones, but a few of the bigger motherships went down too. I think the swarmer casualties can be measured in the thousands, though.”
“So, not quite as much as we hoped.” He sighed. They were still hopelessly outnumbered. “All units, prepare to engage the enemy. I’ll launch my last probes and move in. Give me the coordinates where I’ll do the most damage.”
“One moment,” Fanra said. Meanwhile, another ten probes were launched from the frigate’s right side and did the same thing as the first group with roughly the same results. “Hold on… I’m picking up more hyperspace windows opening. Lots of them.”
“More reinforcements, no doubt,” Rotgen said.
“Well, they sort of are… but they’re not Xargans!”
Several hundred Tarhedian ships - some of them were the ones that fought in the previous timeline’s battle for Tanopas - and a few similar ships that had stayed behind, but most of them were more standardized and built for combat - emerged from hyperspace, immediately attracting the attention of the Xargan armada.
*** Somewhere near the Tarhedian homeworld, some time ago ***
The ship emerged from hyperspace in a small, fairly ordinary star system. The data module indicated that there would be a fleet hidden on the fifth planet in this system; however, the Tarhedians’ sensors could not see anything.
“There appears to be nothing here,” Kanet said.
“It will be here,” the Hatos from the previous timeline told him. “I am certain of it. Prepare to transport a small group to the coordinates provided in the module.”
A few minutes later, several Tarhedians, including Kanet and Hatos, beamed down to the planet surface and spread out. Kanet was the first one to find something in the thick, seemingly featureless fog.
“Over here,” he said. “I believe I have found it.” The rest of the team went towards him, seeing a small transporter platform of Tarhedian design. “Who could have built this? No Tarhedian has ever--”
“No Tarhedian, indeed - look!” Hatos told him, pointing towards a few scattered bone fragments nearby. “It would seem Lanis did not perform this undertaking alone - those are Terran bones.”
“But where is the rest of the skeleton?”
“These bones appear to have been broken posthumously. Possibly to be repurposed by the constructors of this platform; I do not believe the fleet we seek was constructed by living beings.”
“Construction drones?”
“What else?” Hatos simply returned, activating the transporter. Suddenly, the away team found themselves in a massive underground hangar, in front of a battlecruiser slightly larger than the Orion. “Astonishing,” he said after a few moments.
“This cruiser is an entire fleet?”
“Perhaps the rest of the fleet is hidden elsewhere in the system. For that purpose, this is a perfect system - the local asteroid field is dense, stable and full of various sensor-dampening minerals. Look, one of the drones is here to meet us.”
The construction drone Hatos was referring to slowly hovered over to the group, displaying the insignia of the Tarhedian Empire on its side as it came closer. “Warships constructed for us by the Empire?” Kanet confusedly said.
“An obvious choice - our drones were not an option because using our resources to construct the fleet would have a greater historical impact. Now it is all starting to make sense…”
The drone buzzed and beeped something in its simplified language; lacking a proper vocabulator, this was its only means of communication. “Come this way,” it told them.
A few minutes later, they found themselves on the bridge of the ship; it was clear from its construction that the craft was intended to be nearly fully automated. “I believe it is time to depart,” Hatos said. “Kanet, I believe this is your place,” he added, pointing at the command chair. “After all, you will command the fleet.”
Kanet looked confusedly at Hatos. “Command the fleet? I thought you would--”
“No,” Hatos firmly told him. “I have one more task to complete. I cannot lead the fleet.”
“What will you do?”
“I will make one more attempt to improve our odds of victory. If it fails, it should have little effect on the battle. Now, let us see what else lies in wait for us, shall we?”
“Yes, of course. Open the hangar bay doors; take us out, maneuvering thrusters only,” he instructed one of the officers that had come with them - the acting helmsman of their new flagship. “What shall we call it?” he asked Hatos.
“I would leave that to the Council and my counterpart. Still, for the time being… perhaps ‘Baphal’ would be appropriate,” Hatos answered, suggesting an old Tarhedian word for ‘hope’. “It is, after all, precisely what its name suggests.”
“Indeed it is,” Kanet said as the ship emerged slowly but surely from its hangar. Something must have been triggered by its launching, though, for hundreds of other ships emerged from hidden hangars throughout the planet and the system’s asteroid field, rallying around the ship that brought the Tarhedians here. “Indeed it is...” he repeated silently, a smile starting to appear on his face.
*** Petran system, present day ***
“Petran forces,” Kanet started, “this is Kanet of the Tarhedian battlecruiser Baphal. On the behalf of my people, I apologize for the delay and hope that we have brought enough of a force to make up for it.”
“Of course you have!” Lanis happily told them from the Eagle, maintaining his composure just enough to respond to their message. “Just in time, too…”
Hatos was the next one to say anything that wasn’t the cheering they could hear from the other ships. “Calm yourselves - the battle is not over yet. We have to help Kanet’s forces however we can,” he told the Petran defenders.
Meanwhile, the newly obtained Tarhedian ships had opened fire on the Xargans, demonstrating an impressive array of plasma beam cannons while swarms of automated drone fighters slightly larger than swarmers launched from their hangars, each armed with a single neutron can
non with which to engage the Xargan swarmers. A small shuttle launched along with the Baphal’s drones, apparently headed towards the Xargan flagship.
“Disengage the hyperspace disruptor for a microjump towards the Tarhedian fleet,” Hatos ordered. “It is time to turn the tide.”
The disruptor powered down; the Tarhedia and the entire Petran fleet jumped towards the Xargans, flanking the somewhat weakened fleet as the Baphal’s shuttle carefully dodged enemy weapons fire on its way towards their flagship. “All units, engage at will. Lanis, Zeshaira, take a squadron of fighters and protect that shuttle,” Hatos said. “Captain Rotgen, please try to ensure the survival of the Baphal - I am most curious as to what explanation Kanet has to offer for its presence. I suspect I already know some of it, but it should be an interesting story nonetheless.”
“Understood. Piluams, Manev, form up on the Baphal. Concentrate on anti-fighter activity - looks like the Tarhedians can handle the rest.”
The Tarhedia powered up its main weapon, unleashing it into the front of the Xargan flagship with only moderate effect; the ship was both bigger and more heavily armored than its cousins, a breed formed solely for tasks like this. It was not invulnerable, though - and the materials required to form its thick outer shell are infrequently discovered by the Xargans, which is why it was not until the failed attempt to destroy Petra that it was unleashed upon the Petrans.
“Did that thing just shrug off--”
“Not entirely,” Hatos answered Lanis’ surprised question. “But I am just as surprised as you are. We will continue bombarding this mothership, but I fear it will take the full force of the fleet to bring it down should our primary weapon be disabled.”
“Alright, the shuttle’s almost there - we’ll double back and try to back you up.”