by Ivan Kal
Altsoba sent orders for her ships to move around the Sowir at the maximum range that her ships were capable of firing their lasers and particle weapons, not giving the Sowir a chance to use their main weapons. Here and there they returned fire with their own particle weapons, but all of the Empire’s ships had the shimmering field technology now that dissipated any hit from those weapons, and the Sowir missiles were dying before even entering the inner envelope of her force. Her Mark Two dreadnoughts used their substantial capabilities to screen the entire space in front of her ships with a curtain of shells, preventing any missile from passing through.
Over the next twenty minutes, her ships destroyed the rest of the Sowir fleet, without receiving any damage themselves. It wasn’t even a battle as far as she was concerned. Her c-board chimed and she read the new orders from Fleet Commander Hakim. She relayed the order to the taskforce and then turned to her navigation officer and ordered a change of course.
***
Force Leader Nenad Krylov acknowledged the orders from the Fleet Commander and relayed them to his taskforce, changing course toward the Sowir shipyards. They had taken some fire during the initial attack, but they remained largely undamaged. They were massive, placed in orbit around the sun between the third and fourth planets in the system.
He could see on the holo as a few of the ships from the docks moved out and started running away. Nenad let them go; his job was to destroy the shipyards. As his ships entered range, he ordered them to fire with all weapons.
The shipyards had no defensive capability themselves, but they had eight defense platforms, which proved not enough as tungsten shells shredded them in second. Then the 900mm shells slammed into the shipyards, followed by a wave of five hundred missiles that opened them up to space, venting atmosphere. Then particle beams and lasers hit, cutting the shipyards to pieces.
***
Nair walked onto the CC and retook his spot on the command chair. As the battle was over, there was no longer a need for him to be inside Watchtower. Nair watched on the holo as his ship entered the orbit of the second world in the system above the factories on the planet. His ships were positioned around the planet above all the Sowir military installations, which surprisingly there weren’t too many of. The Sowir were a very strange race. They had a small population, and their agents outnumbered them greatly, which meant that they didn’t really need planets to settle—they just used them for resources.
Nair ordered his ships to take out the targets on the ground. Kinetic strikes rained down on the planet from the sky, blowing away the installations and their surroundings, raising dust and debris into the air.
Once they were finished, Nair ordered his ship to the other planets in system that had a Sowir presence on ground, while they completely ignored their non-military ships that were running away. It would take them several hours to erase all presence of the Sowir from the system.
***
Second Fleet – Guxaxac
A fleet of 650 warships and 120 Army transports dropped out of trans-space at the Guxaxac system’s incoming trans-station, firing up their drives and speeding directly towards the Sowir fleet in orbit of the Guxcacul homeworld. Bethany watched on her command board as her ship’s sensors painted a picture of the system. There were two hundred and eighty Sowir ships in the orbit, with no orbital stations or defenses. Only one hundred warships accompanying one hundred and eighty troop ships. According to the Sowir prisoners, each of those ships carried thousands of the Sowir agents in stasis, there to be used when the commander on the ground needed them.
They didn’t even have a lot of bases on the planet, only one outpost on the surface, and maybe half a dozen underground. But then, they didn’t need to have more. They had already killed enough Guxcacul that they owned the planet. And the Sowir didn’t need many bases; they rarely even left them, choosing instead to control their troops from afar, where there was no danger to them.
The troop ships in orbit were actually a sign of how much trouble the Guxcacul were giving them. The Sowir rarely needed to have reinforcements close and ready. But then again, they were not very good at war, especially at war underground; their soldiers were not designed for it. What they were designed for was to overwhelm their opponents with sheer numbers, which had been going extremely well for them, but not anymore. The races of the Consortium had been ill-prepared for the war when the Sowir had attacked, and they hadn’t had any mastery of war, at least not on the same level as humanity had. They were peaceful races that had evolved at the top of the food chains of their planets, united into a single entity almost from the beginning. Humanity, on the other hand, had mastered war a long time ago.
For a moment, Bethany wondered if she should have to use the Watchtower interface, but then immediately dismissed the thought. The Watchtower was an amazing tool, but she did not plan to be in a prolonged engagement with the Sowir. Her target was probably the most valuable of the systems that the Empire was attacking, but it was in actuality the one with the weakest Sowir presence. There were no stations or defense platforms, only debris floating where once Guxcacul stations had stood, and the Sowir had the smallest number of warships here. She could destroy them easily from afar. There were only two problems. One, the Sowir troop ships; the moment they detected her fleet’s attack, they would try to land. She would probably be able to destroy most of them, but some would land and make things harder for the people on the ground. And two, there was a chance that the Sowir had a weapon capable of destroying the planet.
It was a small chance, but Bethany needed to consider it. After all, the Ra’a’zani had done exactly that to Earth. That was why she would pull no punches, and would attack with everything she had. She manipulated the c-board, sending orders they’d programmed in advance to her ships. Using her imp, she made adjustments where she thought it was required, and then leaned back and watched her ships execute her orders.
***
As the Empire’s ships closed the range, they fired their missiles, sending three waves of 15,000 missiles each towards the unsuspecting Sowir. When the missiles passed the halfway point, the Sowir detected them. Immediately, they changed formations, putting their warships in front of their troop ships and getting ready to fire with their point defense. In addition, they fired their own missiles to intercept the Empire’s. The first wave of the Empire’s missiles was met with an amazing amount of defensive fire, but it was too little to take down the first wave; what did manage it were their missiles. Sending thousands of missiles towards the Empire’s attack allowed them to take down the majority of the first wave.
But it was not enough. Five thousand missiles reached Sowir positions and destroyed every one of their warships. Their troop ships had positioned themselves in a way that sacrificed the majority of them in order to allow a few to land. The remaining missiles from the first wave destroyed one hundred and seventy-two Sowir troop ships, with the remaining eight managing to enter the atmosphere on their way down to the planet. Bethany grimaced. There wasn’t anything she could do now. The eight ships, if their intel was correct, carried about 6,000 troops each, making 48,000 in total. She shook her head and sent the shutdown order to their missiles, as there wasn’t any need for them in the end. They would be picked up later after the battle was over.
Turning towards her Communications Handler, she started giving orders. “Contact the Army, let them know that they can approach the planet and start landing the troops.” Then, from her c-board, she ordered her fleet into the orbit of the planet, making sure that her ships stayed away from the range of the Sowir base on the ground. They knew that it had orbital defenses, but they had no idea of what kind or how much damage they could inflict.
Chapter Eight
Guxaxac
Field General Dayo Okoro stood inside the battle center on planet Guxaxac. The center was actually a big, rectangular container that one of their ships had brought down to the planet. Already, after only half an hour of being on the ground, they had walls around t
he base, and various other facilities. The walls and the facilities had been transported by Army atmospheric transports from the much larger transport ships in orbit. All equipment and supplies had been loaded into fabricated containers built for this campaign. Each container served as a dedicated facility: medical, soldier barracks, advanced sensory stations, and more. And all was designed to be easily assembled into a functional base.
That was actually the reason for why they had delayed the assault on Guxaxac this long. The Empire had never had a need to fight for an extended amount of time on any planet where they didn’t already have a presence. Time had been needed for them to design and build equipment. And they had—all of their equipment and their bases were modular. They could assemble bases and/or scouting stations for whatever the situation required.
As the base was expanded and areas for the soldiers set up, the transports started bringing down more troops to help with further assembly and to start setting up a perimeter. There was little danger; they had picked a spot high on a plateau at the top of a small mountain. There were no tunnels there, and they had a view of their surroundings for kilometers in every direction. The only Sowir base on the planet was half a planet away to the south, and without the support from the orbit, they had very little that could threaten the Empire’s position. There were other bases across the planet in various stages of completion, but this one would serve as the command center for the entire campaign, and Dayo would serve as commander for it.
He walked outside of the battle center and immediately felt the heat of the Guxaxac sun on his skin. He turned upwards and squinted at the reddish sun. Guxaxac was a lot hotter than Sanctuary, at least during the day; at night it was supposed to be more comfortable, albeit still dry. But it wouldn’t bother them much; most of the actual combat would happen belowground.
Looking over the base, he saw two more dropships leave off containers, his people already running and attaching cables from mobile power plants and from the other containers, establishing connections with the other centers. He turned and walked back inside the battle center. People were still moving around running operational checks and making sure that everything was properly set up. One of the walls of the rectangular room was already turned on, and displayed early reports from the other bases around the planet. It would take them maybe another twelve hours to get everything up and running, and during that time they would be most vulnerable. But thankfully most of the Sowir troops were underground, save for those that had been dropped off before his force had arrived.
They had landed and presumably left their troops at the Sowir topside base before trying to escape—unsuccessfully. Dayo knew that he couldn’t let them get all those troops out of stasis. They already had too many Sowir troops to contend with, and he couldn’t allow them to strike while a great majority of his troops were not yet on the ground, which was why he already had a plan for them. They could have tried orbital bombardment from the fleet, but aside from the damage that those weapons could do to the planet, like collapse tunnels and destroy entire areas, the Sowir had anti-orbital defenses. The Sowir had hidden their troop stasis units in the base, knowing full well that that would give them time to wake them up. The fleet would not risk getting into range of those guns, as they were kinetic in nature and able to inflict damage to the fleet. But the fleet would also keep its distance because the Sowir had missile silos. According to the intel from the Sowir prisoners, the silos had been built after their people had seen the power of those weapons in the fleet actions, for the purpose of defending against the Empire.
But after the non-aggression agreement between the Empire and the Sowir Dominion, they had halted the construction of further defenses. They hadn’t seen the need to spend resources; they had believed that the Empire would keep its word. Up until that point, they had only had experiences with civilizations that had dealt with them without duplicity. Their plan from the beginning had been to break the agreement, only they’d believed that it would be on their terms.
So instead of having the fleet slug it out with the defenses, he had assembled a force that would move and strike at them before they were able to wake up those troops. And perhaps even get some intel on the Sowir on the planet.
Their troopships had already been destroyed; after they’d left their troops, their ships had attempted to escape. They had risen from the planet and had even managed to get to high orbit before the fleet had destroyed them. His force would need to attack them on the ground. He wasn’t going to risk the few atmospheric gunships he had. He had few of them; as most of the fighting on Guxaxac would be underground, he had been given only a small number of those, and he wanted to keep them in reserve.
Dayo turned his eyes to the holo in the middle of the room, seeing one base shown there that had a ready signal above it. It was a small base set up for the purpose of launching the attack on the Sowir base. They had rushed its construction, and had dropped in personnel and weapons as fast as they could.
As he was looking at the holo, an incoming communication request came through from the base. Dayo reached over and placed his hand on the hologram, accepting the comm.
“Field General,” the shape of Andrew Mao said as he saluted. Dayo returned the salute, and then spoke.
“Are you ready, Force Commander?”
“Yes, all the machinery is down, as are the troops. We are still having trouble with setting up a sensory net, and need to rely on the fleet. And their info isn’t all that accurate in this weather; they are too far away for detailed scans,” Force Commander Mao said. Dayo nodded. Andrew was on the south continent, close to the area where the Sowir base was. There had been a storm there, and while the worst of the storm was over, clouds still remained over the entire area, making it difficult for the fleet to see.
“Proceed as planned. It is unlikely that the Sowir will send any troops to intercept your people from the base before you attack. They have very little in terms of ground transports, and most of their numbers are underground searching for the Guxcacul. It would take time to recall them,” Dayo said.
“Of course, sir. The troops are ready, and will set out immediately,” Mao said.
“Good,” Dayo said, and terminated the comm. Mao was in charge of that base, and would oversee the operation from a distance, while Dayo would get updates on his holo. He had a bigger picture to contend with now. First on his list was getting all the bases up and operational. He turned to his staff, who had just finished setting up smaller stations to the side of the room, and started asking for reports.
***
Company Leader Mira Johannes watched as her squad did the last checks on their equipment. Her squad was designated as heavy assault, and most of them operated heavy weapons. Each platoon had four squads with seven people per squad, meaning that her platoon had 28 soldiers. And this mission would be carried out by ten platoons, a total of 280 soldiers, which meant that her company had four extra squads attached to it for the purpose of this mission.
Mira walked up to her mech and with a command from her imp opened the cockpit. She climbed the six-and-a-half-meters-tall machine and entered. Inside was a protective cocoon, and after she stepped inside, she immediately felt the connector attach itself to the back of her neck and the access point implanted there. There were no controls inside the mech; it was operated by technology that had evolved out of virtual reality simulators.
Mira covered her nose and mouth with an air mask that was connected to the emergency air tank and to the outside, for cases such as these when the air on a planet was breathable, although it was filtered. She then closed her eyes and started issuing orders to the mech. First, her cocoon closed, and foam filled the inside, restraining her movements. It was designed to protect her from impacts and anything else that could damage her mech. Then she did a check on all her systems, and after everything came back green, she turned the mech on.
The first thing that happened was that her vision returned; fed directly into her mind, the im
ages of the mech’s surroundings appeared. Then icons started popping up above the things in her view. She was the mech; she could see through its sensors and operate any of its weapons as if they were a part of her own body. She turned her head, and the mech’s visual sensors rotated. She looked around and saw that most of her people had gotten inside their own mechs or tanks, depending on the squad. Beyond her own platoon, the other platoons were getting ready as well.
Mira stood her mech and started walking towards the gate of the base. The 40-ton mech started walking on its two legs. The legs were set wide to provide the mech with more balance. Mira’s mech was the HAV-01 Juggernaut, the heaviest mech that the Empire produced. It could achieve speeds up to 87 km/h. It was heavily armed and armored, and its most powerful weapon was a Gauss cannon placed over its left shoulder, although when not in use it could be moved to the mech’s back.
On its chest it had six missile launch tubes, and each tube had four missiles in its magazine, for a total of 24 MAHEM MM-2 missiles. The missiles were of the same type as those used by the fleet, only smaller; they had half the explosive power and a fraction of the fuel, but then, they didn’t need to have as much fuel as the Fleet missiles when their range to the intended target was so much smaller. Attached on its right shoulder was a class 3 laser turret—in comparison, the fleet used class 5s for their ships. Its left arm had a powerful 70mm turret, and its right held a smaller-caliber rotary cannon that fired 30mm rounds.
But one of its biggest strengths was that it had the shimmering shielding technology. Inspired by the Ra’a’zani technology, it shielded the mech from energy-based weapons, and it could dissipate most explosive energy turned against it, barring a direct hit, as it wasn’t as powerful as the fields on fleet ships. It made the Juggernaut a true beast.
Mira called a battle map to the corner of her vision and saw that her platoon had followed her outside of the base. Six more mechs joined her, three LAV-01 Hawks and three LAV-02 Tigers. Then came the other three squads in her platoon with three Ravager Mk 5 artillery tanks, one from each squad, and three Fury Mk 3 light assault tanks.