by Ivan Kal
“What?” Narrasak asked incredulously. “That would give them another eight hours to prepare!”
“We are attacking a system through a trans-point on information that might be outdated. We should take every precaution,” Anessa answered.
Narrasak fumed. “We are Shara Daim, we are the strongest! You insinuate that we have something to fear from them!”
Before Anessa had the chance to respond, Garaam interjected, “I agree with Anessa,” she said evenly. “We are the strongest because we are the best, raised to understand war. Because we don’t take foolish risks. Sending a scout force is smart.”
Narrasak glared at her for a couple of long seconds, and then finally relented. “Fine, I will assemble a scout force.” And he immediately closed the link.
Anessa turned to look at Garaam, who remained studying her. “Your time in captivity changed you,” Garaam said, and Anessa made a conscious effort not to let any of her internal turmoil show.
“How so?” Anessa asked.
“We are raised to know that we are better than anyone, that other races pose no threat to us, that they are beneath us. Our belief is tempered by our training and ability, but that belief is always there, because our ancestors once ruled the galaxy through strength. Before, you would’ve never counseled caution against an opponent that was beneath us, a race that had allowed itself to be enslaved, who helped the weak,” Garaam said.
“Why did you agree with me, then?” Anessa asked.
“I am not stupid enough to believe that we couldn’t be led into a trap and that we couldn’t lose. I have fought against many races that were more than a match for us. I won because I was a better commander than they were, not because I somehow could not lose. Narrasak has spent his days leading his Legion against opponents far too inferior to truly test himself; his victories have only reinforced his belief of invulnerability. Our technological advantage has made us think we are superior against everyone. However, fighting an opponent that has the ability to harm you is another thing entirely,” Garaam said, and then studied Anessa, looking for something.
Anessa looked at her longtime friend as if she was a stranger. She acknowledged her words and closed the channel. She couldn’t believe what she had heard; Garaam was one of the most respected Dai Sha, but her words were heretical. The Anessa of before would’ve heard those words and looked at her in disgust, perhaps even going as far as to execute her for her blasphemy. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Now she knew that she could be defeated. She had been captured, and that had shaken her. Then, she had spent a long time as prisoner, learning about an alien culture and customs from the source, something she had never done before. Once, she would’ve looked at a race that lived by rules other than strength and thought it weak, but now she wasn’t sure.
Now she couldn’t help but wonder if there were more Shara Daim that felt like Garaam did.
***
Several hours later, the Shara Daim force were still waiting for word from their scouts. They had sent ten of their destroyers and eight of their cruiser-class ships to scout out the trans-point. And they should have been sending back word to the flagship any moment now.
Anessa waited impatiently, until finally the Va Sun at the communications station spoke up.
“We received an update from the Ravager. The scout force has arrived in system and reports that the Empire’s point is filled with debris; they lost one destroyer and have three other damaged. They caught Empire ships as they were pushing the debris inside. They destroyed the Empire’s ships and are proceeding to clear the point. There doesn’t appear to be any enemy warships except for a dozen or so at the fourth planet, so they will be able to clear the point before we arrive. Ravager orders the force to move into the trans-point.”
Anessa ordered her Legion into the point. Putting debris into a point was a very effective strategy, if you knew that the force coming against you was large enough to fill the point, and you had the time to put enough debris into it. The point was a large spherical area in space, and the larger the force coming through it, the closer the ships had to be to one another in order to fit. Their three Legions were not the upper limit, but if there was enough debris, it could’ve been bad. They wouldn’t have lost the larger ships, but the smaller ones would’ve either been destroyed from impacts or severely damaged. It was lucky for the scouting force that standard procedure for going through the trans-point was to spread the forces across it.
They would now be using their energy weapons to clear the debris, and since they had reported that they could clear it before the Legions passed, it meant that there wasn’t a lot of the debris, but even a small amount could’ve been a blow to the Legions.
The Legions took formation inside the trans-point. Narrasak’s Legion took the center, with Anessa’s and Garaam’s taking the sides, waiting only on the order from the Ravager. Then the order came, and the Legions disappeared in a flash of violet light.
Chapter Fifteen
Sol
The holo showed the Shara Daim advance taskforce clearing the debris from the trans-station using their energy weapons. The scanners recognized the weapons as a type of high-intensity lasers, about ten percent more powerful than the Empire’s of the same class.
Adrian studied the enemy from his chair in the Olympus Mons command hub. There was no point in him being on a ship when he was more defended on the planet. There were two types of enemy ships. A smaller class, 850 meters long and 200 wide and tall, and another that was a larger class, 1100 meters long and 400 wide and tall. Both classes were shaped like long pillars with weapons mounted around the hull, with a wider base where their drives were and with a narrow tip.
From the data they’d received from the Erasi, he knew that the smaller ones were destroyer class, and the other a cruiser. Veritas had encountered two more classes of Legion ships in Tarabat. A heavy-cruiser class, at 1400 meters long and 600 wide and tall, and what the Shara Daim called super battleships. 3500 meters long and about 800 meters wide and tall, its back and front looked like rectangular pillars, but its middle was wider, making them look like a hammer that had the hammer’s head lowered to the middle of the handle. Their Legions also had a battleship class, which was a smaller version of their super battleships, at 2400 meters long and 600 wide and tall, with the central part being about 1400 meters wide and 800 tall.
They had powerful ships, and Adrian knew that what he wanted to accomplish wouldn’t be easy. The Shara Daim ships finished clearing the points and moved aside, preparing for the arrival of the rest of the force. There was still debris outside of the trans-station, as the drones hadn’t had the chance to push all of it inside the trans-station, and some of that was there by design.
Twenty minutes later, a violet flash of light announced the arrival of the Shara Daim force. Six thousand and three hundred warships had just entered his system.
“Alright, people, this is it. Follow orders, remember the plan.”
He leaned into the chair, closed his eyes, and accessed the Watchtower interface. Suddenly he was floating in space between the planets of the solar system. The Legions still held position at the trans-station, and Adrian looked over the force. He had already known the composition of the force, of course; the Empire had sent their stealth ships into both the Erasi and Shara Daim territories as soon as they’d discovered them. Three Legions, and from the data Aileen had recovered, he knew that they were the First, the Third, and the Fourteenth Legions. He didn’t know who led the Third and the Fourteenth, but the First was led by Anessa. And since no ships other than the Legions had left the system she had arrived in once he had released her, he knew that she was with her Legion.
A group of ships was speeding away from Mars in the opposite direction of the incoming Shara Daim force and towards one of the outgoing trans-stations. The Erasi diplomatic ship and its escorts. It didn’t really surprise him they were ready to leave even before the Shara Daim arrived, and must’ve known about the attack.
The tachyon probes around the system were constantly scanning, giving him a real-time picture and scans of everything in-system. With a thought, he zoomed in on one of the Legion ships. According to Aileen, the ship was called Bloodbringer, and was Anessa’s flagship. With a thought, he marked the ship and sent the orders regarding it to the drone control. Then he saw the Legions start to move. Adrian waited for a moment and then sighed. It was time for the battle to start. He focused and sent the orders.
***
Two signals flew through space from Mars towards the invading fleet, its target hidden in the debris field that surrounded the incoming trans-station. The Shara Daim Legions ignored the debris, as it was no danger to their ships. The pieces of scrap floating around were inconsequential to them; their scout force had already informed them that they had caught the Empire ships that were pushing the debris in and destroyed them.
A ship at stealth received the first signal, one of 150 Specter-class stealth ships, surrounding the trans-station. The commander relayed the order, and all 150 ships released the missile pods they were carrying. Each ship carried 10 pods, attached to their hulls. A moment later, the 1500 pods got locks on their targets and fired one third of their loads towards the Shara Daim in the center, 100 missiles each. Six seconds later, they fired the second. One hundred and fifty thousand missiles sped towards the Shara Daim ships.
The second signal found its target as well, and a simple command turned it on. All over the debris field, large missile-like devices powered up and received targeting solutions from Olympus Mons and the stealth ships. A moment later, their drives sent them on their way towards the unsuspecting ships, following only two seconds behind the first wave of missiles.
***
Anessa watched as the Legions slowly advanced. The trans-point was located between the orbits of the third and the fourth planets, and it was fairly close to the fourth planet in its current orbit. There wasn’t much in the system, at least not on the scale of an older colonized system. Most of the traffic in system was between the fourth and fifth planets and the asteroid belt in between them. A few faint returns came from the orbit of the sun and from the ring of the gas giant, but they were obscured and too far away to be seen clearly, so she focused on their target. There were several stations in the orbit of the fourth planet. And around twenty objects that her ship’s sensors recognized as Erasi defense platforms.
Anessa frowned at that. The Empire couldn’t have purchased the plans for those platforms because the Erasi didn’t sell their military-grade technology, even if it was outdated. Which could only mean that they had given it to the Empire, and since the Empire used it, that meant that they didn’t have anything better. And that didn’t make sense. She hadn’t seen any of their technology in action, but she was positive that they had taken at least one Ra’a’zani world, although she didn’t know the particulars of that action. The Empire could’ve lost a lot of ships, or the Ra’a’zani force could’ve been small, and easily outnumbered by the Empire.
She was still musing about that when alarms started sounding around her command. Red blips started appearing all around the three Legions, and lines appeared connecting them to their likely targets.
“Incoming missile fire!” the Va Sun at the sensors reported at the same time.
“Establish the net and move us above the formation,” Anessa ordered.
No one wasted time to acknowledge her orders, they just executed them. All the ships in the attack force instantly made connections, synchronizing their defensive fire. As soon as the missiles entered the range of point defense, lasers opened fire, burning and blowing them up.
The enemy missile count was high, and the missiles were powerful, only ten percent weaker than those of the Shara Daim, and more than one hundred thousand missiles came from the debris field. Anessa watched the holo and the scanners trying to find their source, but they were unable to, which meant there were either stealth ships or the missiles had been mixed in with the debris and powered down. Immediately, several possibilities went through her mind. She knew how Adrian liked to fight, never using more power than what was enough, always maneuvering his opponent into position that worked in his favor.
She realized that the debris field was never intended to cripple the Legions; he had placed only enough so that when they sent scouts, it would appear as if the danger was gone. He had placed the Legions at exactly the position he wanted them. It was a valiant effort, Anessa acknowledged grudgingly, but it wouldn’t be enough. If he had used that number of missiles against a single Legion, he might’ve had a chance of doing some damage, but with three working in concert to take down those missiles, almost nothing would pass through, and those few that did wouldn’t even drain their shields.
“Secondary launches!” the Va Sun reported a few seconds after.
Anessa watched as the first missiles died. Their evading capabilities were impressive, and she revised her conclusion: some would pass through, but still not enough. Even with the second wave coming behind it.
She watched her holo and tracked the progress of the defensive fire, when she noticed something odd. There were two types of missiles among the first volley; the majority of them gave off regular missile readings, but the sensors had a problem penetrating the shielding of a small percentage of the volley. Those strange missiles were larger than their ordinary ones, and somehow no defensive fire was directed at them. She checked the projected trajectories for those missiles and realized that they ended in space between the ships; not one was on a trajectory toward a ship. That told her why they hadn’t been targeted; the defensive fire gave priority to the missiles on direct trajectories to the ships.
The missile volley reached the Legions, several passing through the defensive fire and hitting the shield, doing almost no damage. The Bloodbringer took a hit from four missiles in quick succession and took only a 0.7% dip in their shield strength. She glanced to see if the second missile type would change trajectory now that they were inside the formation, and saw no change.
***
The two thousand Icarus-class missiles entered the Shara Daim formation, then their drives shut off and disengaged, leaving only the spherical canisters that were 10 meters across floating in space between the Shara Daim ships. A moment later, gas thrusters placed the spheres in a gentle spin.
Two circular holes opened on two opposite sides of the spheres, and harsh blue light shone from the openings. A second later, the powerful capacitors in the spheres started draining as intense ion beams exploded out of the spheres.
The Shara Daim formation was dense, and the Icarus missles close. The majority of the beams struck the Shara Daim shields point blank, the spin of the sphere sending the beams across multiple ships during their 3-second firing time.
The ion beams were specifically designed to punch through the shields. A large number of Shara Daim ships suddenly found themselves with their shields gone or extremely drained. Just as the Empire’s second volley arrived.
***
Confusion reigned among the Legions as the Empire’s beam weapon wreaked havoc among them. Ships were reporting losing their shields and some even reported damage. Bloodbringer itself had caught one of the beams for its full charge and had its shields dropped to eighty percent. But Bloodbringer was a super battleship, and they had the strongest shields out of their ships. The rest were not so lucky.
However, there was no time for them to figure out what had happened—the second volley of missiles entered their effective range. The defensive net had suffered in the confusion, as many commanders tried to evade the hellish beams. And now many of the missiles passed through to hit the ships of the Legions. The missiles seemed to be targeting those ships who had lost shields or whose shields were close to failing.
Anessa watched in horror as the first Shara Daim ship exploded.
Chapter Sixteen
Olympus Mons
The Shara Daim ships exploded as thousands of missiles struck at targets of
opportunities. But soon the Shara Daim defensive fire put an end to the Empire’s attack.
“Nice targeting,” Adrian said, and Iris appeared in front of him.
“Thanks,” she said.
It was she who had used the Watchtower interface to control the missiles. Adrian could’ve done it, but she was better at going by percentages. And this was a perfect example of when an AI could be deadly. She had targeted only those ships that they had the chance of destroying with the number of missiles that had passed through the Shara Daim fire.
“That will piss them off for sure. They don’t like being used as target practice,” Adrian said.
“Yeah, but that is what you wanted,” Iris said.
“Yeah, I did. Well, it’s time for the next phase.”
***
Anessa read the reports. Six hundred and fifty-four ships—four hundred and ten destroyers, one hundred and eleven cruisers, one hundred and thirty-two heavy cruisers, and one battleship. The Legions had lost six hundred and fifty-four ships in a span no longer than a couple of minutes. They had not lost that much in such a short period of time for centuries, certainly not during Anessa’s lifetime. She couldn’t even remember the last time a single Legion had taken such losses, even when fighting overwhelming numbers.
Her comms chirped and Anessa turned on the privacy screen, then accepted the request from the flagship. A moment later, a livid Narrasak and a hard-looking Garaam appeared in front of her.