What War Had Wrought (Rise of the Empire Book 7) Page 17
Then the Erasi ships started accelerating, moving out of the range of both the station and his fleet, their retreating fire striking against his ships. Half an hour later, every remaining Erasi ship had moved outside of the range his forces. Nair checked their trajectory, and saw them heading towards Boreas and not in the direction to meet with the rest of their fleets. Boreas had several research stations both in orbit and on the surface, stations that weren’t defended, but Nair knew that they had already been evacuated, as most of the system had been. All had been moved behind the protective lines around Sanctuary. At worst, the Erasi would just inflict material damage, but even that made him angry. From their action, it was clear that they had come here to inflict as much damage as they could.
With a last look at the retreating Erasi fleets, Nair gave the order for the First Fleet to enter skim, moving behind the defenses around Sanctuary.
***
Laura seethed as she read the reports. The Erasi had inflicted significant damage to the shipyards, killed thousands of people on them, and halting the Sanctuary shipbuilding for months, if not years. And at the exact moment when they couldn’t afford that. She read through the rest of the reports, seeing that the two Erasi fleets had suffered significant damage. They had lost at least thirty percent of their hulls, while the First Fleet had lost only sixty-two warships. It would be another eight hours before the Erasi warships reached the first defenses, enough time to rearm the First Fleet.
And she had lost use of one defense station, which was probably what the Erasi had intended. The recharge time for the defense station was thirty-two hours, by which time, if she wasn’t wrong about the Erasi’s objectives, they would be gone. Now she had only two stations remaining and would need to make sure that she used them when they would be able to inflict the most damage to the invaders.
***
Hanaru’s fleets reached the first of the Empire’s defense platforms, and immediately they opened fire. Thousands of energy beams struck against his ships, just as he gave the order for his fleets to fire missiles. His ships flooded the space with missiles, overcoming the defense platforms’ defenses and destroying them one by one. As his ships moved forward, more and more of stations and defense platforms came into range, and the Empire’s defense fleet moved to engage from behind the defenses where they had moved to once his two fleets had retreated, and they too opened fire. The two forces engaged in a delicate balance as they each tried to get an upper hand on the other without overextending.
Hanaru glanced at the timer. There was only a few minutes left.
***
Several hours ago, a lone scanning drone detected unknown moving objects. Hampered by the fact that it was the only drone that detected them, it couldn’t extrapolate the objects’ trajectory or speed. The drone sent its report to the monitoring station. Seeing as there was a hostile fleet in the system, the station’s AI gave the report a low importance and put in the massive queue that was on hold until the situation in the system was resolved.
***
Laura paled in horror as alarms started blazing inside her control room. She watched the hologram and saw stations in orbit of Sanctuary and around the protective cover of the defenses get hit by something. Holes were open in their hulls, venting entire sections while others were ripped to pieces.
“Those are civilian stations,” someone said in horror, as several habitat stations exploded or were open to space. Laura watched helplessly, unable to do anything, because as fast as it had begun, it was over. Before she could ask what happened, more alarms sprung to life. Laura watched as objects appeared in the orbits of Sanctuary and Thanatos and started descending towards the planet and the moon. The massive defensive turrets of Thanatos swiveled and started taking down the objects that were targeting various facilities on the surface of the moon.
Ultimately, several passed through and struck against the large shield dome that protected the Fleet Headquarters, but that was the only place on the moon that had the shield; the other facilities hadn’t been equipped with one yet. Two struck at the Fleet Academy, wiping it off the surface of the moon, while the third smashed just outside the shield and destroyed the spaceport.
On Sanctuary, the situation was similar. The Olympus City defensive turrets took down most of them, but two passed through and struck the city shields, bathing the sky above the city in red. Two more had entered Sanctuary’s orbit and destroyed two research facilities on the southern continent, which had no defenses.
Laura forced her eyes from the devastation and to the Erasi fleets that were fighting the defenses and the First Fleet. Immediately she saw that they were disengaging, turning to run away. And after what they had just done, she will not allow them run away. She ordered both of the stations to move and keep the Erasi in position. There was only ten more minutes until Star-Guard One was in range.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Nair was shaken by the destruction in Sanctuary’s vicinity. The early reports suggested that the attack was executed by kinetic weapons; how they were unnoticed didn’t matter now. What did was making the Erasi pay for the people on those stations that they had slaughtered. Nair had failed in his duty to protect this system, but he wouldn’t let the Erasi leave unpunished. Their forces had already started pulling back and, if Nair was reading the patterns in their movements right, splitting into several smaller forces. The First Fleet accelerated, following the Erasi and firing their proton beams and missiles at the retreating ships, even as they were slowly gaining speed and moving out of his fleet’s range.
Then two massive stations left the skim in positions behind them, exiting close enough that one small Erasi destroyer actually collided with the station’s shields. The stations leaving the skim so close must’ve wrecked the Erasi ships’ systems, and Nair saw that he was right when the ships in the close vicinity of the stations died without even firing back as missiles and proton beams slammed into unprotected ships drifting forward.
The two stations forced the Erasi to change course and move away from the stations, which allowed his fleet to catch up. His ships fired at the Erasi, who were now trying to move above the sun’s plane, closing their ranks to weather the assault of the stations. Two of the Erasi fleets close to one of the stations turned their attention to the station, buying time for the rest to move away.
Nair’s fleet managed to close range with the back element of the retreating Erasi force, mauling them with a flurry of plasma torpedoes, proton beams, kinetic weapons, and missiles. Ion missiles knocked down the Erasi shields, and kinetic weapons finished any ship close enough to the Empire’s fleet. The stations had mauled the two fleets that were covering the rest, and hundreds of ships or their pieces floated around the stations, one of which was leaking atmosphere and had lost shields in several areas as the retreating Erasi ships poured fire into it.
Nair saw that the Erasi were about to move out of his fleet’s range again, and soon after out of the range of the stations. He ordered all his ships to reassemble into a formation and prepare their skim drives; he was not about to let them get away. He contacted the Fleet Headquarters informing them of his plan. Just as he was about to give the order, the Fleet ordered him to hold off. Before he had the chance to ask for a clarification, a bright wall of light pierced through the Erasi, sweeping through their formation. In a span of three seconds, thousands of Erasi warships, almost a fourth of their entire force, ceased to exist. Not even dust remained as proof that they had been there.
***
Hanaru watched in satisfaction as his plan worked. The Empire had missed his attack and all of his targets had been destroyed. Not every target, he reminded himself. He hadn’t anticipated that the Empire would have planetary shields. Those were extremely hard to manufacture, and even the Erasi only had them on the planets in the core systems. Other than that, his attack had been successful. His ships had wrecked the Empire’s system, destroying or crippling its infrastructure.
He gave the order for
his fleets to split into small groups and head for the hyperspace barrier, taking shots at any target of opportunity. However, just as his fleets started moving apart, the last two of the Empire’s defense stations showed up. They exited their FTL as close to his fleets as they were able without colliding, and Hanaru saw a number of ships in two of his fleets lose controls. The phenomenon that occurred once the Empire used its FTL drives was well known to Hanaru, and one of the things he had worried most about, as he had no way of protecting against it.
The disabled ships died in minutes as the two stations opened fire, and their positions forced Hanaru to issue new orders and gather his ships into a large formation to protect them from the onslaught of missiles and weapons fire. His ships sped away as the Empire’s gravity weapon reached out and ripped ships apart.
With no choice, he ordered two of his fleets to slow and protect the rest; he was already losing more ships than he had anticipated, and if he was going to fulfil the rest of his mission and start attacking other Empire systems, he would need every ship. The Empire war fleet kept firing at his back, and he was losing ships fast, as they were focusing on retreating.
The defense stations were proving themselves an incredible threat. One of his fleets managed to get through one station’s shields and inflict damage to the massive thing. Seeing as the rest of his fleets had managed to move out of their range, he recalled the two fleets and left the stations drifting slowly in space, useless when his ships had left the range of their weapons. The Empire’s war fleet was still in pursuit, but their inferior speed meant that his fleets would have no more problems. He knew that they would use their FTL drives again, but a single fleet was not as big of a threat as their stations were.
Hanaru looked at his subordinates. “Relay the order for the fleets to scatter per the plan,” he ordered. The eight fleets would split into four groups of two fleets each, and leave the system through hyperspace, then attack already chosen systems through the Empire’s territory.
As his fleets prepared to scatter, alarms blasted across his ship and his holo went offline.
“What happened?” Hanaru asked angrily.
“We don’t know, Weaver, our systems overloaded. Bringing everything online now.”
A moment later, the holo came back online, only there was a large hole in the middle of his formation.
“Where are my ships?”
“We don’t know, Weaver, they are gone,” his subordinate answered stupidly. “Checking records now,” the subordinate added, and Hanaru waited impatiently.
“Just before the overload, the scanners detected a large source of energy buildup…And there was some kind of energy surge passing through the middle of our formation.”
“What kind of energy surge?”
“We don’t know, Weaver…We are getting data from other ships now…” He read through the data for a moment or two before turning back to Hanaru. “The energy was a weapon of some kind, Weaver. Our ships…they have been destroyed.”
Hanaru looked at his subordinates incredulously. A weapon that could destroy more than three thousand warships in a moment?
“Show me the source.”
A moment later, the holo changed to show him the image of the system’s sun, and there in its orbit, entirely too close to the sun itself, was a massive station, its surface illuminated by the clearly visible shields and several openings in its hull that were pointed at his fleet.
“There is another energy build up from the station, Weaver.”
Hanaru hesitated only a moment before speaking. “Scatter the fleets, now!”
***
The command room in the Fleet Headquarters erupted in cheers as the Star-Guard One station punched a hole in the Erasi numbers. Almost three and a half thousand ships, gone in an instant, an entire fleet.
“How soon can they fire again?” Laura turned and asked Oswald.
Oswald leaned to look at the holo. “They drained their capacitators to fire that beam. To fire another one like that? It will take them days to charge the capacitators enough. But they can fire a smaller beam, one every twenty minutes.”
“How big of a beam?”
“Around two hundred meters across.”
“Will it lose on power?”
“No, not at this range. If the Erasi move past the Eurus orbit, then yes, the weapon can’t reach that far,” Oswald answered.
“Contact Nair, tell him to be ready to split his fleet into small taskforces to hunt down the Erasi ships. I think that the Erasi commander will figure out that the only way he can minimize the losses from Star-Guard One is to spread his ships thin.”
***
Hanaru watched as the Empire’s station fired at his fleets again, this time a much smaller beam but one that still destroyed one hundred and forty ships. The beam passed through everything, hitting every ship and burning all that it touched. Eleven of his super battleships exploded as the beam burned holes through them. Several ships were hit and managed to survive, as they caught the edge of the beam, and a few more managed to survive while being crippled and unable to move.
The Empire’s fleet continued chasing them, firing missiles, as Hanaru tried to organize his ships. Then another beam swiped through the fleets, destroying another ninety-three ships. Seeing no other course, Hanaru ordered them to scatter so that no ship was directly behind another, which would make his fleet more vulnerable to the Empire’s ships but would ensure that the station would only be able to take out one ship at a time.
But while his ships moved, the station managed to fire two more times, destroying another two hundred and thirty-three ships. Hanaru had come to this system with ten fleets, almost twenty thousand ships. And he had lost just over seven thousand, far more than what he had believed he would lose. And as the Empire’s station kept destroying his ships, that number kept getting higher. Then the Empire defense fleet disappeared, entering their FTL, and less than a minute later, they appeared again.
The Empire had split their fleet in two, and each had attacked smaller elements of his fleets. In order to protect his ships from the Empire’s station, he had made them vulnerable to their ships. With their FTL—and smaller recharge times for their ships—they would be able to overcome his smaller groups and destroy them with numbers advantage. His fleets were all heading towards the hyperspace barrier in different directions, but the Empire would still be able to catch them with their FTL drives. Hanaru checked the distances and started calculating the timing. Some of his forces would be able to get away, but only a fraction of what he had thought he would have.
With no other choice, he contacted the two fleets that had just finished a bombing run on the installations at the third planet, and ordered them to leave the system and go directly to the fallback system, not continuing to the next Empire system. Once he escaped this system, Hanaru would have far fewer ships than he had planned for initially, and would need to adjust his plans. Splitting his forces might not be a good idea anymore.
As Hanaru was thinking on how best to continue his mission in the future, a beam of energy ripped through his ship, evaporating his command center and him in it. His life ended with no warning, and just a moment after his super battleship was destroyed, a new fleet entered the Empire’s system through one of its trans-lanes.
***
Nair watched as the Erasi battleship exploded under the fire of one of his dreadnoughts, and close after the last Erasi ship in this small group. He was no longer using the Watchtower interface, as there was no need; this was no longer a fleet action. His ships were hunting down the Erasi in small groups. Nair glanced at the timer and saw another seven minutes before his ships could enter skim and hit another group of Erasi ships.
“Fleet Commander,” an Adjutant called from his right. “Warpath’s Vanguard has arrived. They are placing themselves at your command and are asking where you want them.”
Nair smiled at the good news. “Send them the priority groups, and let them pick a group and sta
rt destroying Erasi ships. Warn them to check with Fleet for Star-Guard fire; we don’t want them to skim to somewhere where the station will fire.”
Nair turned back to the holo and studied the fleeing Erasi ships. There were still more of them, but they couldn’t gather in anything larger than a dozen ships; otherwise, Star-Guard would kill them faster. Their only remaining action was to run and hope that they got to the hyperspace barrier faster than the Empire could destroy them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
December; Year 58 of the Empire — Empire Command Ship Gallant
Adrian’s fleet dropped out of hyperspace almost a light month away from their target. Far enough away that they were out of the Erasi’s active sensors range, and sufficiently away that there was no chance for their exit from hyperspace to have been seen. Adrian turned to the command room crew of the command ship Gallant. “Is everything ready?”
“Yes, Lord Sentinel. We are in contact with the forward element, everything is ready to go,” Fleet Commander Rtsaar answered.
Adrian nodded at the Guxcacul, and turned to look at the holo, which started showing him a real-time image of the Erasi fleet that they were receiving from the stealth ships in the system. The plan was to hit them hard, hit them fast, and before they could react. He checked the positions of the Erasi ships in the area of the massive cloud-like formation of the Erasi fleet that he was planning on attacking. With his implant, he adjusted the targets a bit to account for the slight shift in the Erasi formation. Then he turned back to the Fleet Commander.
“Send the first wave,” Adrian ordered.
Rtsaar manipulated her console, and a moment later, she relayed the order. Fifty-one cargo ships released the skim missiles from their holds, five thousand one hundred in total, and their thrusters fired up, sending the missiles forward towards the system as they settled into a formation. The cargo ships then turned around and entered hyperspace, going back to Kaleras. As soon as the missiles achieved max velocity, just over two hundred missile pods activated their skim drives and disappeared, followed quickly behind by the skim missiles. A timer appeared and started ticking down over the large holo-table, one counting down until the missiles and pods arrived at their destination.