Three hours after the destruction a communication officer looks puzzles up and to her before slowly and gingerly walking up with a dataslate.

“Sir I have Premier level orders but the countersigns are wrong.”

“How so?”

“They are from State Security instead of Political.”

Alexis holds out her flesh hand and looks over the dataslate. She looks over the orders and shakes her head. “State Security are overstepping their bounds. We do not follow their orders and namely to stand down when on a military operation to return to the Great Country.”

“Yes sir.” The man takes the slate and goes back to his station.

The leviathan keeps coming towards Earth. Its huge hull is distinctive as most space vessels use the older noncombat models of the Great Nation. It has been a day since the battle and most are relaxing when an alarm sounds.

Alexis looks up from her chair is about to ask when the ship has an odd sound. There are three more. Her metal arm grips an additional metal part they added to the chair after she cracked a chair on Epsilon base.

The tactical crewman yells out. “We have been hit by missiles. Sensors did not pick them up on passives.”

“Bring up full sensors. All crew to combat stations. Damage report!”

More crewmen come in to active other stations that were not fully manned. Alexis had thought they would not try anything after her show of force and has stood down full combat stations.

“Sir four hits to the hull, none penetrated. One railgun is knocked out along with some sensor lines. Internal damage from the shockwaves and spalling are minor. No casualty or loss of air.”

“Sir sensors have over two dozen more incoming warhead!”

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Alexis jerks up, “Activate defense weapons and take them out. I want to know who fired at us. Prepare main guns for firing.”

The combat sections are busy and just after her order antimissile ordinance is unleashed from counter-missiles to point defense railgun fire.

One of the combat section crew calls her chair. She hits a button to hear the message.

“Sir the main guns are ready but we suggest only firing one and two. Thee and four have not fully been double-checked or test fired.”

Micromotors in the metal hand whirl as the bar suffers her frustration at the news. “I will follow your suggestion. Load high-explosive charges.” She leans back smirking. “Armor-piercing would be overkill on anything out there.”

The next half hour is busy as there are multiple waves coming in. The crew and AI have worked hard and only one gets through. The damage is minor with no serious effects to the vessel.

“We have a lock on who has been firing on us. There are four orbiting habitats and Unit 2 has data-mined that they are like the base we destroyed. It lists them as Barbary nations.”

“Lock on the main guns. The other four would not be needed for stations.”

“Locking... We have lock on three of them. The fourth is on the other side of the Earth at this time.”

“Fire main guns one and two each at nearest station targets.”

There is a flicker of lights and systems blur as the first massive railgun powers up. Saint Elmo's fire shimmers along the open barrel of the gun and slowly further on to the hull of the Fateful Hour. The energy cycles and fires off a massive explosive containing rod off in to the dark of space.

“Systems are having issue with the power requirements and interference from the electromagnetics in firing the gun Sir. The first round is on target and will hit in less then a hour.”

“Understood. Fire the second main gun.”

The bridge systems are more seriously effected this time. The barrel shimmers with the power then crackles brightly before it and a number of levels in the warship go dark.

“Sir main gun two malfunctioned. Power relays have fried and one crewman was killed. We lost all power to a number of levels and damage control is working to restore it.”

The metal bar deforms more as the metal hand grips it. “Do we still have sensors and missile control.”

“Most sensors along a section of the vessel are out but we still can program and launch missiles. Point defense systems are highly degraded till we can get the sensor systems back up.”

“Launch two capitol grade missiles at the other two stations. Navigation rotate the ship so we can see all around if only at times. I want is shifting at random times in case they launched ballistics at us.”

The crew is working around her as she looks at what damage control tells her is out. Unit 2 is of great assistance in correlating the information.