"[Hello? Hello?... Is the recording online...? It is? Good, is my voice crystal clear? No noises?... Alright, thank you gentlemen. Of course, the ladies too! Hahahaha... Haha...]"
There stood, on the Public Broadcast System, was a tired, but determined man being watched with utmost importance. He is being watched in every nook and cranny where a screen, a radio, a phone, or whatever piece of technology that a potato can power to receive messages. His face, if not only his voice, is being tuned with a desperation and worry of the populace. Hugging their children, hugging their pets, hugging their mates, hugging their friends, if not, the community they cherished or ignored, have now huddle up on hotspots where many people can receive a live message from the man. Everybody of the 2 billion people or so, is now watching the man's needed voice for what their next course of action is; "What happened to the Frigate guarding the planet?", "Where's the emergency response from Earth?", "Where's my friend/family?", "Why is the power out?", "What happen to StarNet?", and most importantly of all, "Are we going to be safe? Will help come?"
Though, despite those questions, almost all of them already know the answers. They just don't want to explicitly blurt it out. They want to accept the much more positive note as always, because there will always be a way. There always has been at the end of every tunnel, but they already know the answer to that hope either. They already know what will befallen upon the loneliest place on any Human territory. They definitely know that as nearly 7 months has passed, their options have withered. Their potential as a colony dwindling, and their time running out as the clock ticks.
Perhaps they already know that, hence why they are listening attentively to the man's word on live broadcast. They want an answer. An answer of a question they already know...
And the man's appearance of determination have gave them a good idea on what's their next objective.
No, that seems to be the wrong word for it. Their only objective, because it's the only one left.
"[Hello everyone, I'd like to partake a important message regarding on our next important course of action... Regarding of the current dire predicament Venture is in.]"
He took a short breath, probably to organise his thoughts as he continued his broadcast.
"[As you already know me, my name is Kishimura Honda, Prime Minister of the Conglomerate of the Kuiki Imperial Colony, now, Emergency Co-leader of the whole planet of Venture as a emergency response of a current crisis. Of course, as all of you are all up to date of that, and it is now 100% certain, that what we are fighting aren't just mere rebels or terrorist, or pirates. They are Aliens. Aliens of higher capabilities of combat prowess and technology. We may not know what they look like, as our folks at Base are still trying to find that out. All we need for all you to know, is that they are nothing like any of the threats humanity have face... And unfortunately... We, as the frontline of that threat, will mostly likely not survive the holding.]"
A grim atmosphere loomed over the populace as a pause slipped out of the Prime Minister. Everyone have a lot of mixed responses; despair, apathy, defeat, and resignation. Everybody knows that the Aliens have reached Mars 2, and it would be only a matter of time before they reach Venture. It could be days or even a few hours, they don't know, as they don't have a grand idea how fast those Aliens are. It's to the point it's almost funny how they are literally just waiting for their end with a clock that tells them of a threat, they may or may not know is accurate with the details.
"[The Colony Frigate, USN Laffey, have successfully brought us enough time. It could be few days or weeks, it doesn't matter, as every second matters in this! The Alien ships have took a dramatic slowdown of their route towards Venture, and base on the calculations by our team, it is estimated they would arrive in either 3-18 days. Depending on how much their repair systems are good enough from when the report was given... However, I'm pretty sure that's not the information all of you want, right?...]"
After all, what does a mere colony could do with literally nothing in their hands? It's like fighting their own Nation's military with a sling and a rock. It could probably make a dent, but not enough to stop it.
"[To answer the question, whether or not the Aliens can be hurt, or atleast killed?...]"
However that's exactly the point.
"[Yes. Yes they will die like every other living being. Just as Nature herself as intended.]"
The Prime Minister said with utmost confidence and pride, with a barely containable smile as a stream of roars of cheering went out to the crowd as more and more of the live broadcast kept on continuing. With each word only fueling the last emotion that has been boiling since Day 1 of the Alien Threat.
"[Before the USN Laffey crashed into orbit, we managed to encounter a battle with the Aliens, and they suffered a catastrophic lost of 16 ships! One of which is presumed to be a Heavy Cruiser or a small Battleship! They are not invincible! Though they surpass us technology wise, their incapacitated ships, it proves that they are not unreachable!]"
A cheer erupted of many of the broadcast, at the same time the live broadcast was being delivered, the evacuation order was already implemented in the more semi populated and isolated regions, as the dense urban areas were already evacuated months ago. The limited military of the three Colonising Powers, have began taken positions in the city. Old as they may, with a large generation gap of a modern military, it doesn't matter as they are still as deadly when it comes to defense. The people, of all ages, began lining up in the closest military post for volunteering for the Operation to be the last defense line of Venture. Man or woman, it doesn't matter as they want to volunteer to protect their new home, and their identity as a Venturian of humanity's frontier.
"[We are currently collaborating with the Republic National Representative of the Venture Colony, Soma Lo'kt, and their SAI, Venture 698-Beta, to conduct their military strategy as all of you are now trained to do so... Remember, this all of for the sake of Humanity. We cannot have reinforcements because StarNet was incapacitated, and it was probably for the better to not let the Aliens find our larger territory as a whole, and even our own Colony, 698-2 Beta, with the entrails of StarNet. We need time, and time is what our standard message towards 698-2 and Earth for reinforcements to come in about 10 years...]"
He then bowed at the live broadcast, for those with monitors, it was a physical communication to show importance of the message. In this case, he is asking for the whole population with a sincere bow to take apart in this operation.
"[We must hold out for atleast 10 years. It is enough time for Earth to finally got our message. We must not falter of our adversary after finally reaching this moment of First Contact... We have already baptised our kind with fire, we learn from it, and now control it away from and harm, and now... perhaps we are now going to use that fire to good use.
From the words of a famous historical icon;
Ālea iacta est!
Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for Operation Invicta, to commence.]"
[BZZT!-]
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[TRANSMISSION RECEIVE]
[From the Grand Expedition Operation Flock]
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
[Would you like to see?]
"Give me the report..." The Admiral grumbled, as the contents of the message shows
[We have finally approached the zenith of our Grand Expedition, my Grand Queen! The subjugation of the Alien species will now commence after few planetary rotations after this message will arrive at our Home world. The Human Question should be fully solved the moment you have received this message. As the difficulty of this mission was much less difficult than expected, nonetheless, we did encounter a resistance. Fortunately, it has only heavily damaged our Line 5s, and only minor damages have been done to the rest of the fleet. The humans are as flimsy as the initial scans have brought up, they even have just one proper warship just as you have predicted my Lord!
We will bring the good news once the operation is done. Rest assured my Queen, you won't regret trusting us this operation.]
'Utter pulp that report is!'
The Admiral smashed his sharp claws into the terminal with rage as the bridge crew look at him wearily. Tired as they may, they really don't want to deal another problem popping up just as they solved the last big problem they have stopped. And even if they wanted to patch it up, it'll just be disheveled again the moment they look away. They might as well just wait it out and hopes nobody gets executed because of one, damned human warship.
"All of you are cowards! You are just like those damned 3rd Worlders! Cowering and sacrilegious to our Queen with FALSE MESSAGES!"
His booming voice, prancing of his mandibles, and most importantly, the aggressive stance and the droning sound of the wings beating like a walloping thunder. Making all of the bridge crew submit to him, as they instinctively make a bow like body movement in fear of their claws being interlocked, and quite possibly be declawed.
"..."
This all happened even before the false reporting, rather, it was the last fuse left for the enraged Admiral.
It happened many knits ago, after the disastrous confrontation of the Human warship, and their eventual confrontation and battle. Their engagement was rather long than what they have expected of a small ship, in which the following memory have enveloped the crew of their fight with ship.
To say anger boiled them on how one small ship have harassed them for almost half a planetary cycle irked them to a primal degree.
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It just happened after the whole fleet finally got their bearings, and have got their shields to combat ready statuses that they began to re-engage with the Human warship.
What happened next was supposed to be the end for the Human warship. When the Justice High have finally got their sights on the small ship, with just one command, that was supposed to be the end of the end of the ship.
The shot of one of the main Plasma Directional Stations have lightened up the space for a moment. The instantaneous blast blinded them, and just a nik later, what they thought of the disappearance of the ship was met with one of the Line 6s being crushed by a powerful projectile, crippling it's ability to move as it just began to uncontrollably move in space. The projectile then went off course slightly into the right side of a Line 4, about 180 claws, as it then detonated with a small quick light. Molten shrapnel flying everywhere as it began to cause superficial damage to the ships, however, it wasn't the same for the one of the System Jammers as one coincidentally hit the bridge. Causing large amounts of atmosphere to vent and killing atleast 4 Religiosa.
"Wha..."
But of course, it wasn't enough to cause to make it a kill.
"WHERE IS IT?!"
Everybody then turned their heads towards the still functioning human warship, however, it's already fleeing on a quite a long distance with it's distinguishing bluish cackle excreting out of the ship.
There, despite the lost of another ship, the fleet gave chase, but rather slowly, because of the damaged Line 2 and 3s trailing inside the System Formation. In which important ships and impaired ships are huddle by the protection of the other ships.
This did not stop the constant barrage of the physical projectiles the humans have, with the major difference this time is how easily intercepted the weapons are with the less powerful projectiles. In this case, the shields were able to intercept the projectile as the Admiral suspected, though oddly primitive of the usage of physical projectiles were, they are still powered by something inside it. Thus, the shields, like the missiles earlier, were now easily intercepted as the shields were at full capacity.
That is, until there was a sudden shift of the way the human ship moves. Because though they may be slowed down, the Religiosa ships are fast, and they are slowly catching up the human ship. For whatever reason, base on the way the human ship moves earlier, they estimated that the ship could move faster than it is doing now. Whether or not it's because the Justice High has actually damaged it, or it is simply propulsion limitations, the ship is getting closer for effective range of their PDS of 8000 - 10 000 megaclaws. Even then, it is already pushing for Line 1s to keep the projectile in place, or even retain it's destructive capabilities. Either way, the human ship just kept on pushing further and further away from the 3rd planet, as it kept on shooting it's smaller projectiles.
Surprisingly enough, these smaller projectiles on the other hand are actually making noticeable and concerning damages to the Line 6s, which have now changed their position to be on the front. It is not enough to keep them out of action or stop them, but they kept on hitting on key external systems. Which angered the crews of the Line 6s as they slowly loose some of their communication systems, their seekers to view the human ship, their smaller PDSs that kept on shattering, with few lucky hits even penetrating into the carapace of the ship and some even breaching into the bridge.
The Admiral at that time, with hindsight, should've split up his ships so it can run at it's maximum speed to catch up with the slow human frigate. However, it is too risky, because though the space is empty with any major obstacles. Satellites of large and small floats over the place, he could even say that the amount of metal on the planet is ridiculous, as they could even probably form a ring. Either way, there's a good chance it was an ambush. In hindsight as well, he could've ordered torpedoes to be sent out as they are much faster in masses. However, it seems the human ship have some good shields on their own, as the missiles either stopped working and just went of course or began acting sporadic, or even exploded too early about 1000 megaclaws short. He saw no projectiles and sensors only noticed a sudden heat spike, so it's probably a shield.
Then, as he have feared, but also unexpectedly thought was impossible. The human ship, suddenly split up to 5, after the detection and communication systems went amok for a nik. The Navigators and Weapons Directors panicked, as dealing one of the humans ship was a hassle if left unguarded, let alone 4 more!
However, to their surprise, the 5 dots oddly went into very different directions. The Admiral who noticed this realised that it could possibly be a decoy, he doesn't know how the humans did it, because base on his experience, decoys are rarely used because of how obvious the ship's entrails are. In the current situation however, it seems to have worked as all the debris fields somewhat camouflage it. Though, very ineffectively, as it was obvious which is the only moving obstacles are.
Well, that is until all of a sudden, the detection systems were filled with a sound of sudden alarms as it warned them how they were currently surrounded.
This of course was another one the Admiral could have seen in hindsight, but because of the current stress of the situation, he either forgot about it as a possibility or simply didn't think that a cowardly move would work.
However it did.
The ships immediately went into lockdown as it shuts down all systems, except life support, and locked the control panels and the weapons down. This lockdown may look absurd, however, it is a very emergency measure that keeps the ship's technology from being stolen when the battle didn't go their way. This is done by locking all systems to prevent extraction of technology.
Honestly, the Admiral nearly forgot that feature existed because of how rarely it happened. Now here they are now being surrounded all of a sudden by multiple signatures that are targeting their ships from nearly all angles. The Admiral of course panicked, as it was unavoidable and even thought that their ends were done for.
Yet of course, he remembered about the decoys and immediately take action of the Navigators to quickly re-engaged the seekers and communication systems to undo the scuttling of core systems. As mentioned, it is only targeted at valuable technologies, except life support, but the Admiral won't definitely let expensive and important equipment in a important operation to be blown up by decoys of all things!
And after nearly 30 nimbs of gaining control of their ships and cancelling the scuttling procedure. Miraculously, they didn't lost any ships this time. They then look at the perpetrator to only found out it was the dead satellites, pointing them with a inferior laser that could not even burn any material at their ships. However, the ship's systems detected it as an attack because of their situation few moments ago, so it's not a far fetched scenario to confuse equipment with the non-lethal ones.
Still, the Admiral may not know if the humans knows about that common system failure, or simply not, as the humans probably did it to flood their data with unnecessary information to escape. Either way, a loss is still a loss, as the human ship was nowhere to be seen, and not dead in space. While their losses have now reached 17 ships, compared to none to the human side with only ONE ship...
To say the Admiral was pissed, that he has been fooled by nymph tactics for multiple times, was big underestimate. Because not only he loss face with his fleet and crews, he also lost to one ship with multiple losses in a single battle. He was both beaten in humiliation and warfare by ONE human ship, as the only thing the Admiral could do is grit his mandibles. As finally, multiple Shipmasters began to complain of the Admiral's horrific performance.
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