There was a brief respite after the death of the last battlecruiser. Time for the heat-sinks to sap away a bit more energy from the bank of particle cannons clustered at the front of the ship. Time to stretch, to focus; and for the enemy fleet to get into precisely the wrong position to support each other; a half-globe that would, momentarily, be within effective range.
He had a bit of a quandary. Should he target the smaller, lighter ships first, so that he could flee if needed? The thought was only for a moment; if he wanted to reach that gate before the enemy ship count started to spiral into the hundreds of thousands, running wasn't an option. So...
He tapped a few keys. Sorted the enemy ships by the best able to avoid or intercept missile fire; the Battleships could soak up quite a bit, while the Cruisers and Escorts were mediocre at it; and in order for their speed to matter, the Escorts would need to run away. So. Kill the battleships first. He glanced up.
"Doshet. Take over piloting, I'll be focused on shooting for now. And... Be ready. I'm going to need you after. Raimi. be ready with the missile deployment, just in case an EMP hits us. Everyone... this is the moment."
The crew focused on their own jobs; each of them fully aware that if everything went right, none of them would be needed; but that they might be needed at a moment's notice. The Jernal nodded; the sleek brown form virtually indistinguishable in his vacuum suit, looking more like an elongated, emaciated human; not quite so emaciated as he'd been months before. More full. healthy. Alive. He'd had months to practice. The Gaze had a simulator; and while Eyeball consistently racked up the wins at the lower levels, and Ascension was the uncontested champion at the middle levels... when it really hit the fan, he could think and react faster than any living or cybernetic thing on the ship.
In the simulation of a hundred battleships firing on the ship, Eyeball got away without a hit for seventeen seconds, managing to avoid being hit longer than anyone; and then was destroyed. Ascension lasted for thirty-two, being hit almost immediately, but dragging out ultimate death. Jernal lasted for two minutes and thirteen seconds. The Jernal equivalent of adrenaline was flooding his body, washing away the last dregs of the sedatives that made it bearable to speak with the other crew. The world slowed to a crawl. He studied each of the enemy ships. The trajectories of their weapons. The paths of incoming fire; and began to weave a path.
As the first volleys were fired, the crew were tense. Republic ships had begun firing at extreme range, unconcerned with the wastage of power, or reducing shield strength. This was it; they absolutely needed to kill the Gaze before it reached the gate.
For the first eleven shots, it went smoothly. Battleships died in a burst of death and flame, holes cleanly passing through them. Escorts evaporated, sending debris and corpses scattering in all directions. The first few shots struck the Gaze's shields; they were too close now. Too many incoming attacks; dodging them all was no longer possible. It became a matter of ensuring the incoming fire hit as little as could be managed; and that the strongest shields were the ones in the path of fire.
Eyeball glanced at his display. Half of the Battlecruisers; all of them on the 'upward' side of the path; had been taken out. It was all escorts and cruisers up there; he turned his focus downward. "Ascension, Raimi. Missiles. Decoys."
The overload on the shield made the lights flicker briefly; the ship suddenly lurched; the cargo bay doors had forced themselves open abruptly, and with a blast of compressed gas, the cargo of missiles began to launch into space; Doshet gave the ship a brief twist to help clear them as they all began to light off; and after a few moments of shifting trajectories with tiny maneuvering thrusters their main engines activated; and the missile count suddenly started to rise; rapidly reaching one thousand. Two. Three. Four thousand had launched by the end; split to target every single ship above the ecliptic with more than enough to completely overwhelm it, and another thousand to distract and harry the lower enemies.
Eyeball turned away from them; he no longer cared how well the enemy could survive missiles. Soon enough, those would clear out half the fleet; and as the mass ignition of the missiles confused sensors, a set of sixteen energy signatures suddenly appeared; as decoys dropped off the hull in every direction. One of them was destroyed almost immediately, struck by enemy fire; but that still left fifteen decoys; and, to the enemy's perspective, they now had to split their fire between sixteen possible targets, any one of which might be the Gaze of Wrath; as well as more missiles than even a Battleship should have been able to carry.
***
Drakth stared at the display. The cold, cruel math of war had been slowly approaching the end. The Gaze of Wrath was too close to the sun for backup to arrive by their alien faster-than-light drive. Shots had begun to strike home; the Rogue's shields were visibly being depleted. Any given moment, they would fall; and the moment a blow struck home, it would cause a cascade; shields would weaken, thrusters be destroyed, weapons knocked offline. This was the nature of ships like the Gaze; glass cannons.
But then... Four thousand missiles. If his fleet was all together, all supporting one another.... it would be more than they could handle. Even worse, from the way they were launched, the enemy knew about how long they could likely survive; and had determined how many of his ships they could shoot down before being overwhelmed.
And then applied enough missiles to guarantee that it was enough to even those numbers out. The impossible was happening. The loss of all of those stealth ships had made it possible but extremely unlikely. The wave of missiles and the loss of the battlecruisers, more likely; but still only a tiny chance. Now...
He would bet that, in the next two minutes, he and every one of his ships would be destroyed. The Wrath would have a clear path to the gate. The gate would be lost. The orb secured by the enemy, giving them enough neutronium to build hundreds of thousands of cores.
He'd had a plan, when this started. A last-ditch, emergency effort, in the event the enemy somehow brought overwhelming numbers and firepower. Something that could turn an entire region of space to a wall of death.
"....For the founders." He was quiet. There would be no rousing cheers. No speeches.
A few lines of text. A command to the crew of the grave-lens devices ringing the star, directing the pulses in at the orb. With each orbit, it became more irregular; every day, it would pass outside the much smaller sun's surface briefly. In theory, it could be retrieved any of the next few days by just scooping it out at the right moment.
Stolen story; please report.
All of the lenses shifted. Pointing, instead of into the star, at the orb, at the space around the fleet. And in a titanic, horrible waste of material, each of them overcharged themselves; and released a pulse of incredibly intense gravitic power. For the ones with a direct line of sight to the fleet, it would be a kinetic push, disrupting and shifting things in the area; for the others, it would be a wave of coronal mass, sprayed indiscriminately over the battlefield.
It was too fast for him to even be aware. One moment, his men were desperately trying to shoot down the elusive mercenary. The next... it all went black.
***
Eyeball was focused on the next target, waiting for the temperatures of the main gun to dwindle enough for firing to be an option... when he could see it. The universe turned white. The world ended. There would be no dodging, no escape. He needed to... his hand gripped the lever for the warp drive, and he yanked the thrust controls from Doshet, who looked up, staring at him in confusion.
Death. Death. Death. Every direction he looked, a warp jump was instantly fatal. The best route he could find was catastrophic damage. He needed to... Ahh. There. Not good, but...
He grimaced; and yanked back the lever.
One moment, the ship was in the midst of battle; under constant fire from all directions. The next... it was several light-minutes away, its shields down, armor stripped away, weapons non-functional, hundreds of hull breaches; in a moment it had gone from in nearly perfect condition to devastated; and drifting through space with neither engines nor power to any of its external components
Emergency power flicked on after the lights briefly went down; the Ascension drone standing beside him was simply limp, immobile; but the crew, after a moment's hesitation, leapt into action. Doshet, taking in the appearance of his station, rose to his feet; and left the bridge, grabbing a patching kit; intent on sealing every single breach in the hull himself, if need be.
Deep within the ship, buried in the extradimensional space, one of Ascension's cyborgs; an artificial organic brain in a mechanical body; briefly stuttered as the electronics in it faltered; and studied its surroundings. Most of its memory and capabilities were gone; but it could see what had happened; and its purpose. The AI core needed to be brought online. The fully robot machines repaired, the fabricator brought back online.
The Gaze was crippled. No other ships were near the gate; and they had minutes, at best, before the Republic would enter the system in numbers too vast to defeat.
In the darkness of the bridge, all displays now dead, only the red emergency lighting and the consoles themselves providing light, Eyeball reached down beneath his seat, and grabbed hold of a lever; giving a solid yank. Optical cables run throughout the ship to provide a non-electronic view of the hull lined up; those that were still intact; and the screens around the bridge now showed different angles and views; and a slowly spinning starscape.
One of the Shoork crew; Raimi, the missile technician, glanced at the screens. Her own job was not pointless; she should probably start on damage control. If there was any reason to. "...What do we do now, sir? We're closer to the gate, but... we don't have any guns."
Eyeball glanced at her. "No, we don't. But I'd never planned on using the ship's guns here. Hopefully, we're close enough to get the job done. Once sensors are back online, sweep the area. I have no idea what that was, and I'd prefer not to be hit by it."
***
On the outside of the ship, Eyeball was taken aback for a moment. A string of cables was mounted in various locations running down the length of the ship, and Doshet's vacuum-suited form was blurring along them; the numerous cracks and visible escaping gases all starting to fade; no. It wasn't just him. The other Jernal, the one who didn't have the talent for piloting, Doshiri. She was out here as well.
In the time it had taken him to walk to the closest airlock; not thirty seconds; and exit the ship, they had already rigged safety lines and started temporary hull patches. Good lord. It would be frightfully expensive to feed them, but a whole crew of such people would be... insane.
Eventually, he reached the right spot; and checked the hull. The symbols were still there, thankfully; he didn't have much time to have fixed them if they weren't. A single red tendril emerged from his left arm, pressing against the hull; and he raised the Titanslayer handgun, aiming it at the gate; using it, for once, as just a focus, and not a weapon; at least, not exactly; slowly swiveling his aim as it seemed to move from his perspective.
He gave a slow nod. Part of the trick was the power, the words, the symbols. The rest was the feeling. The emotion. That gateway was an unliving chunk of metal. A sophisticated chunk of machinery, staffed by hundreds of Marrick, manning guns, shields; keeping open the lifeline home. The structure actually extended through the gateway; existing in two solar systems at the same time. Different sectors, even.
Things that were dead could be brought to life, of a sorts. The dead could be reanimated, at least temporarily. Inanimate stone and metal could be turned into an animate creature; again, temporarily. As he focused on the Gate, he willed it into life; feeding in all the hate, the despair, the fear; and raised the cable into the air; forged in the ashes of a dozen dead cities. One moment, it was in his hand, the runes carved onto its surface starting to glow. The next... it was gone.
Eyeball felt... drained. Weak. If he weren't in microgravity, he would collapse on the spot; instead, he simply hung off of the edge of the ship by his magnetic boots, letting his artificial limb take the handgun. He'd put some of himself in that; and wasn't sure whether he would be a little bit weaker from now on... or if this was just temporary. Either way... if this worked, it was worth it.
***
"Eighty-three fleets are prepped for crash transition. We've got thousands of enemy ships in the target area, neutronium and advanced new technologies to retrieve, and an entire sector to pacify." The commander stared into the gateway. The vanguard of his fleet was going to pass through in moments; the first thousand ships of however many hundreds of thousands it took to purge the troublesome sector on the edge of the galaxy.
He smiled; that lowly furry mongrel had managed to prove himself unworthy, and was now definitively out of the running.
After focusing on the latest reports from the other sectors and the ongoing Purge, the ship's Captain stepped up to him. "Commander. Something is going on with the gate. I'd recommend we pull back."
"What? No! If something is going on, we need to move in! Intervene!"
"But sir... it's starting to glow strangely, we've lost communication... and the other end is descending towards the star!"
"...What?" He looked back at the display. Sure enough, it looked as if a glowing red wire had wrapped itself around the gate... and the entire visible area of it's path was filled with the brightness of the star's surface. "Damn. They've somehow forced it into the star! The thing's going to collapse, and we'll lose the sector!"
The entire crew watched in a blend of horror and disappointment as the gate on the other side began to sink into the star. Nearby ships started to move; not wanting to be caught up in the wash of superheated solar mass that would emerge during the moments before the gate fell; obviously its shields would collapse, and the gate itself fade at any moment now.
Just as they'd been concerned about, the hot, dangerous mass started to pour through; a few of the nearby ships started taking damage despite swerving to avoid it; the Commander wasn't too worried. The gate would collapse as soon as its generators got too hot, after all.
But... it didn't. The jet of starstuff started pouring out more rapidly, at greater speed and density; and worse, the gate seemed to be aiming it somehow, swiveling towards the greatest concentrations of Republic ships nearby... including his own fleet!
He was still confused as to how the gate could possibly still be intact, clearly immersed in the heart of a star, when the wash of coronal mass overwhelmed his flagship's shields; and the crew of the vessel were cooked inside the vessel as its softer internal components began to melt into slag.