Chapter 38

"The seeds of great victory lie in minor triumphs."

~ Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Independence

The battle was nearing its end. One way or the other, it would soon be over. All that remained were the Federation capital ships and a few battleships that volunteered to stay behind and defend the giant starships. Most of the sub-capital vessels had been destroyed in the fight, though a few dozen did manage to make it outside the dampening field and jump to safety. However, the capital ships were too slow to get outside of the field and were trapped. All of the Alliance sub-capital ships were destroyed, except for the battleships. One of them had to be broadcasting the disruption field that blocked hyperspace signals.

“What's the status of the WarpStar?” Admiral Briggs asked, feeling concerned for the lone destroyer facing off an impossible fight with an Alliance capital ship. The view of the battle was three hours old; all the fleet could do was watch the almost sure destruction of the destroyer as a small ship would not withstand the firepower of a capital ship for long.

“By some miracle she’s still fighting, sir. She’s got one hell of a pilot!” a fleet officer replied, noting the high maneuvering the starship was performing to avoid being hit with superheated plasma blasts that would surely penetrate its shields and melt its feeble hull.

“Sir, the Yamato is on a direct collision course with an Alliance large capital ship!” another fleet officer shouted, fear in his voice as he saw the course change the giant Battleship had maneuvered. They were close enough for the Battleship to accelerate to a point where the Alliance capital ship would not be able to move out of the way, the resulting collision would obliterate both ships. The Alliance ship being targeted was a Dreadnaught. In the grand scheme of things, the Battleship would be sacrificing itself to remove a much more powerful starship from the battlefield than itself, a strike to a massively overwhelming fleet, and a move that might not do much to the overall battle.

The admiral picked up his mic unit and entered the commands in his terminal to broadcast a transmission to the Yamato, which was close enough for near-instant communications and had enough time to make a difference. Only fifteen light seconds separated the Yamato and the Independence, thirty seconds for the command ship to see a response. The Yamato was at best fifty-five light seconds from its target, which still may not be enough time to slow the giant sub-capital ship down enough to avoid the Dreadnaught altogether. At best, the Battleship would pass by at super close range and at a reduced velocity, allowing the Dreadnaught to strike substantial blows.

The admiral held the mic in his hand, staring at an impossible sight on his readout. He had completely forgotten what he was about to order, and as he watched his other officers in the room look up in confusion, he knew he had not gone insane. “Attention commanders of the fleet, this is WarpStar actual,” John’s voice was heard over the speakers in the room. He had selected an override channel to broadcast to every speaker on every ship in the fleet. The Independence was listening to it in real time, as the WarpStar had warped right on top of her, but other ships would hear it in several minutes as the furthest ship out was at a distance of five light-minutes. “Switch all weapons to kinetic systems. They are vulnerable to kinetic weapons. Railguns, missiles, and torpedoes will kill these bastards. We just eliminated the Dreadnaught that you are no doubt watching us still fight. You will see its destruction in two-and-a-half hours; we do not have time for this. I repeat, fight with railguns, missiles and torpedoes!”

Admiral Briggs was not used to not making the decisions on the field. He had been the Federation’s most respected and top fleet commander for decades. He had gotten used to a routine where he was in charge of everything. Only in rare cases would the Chief of Naval Operations, or C.N.O, give him orders to deploy the fleet. He was not used to a captain under his command giving orders openly to the fleet without consulting him first. This, however, was a troublesome circumstance. The tactical genius that was Admiral Briggs was all out of ideas, and he had used his bag of tricks and strategies that had worked against the Russian Republic so well. The highly decorated and experienced admiral was at a loss for words, unsure of how to respond. Should he be angry at the captain for giving orders above the admiral’s authority? Or terrified out of his mind that he couldn’t think of a way to save the fleet?

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The admiral decided what to say quickly—so quickly, he even surprised himself, a feat he thought was no longer possible. He went to grab the comm unit to say what he had to say, and give his orders, when someone else decided to act on their own as well. The F.W.S Yamato, commanded by Captain Adrian Smith, the spouse to Olivia Smith, C.O. of the Independence, had made the first move. She was hurtling towards the Alliance Dreadnaught at high speeds, hoping to attempt a Kamikaze run, an homage to the ship’s namesake, a Tokyo-class Battleship named the Yamato, and an attempt to cause some damage to hopefully save the fleet. Instead of using her medium-sized bow brake drive units, she flipped 180 degrees, facing her stern towards her direction of travel, and ignited the main drive units. She was forcefully slowing down as fast as she could without killing her crew. She would not slow down before passing by the Dreadnaught, and she would be slow enough for the Alliance ship to score hits on the Battleship with ease—possibly even fatal hits, but the Battleship could do the same.

And that is what she did, firing round after round of her giant 1500mm ship buster rail darts, inflicting critical blows with each hit. To everyone's surprise, the darts not only passed through the Dreadnaught’s shields and struck the hull, but ripped entirely through the other side of the ship, continuing their journey into the void to travel endlessly until finding another victim. Each dart struck vital components, and secondary explosions were going off with almost every strike. The Battleship was less than half the mighty Dreadnaught’s size but was striking her down without any effort. By the time the Battleship had fully passed the Dreadnaught, rail darts had struck enough critical components to cripple the ship, but not destroy her. While the Yamato was ending her brake burn and flipping back towards her vector to increase velocity again, she fired off fifteen cruise missiles and three torpedoes. The missiles followed the paths of the rail-darts, finding the vast holes that were created and exploding around them, widening the gaps and ripping apart component by component, exposing deck to deck to the vacuum of space.

The Dreadnaught was crippled, a floating derelict in space, but was not yet destroyed. Before the Yamato fully passed the ship, she was able to strike several severe blows to the Federation Battleship. Two plasma bolts immediately collapsed the shields, and a plasma lance beam, perfectly timed, ripped and melted its way from the outer hull into the battleship’s main propulsion systems. Crippling the Battleship as she fired off her missiles and torpedoes, she still had enough momentum to push her far enough away from the Dreadnaught to lose targeting and barely survive the encounter.

Only fifteen seconds was needed for the light of the fight to finally reach the fleet, and only five seconds after the first impact of the missiles did the fleet see the result of the MK7 thermonuclear torpedoes. Detonating one after the other, flooding the area with considerable amount of radiation, the Dreadnaught momentarily transformed into a miniature star, seemingly more enormous than the primary star in the system at that distance. The captains and commanders of the fleet did not waste time waiting for orders from the admiral. Each remaining ship fired their complement of kinetic weapons to strike at the remaining Alliance ships. For twenty-five minutes, the entire area spawned many miniature temporary stars as capital ship after capital ship exploded in a fiery display of theatrics.

Admiral Briggs fell into his chair as the crew cheered wildly. He had no idea he had been holding his breath in until the air escaped his lungs at a rapid pace. Tears were flowing down his cheeks as the reality of victory finally hit him. The fleet was saved. Millions had perished, but thousands had survived. No one truly knew what to call this, revenge, justice, or survival. The fleet that had obliterated the Orion system had finally been destroyed, but at what cost? A grand total of eighty-seven percent of the collaborative efforts of the Federation’s First, Second, and Fifth fleets were destroyed. Three million men and women killed in action. The loss of the Liberty was a significant blow right off the bat in the battle, only to remove fifty-seven sub-capital Alliance ships.

Queen Lithanul

“What in the hell was that!?!?!?” Queen Lithanul lit up a bright crimson, flaring her anger at the screen, watching the battle play out in front of her. “What the hell!” she continued to shout as she shot up off her chair to rip the console from the desk in front of her and throw it against the wall of the office. “How. How did they get to the fleet so fast?”

“It is a technology we have never seen before,” the male Almorian replied, emotionless. “They seemed to have figured out a way to break the light-speed barrier without the need of a Hyperbuoy, or they were able to penetrate our dampening field and use the Hyperbuoy for a micro-jump. However, our logs indicate the Hyper-buoy was inactive for the entire duration of the b….” he didn’t finish his sentence. The Queen shot her slave at point-blank range in his skull. Another rare male Almorian was deceased, one that would never again see the universe. One less member of a species that could not replace itself.

“Mel’Nar, drop stealth, and take us to Eden. We are done here,” the Queen communicated to the bridge of a fully metal ship while her skin returned to its natural blue hue. The boat had dropped stealth and quickly jumped out of the system, at an exceptionally close range of fifty-seven kilometers from the Independence. The Federation ships had spotted the destroyer-sized Alliance ship momentarily before they jumped into hyperspace, but not soon enough to stop them.