Bridge of the TFSV Luna, Flagship of the Terran Federation's 8th Fleet, GC 3478, June 3rd, 2347 Hours—

"Tactical One, where are the targeting solutions for our latest guests?" Captain Gray asked, his cold and languid voice flowing across the borderline frantic movements of the dreadnought's bridge. Everyone in the chamber paused a beat at his words, then started working at their stations with their usual poise. A few of the men and women even shared embarrassed looks for a moment as their eyes flicked around the room in shame. They were all veterans, and it had been a long time since any of them had been rattled to the point their captain had to step in and calm them down.

It was as if the stress of the battle raging outside the hull of the capital starship was inconsequential to Captain Gray. He was untouched by the knowledge that their constantly battered and significantly drained energy shields and already scored and pot-marked hull were all that stood between them and the void. The captain didn't even react when the massive starship rocked to the side as a particularly large spike slipped past their defensive fire, only to shatter against one of the starboard stern shields. His utter lack of concern that Swarm 291 was advancing on them, even as the fleet was still finishing off the drones of Swarm 288, spread to those under him.

"There are too many spatial distortions, Captain." Lieutenant Keller snapped in reply, failing to completely remove the frantic anxiety of a moment before from tinging his voice from where he was hunched over his station. His hands were jumping around and through the three-dimensional displays, opening and closing windows after taking them in with a flick of his eyes. "The missile platforms can't get a solid lock longer than a quarter of a second. And the shells will be ripped apart or deflected by the distortions before they could ever hope to make impact. If we want to score a solid hit, we must get closer."

"Captain, Admiral Steel is ordering us to spearhead a charge against Swarm 291," said the internal communications officer.

"Sensors are detecting another spatial distortion in octant three. Early estimates put the distortion's core at 30 LS out," Reported Ensign Haies, who was crewing the long-range sensor station.

"Will it open up to another Swarm Hive?" Captain Gray asked, focusing on the man for a moment.

"It's still too early to tell. But I see the 11th, 17th, 24th CM, 7th SE, along with the 101st and 143rd TF, moving to position themselves to intercept anything coming out of the breach. If they cannot hold, our rear will be wide open."

"Admiral Steel is ordering the fleet into a spearhead formation to punch Swarm 291 through the middle. Whatever operational ships are left after we mop them up are to move into a supporting position for Task Force 23, now stationed around Breach 33." cut in the ICO from her corner of the room, causing Gray to turn his body to look at her. While the position was essential to a ship as large as the Luna and her sister ships, it was rare for the officer to provide more tactically relevant information than updates on the situations in the engineering or science rooms. A report that wouldn't be some form of damage report, as that fell under the internal damage accessor's prerogative, basically making the report redundant most of the time. So, the internal comm position was relegated to the side of the chamber, nearly out of his line of sight. Not that the external comm station on the other side of the room was in a better position.

After less than a second of thought, Gray started barking out orders, "Send an acknowledgment to the Admiral. Helm, coordinate with the rest of the fleet and bring us into position at the tip of the formation. External Comm, order our fighters back for resupply, then have them take up close escort positions on our flanks around the stern. Shield One, cut the power to the stern shield generators by three-fourths and divert half of the free power to the front shield generators. Tactical stations, focus all weapon emplacements on the contacts along our flight path while mopping up what you can. Tac One, I want any extra power in the ship diverted to charge the MPC rails and cores; once I give the weapons free order, open it up at the nearest and largest target. I want it melting into slag by the time we punch through Swarm 291." With each order he gave, there was a shout of acknowledgment, but Gray paid little attention to those. He knew they would follow his orders swiftly and skillfully, or he knew they intended to. The question was if they still could.

They had served together for years, and he had trained everyone on his staff well, ingraining responses to many situations. This wasn't a question of qualifications, as they all had that. After all, just being assigned to a dreadnought meant you were within the top quarter of your class in whatever military academy you attended, and making it onto the bridge meant you could probably display your rank in the class with your hands.

Still, Gray spent a few seconds watching their movements to determine their moods. Over the years of his service, making his way up through the ranks in constant war, he had spent time operating every station on the bridge. And he ensured that everyone under his command could do the same if the occasion called for it.

Sure, compared to the smooth actions of his subordinates, he would be rusty, but that would be expected when comparing someone decent with a professional mid-career. He may not be up to their skill, but he could watch any station and guess what they were doing as their fingers flashed over their displays. And if he somehow couldn't do that for whatever reason, Gray could always flick his eyes up to the curving wall of the room, which was one large monitor and showed the highlights of every major ship function, or pull up the information on the console built into his chair.

But Gray didn't care about the overall ship's condition or an assessment of their weapons and shields' battle readiness. He cared that his subordinates' shaken faith and resolve for victory were restored. Because there could be no retreat. Even if a single battered Veteran Fleet entering a dog fight against a fresh swarm was a recipe for mutual destruction or probably a pyrrhic victory at best, giving up before the battle ever started guaranteed defeat.

So he watched to see if there was a slight tremor in their hands or if they opened a window after just leaving it because they had missed the information or fumbled a command.

After a few moments of watching his staff and seeing confidence — or at least grim determination and long training — reenter their movements, he moved his eyes straight ahead to the holographic projection taking up the air at the front of the room. Outside combat, the display showed a space around Luna for a light hour unless something was pinged farther out. Now, the projection only showed what was within a light minute of the vessel because who cared about the leviathan hours away when the one within arms reach was about to pierce your hull with its tentacle. But even with the reduced size, it took his practiced eye a moment to pick out what exactly was happening in the space around them, as there was so much going on.

The ships of the 8th fleet were quickly — relatively speaking — moving to regroup and form a spearhead formation. After all, they had to maneuver around and through what could easily be mistaken as large shattered moons that were, in fact, the bodies of dead leviathans while they still fought off attacks from leftover drones of Swarm 288. It was adding time as the other ships moved through the corpse-strewn battle space, but he couldn't expect the other captains to rush into the formation at the cost of damaging their vessels. Taking unnecessary risks when they had another major fight in the next hour was idiotic and could lead to more than just the destruction of the 8th Fleet.

So he and his men were left to the age-old tradition of hurry up and wait as the fleet formed up on their backs. Well, they would, as soon as Luna got her fat ass into position. Luna was a good— no, a great ship. But even though they were the closest to the rendezvous point, they would not be the first to make it there.

A ship of Luna's size had to deal with certain realities. And one reality that was a bitch was the engines couldn't accelerate the Old Girl at a significant speed… Well, when you compare her to other modern ships. The thrusters could still get them up to a third the speed of light in a matter of hours, even less if he suddenly decided he didn't care about the inertial dampeners being overloaded and wanted to smear four-fifths of his crew across the walls of the ship. But he couldn't complain too much, as it took a fraction of the time as it would have in the distant past to pull a one-eighty in space. They now had a gravity well that could push on the fabric of space, allowing them to bring the ship to a relative stop like breaks on old cars. That was a damn far way from flipping the starship around so the engines could change their velocity one inch at a time over the exact same amount of time it took to speed up. Needless to say, it was slow. Not to mention, the well could even sling the ship in another direction like it was moving around a planet, along with other abilities, depending on the skill of the helm officer.

Minutes ticked by, and Captain Gray lounged in his chair. His eyes slid over each of his subordinates, then settled on the map of the battle space for a few seconds before repeating the process. They knew he was watching them, judging them for their battle readiness and determining if they should be relieved of duty.

Gray wasn't doing this just to make his subordinates uncomfortable. It was a necessary act, as they had all been fighting a constant battle for days. And that was on top of the weeks where they had only gotten what amounted to hours of rest between days-long battles as their fleet was rotated on and off the shifting battle lines.

The days of combat had blurred together to the point that he would have to look up the logs to discover the exact length of each fight and the overall battle. TFSV Luna — and the 8th Fleet — had not been involved in all or even most of the fighting. That would be impossible, considering the sheer scope of this conflict, containing hundreds of fleets, each with hundreds of ships.

And that was ignoring the fact that they were still human. Even if you had to be of a tier 1 stage 1 human to serve on the bridge of a dreadnought — though Gray made sure his First Shift bridge crew were all tier 2 stage 0 — that still meant that they would have to rest about six hours every three to five days to perform at an acceptable standard. His crew could stay awake nine days straight and be fine, but that was for any single stretch, not this slog where they never got time for a proper rest.

Sure, there was the second bridge crew and even the third and fourth, but fighting a battle of this scale with them just wasn't practical. They were the first shift for a reason, as they were a whole step above the rest. Attacks the first shift would block, or shots they would have made would be missed by the other crews. This would eventually lead to attacks getting through, damaging the dreadnought or one of the other ships in the fleet.

Enough damage that could have been prevented will result in the unnecessary destruction of a starship down the line, which will decrease the effectiveness of the entire armada for the rest of this conflict, if only slightly. It might only appear that they lost a few turrets or maybe a shield generator at first, but the chink in their armor could be the weakness that brings down a fleet.

Gray had seen vids of it happening in battles of a far smaller size than the one they were facing now. So, they needed their best personnel in positions to make the biggest difference.

But if their best had fallen to a level where another was close, he would replace them. At least then, he would have someone better in a few hours, but that was a last-case scenario.

So long as Gray and any other seasoned captain could help it, he would never enter combat without his 'A-Team' at the helm of his ship perfectly rested. But things were never what one wanted, especially with the fickle nature of a battle in a pocket dimension against swarms of drones and leviathans numbering in the high trillions. If there was an optimal strategy against that, Gray was pretty sure it would be beyond his comprehension.

So, things had to be handled with what they had at hand. Like the 8th Fleet heading off to engage a new swarm when they were supposed to mop up Swarm 288 before heading off to the heart of the armadas to join Task Force 23 for R&R. Instead of the busy work of refitting and repairing their starships with maybe an hour of rest thrown in if they were lucky while they were performing R&R, they were called upon to act as a reserve, which was what everyone knew R&R really was when shit hit the fan.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Leaving the 8th Fleet to take on Swarm 291 alone, while the others of the task force had to defend a breach as the rest of the armada tried to reposition to react to a new threat. Although, that was a little misleading. It implies that without the breach, the 8th Fleet wouldn't have fought alone, which wasn't the case at all.

The fleet would have engaged the swarm alone, but it would have been more of a defensive fight with the hope of some relieving force being dispatched to aid them. Now, there was no hope of relief, and there was an active threat of the breach spilling billions of drones out into the nearby space. The sad thing was that if Breach 33 opens up to a new Hive, which was likely, then Gray was sure the 8th had a better chance of coming out of this fight unscathed than a single ship of Task Force 23 surviving their fight.

The numbers would be just too lopsided. The task force was only meant to buy time by stemming the tide, as it would never be able to hold for long. Everyone with eyes and moderate intelligence knew that.

Gray felt himself rock forward slightly before he settled back into his seat, and he looked over at Lieutenant Jones from where she sat at the helm. "Sir, we are in position,"

"Good work getting us here quickly, Helm." Captain Gray said to the young woman before turning slightly and asking, "Do we have an exact count on the Leviathan's numbers?"

"Confirmed nine, but there could be up to twelve." The man at the Long Range Sensor reported, "With the spatial distortions and drones, I can't get a clear picture."

"Understood. Get me a solid number as soon as you can. Time until the fleet is formed up?"

"Six minutes."

Leaning back in his chair, Gray crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap, silently watching the Swarm 291 approach them on the holographic display. As he watched, a wispy streak started to break off from the rest, like an arm of a cloud slowly extending from the central group.

The edges of the arm were fuzzy, but the center was one solid clump of red like the leviathans had conglomerated into a single entity. But that wasn't what was happening. The creatures probably came to a relative stop within the swarm as they released their drones for battle and concealed their bodies.

It was their most common tactic. A tactic that amounted to treating every battle like they could bludgeon their opponent into submission. In truth, it was a reasonable assumption on whatever hive mind controlled them.

The smallest leviathans held millions of drones inside of them, though it was rare to come across a baby that size. Usually, the adults held somewhere in the mid-tens of millions, but the behemoths they found within this spacial pocket held hundreds of millions. Throwing away a few hundred thousand to gain a marginal advantage made the most sense.

What did not make sense was the leviathan's existence, which was impossible by all practical reasoning. The barbed tentacles around their upper spine were as wide as the longest cruisers, and the largest of the bastards could extend them to wrap around a moon. It might sound like a lot, but that was all in comparison. Sure, the tentacles were massive compared to a human's body, as a leviathan's tentacles are usually a couple of times their body length, which was moon-sized, but that was a drop in the ocean when it came to interstellar distances.

Even a slow-moving ship can cover that distance in less than a second. Yet, the leviathan could poke its tentacles through spatial rifts to attack a ship across a star system. And it could fire what was almost but not quite a plasma ball over a hundred feet across. Not to mention that if you scan the total size of a leviathan and then add together the size of all the drones it releases, you will find the drones take up more space than the leviathan's size.

As of yet, no one has figured out how the leviathans make the quasi-plasma, let alone the internal spatial expansion.

For Gray, he didn't care that the Leviathans defied all logic. He only cared that he knew everything they were capable of, so he was as prepared as possible to lead his ship and personnel to get them out of any mess in one piece. But every day, with the mounting destruction of ships and fleets, getting out of this alive was looking less likely.

"The Admiral is ordering the fleet forward three-fourths combat thrust. We are to punch right through the heart of the spiral into the swarm," Reported the Internal Comm.

"Move us out, Helm," Gray said as he watched the display. Combat thrust was not even close to the maximum acceleration most ships were capable of. It was, however, an acceleration that allowed every vessel in the fleet to come to a stop and reorient themselves on a new course in seconds. Maneuverability has been king in battle since ancient times, and Gray didn't see that changing any time soon.

Their spearhead formation, unlike what it was in the distant past, was not a simple "V." In the days of old, when knights fought with swords and spears, a spearhead formation had a single person at the head, and everyone spread out to the sides and back. The point was to make a hole in the enemy formation, and everyone behind would plow through it while widening it.

While in space, things were not so simple.

If you spread out along a single plain, then any force in space will go under and over it and rip it apart. A spearhead formation in space was a cone, with hundreds, if not thousands, of miles between each of the ships and positioned in expanding rings. Despite the space, friendly fire was guaranteed once the drones entered the formation, so keeping them out for as long as possible was critical.

Gray felt the gentle humming under his elbow shift into a deep thrumming as the engines kicked into a high output to push the ship forward. Behind Luna and a bit wider out were six of the twelve front-line battleships in the fleet, with some destroyers, corvettes, and fighters sheltered within their sphere of protection to fill the center. The trend continued as the formation traveled back, with the large, heavily armored ships at the edges and the smaller, less armored ones in the center. The only exceptions were the carriers and medical ships, which were placed in a line running down the center of the formation a few rings back.

"Captain, the cyclone of drones is tightening into a spear." Said the woman manning the long-range sensor station. It was unnecessary, as anyone in the room could look at the main screen to see the tightening mass of drones, but Gray would rather she said something than be wrong in assuming we saw it. Communication was vital in combat.

"We are receiving a weapons-free order from the admiral." Said Junior Lieutenant Bucker at the ICS.

"Tactical One, order all forward weapon crews to fire continuously along our flight path and pass the weapons-free order along to all other crews. Have our Interceptor Missile Platforms empty their magazines on the spear. Fire the MPC down the spear's center on my command." Captain Gray ordered as he thought, at least our shields could recharge a couple dozen percent.

Gray watched the holo-display as the ordnance started streaking across the three million miles separating them from the tip of the drone spear. Twenty seconds later, thousands of their rounds were hanging in the space, and the first rounds had only just passed a tenth of the distance between us. And then there were all the rounds fired from the ships behind, all focused on the same targets.

Thousands of rounds were fired from the railguns, moving at a tenth of the speed of light, plus or minus the ship's velocity. When the rounds impacted the densely packed Swarm Drones, the result was anticlimactic.

Unsurprised, Gray watched as the holographic representations of the rounds disappeared without much happening. Sure, hundreds of the drones were being ripped apart every second, leaving their innards and broken shells to float in space, but there were tens of thousands to take their place.

Even the weakest, most common drone could take a half dozen hits before being killed if they were spread out enough. At least, that was the case at this distance. At two million miles, the drones were being killed with five rounds. And then four rounds at one million miles.

When less than a hundred thousand miles separated them, the drones were being killed with one or two rounds, and it almost looked like the focused fire would stop them in their tracks. The display showed a sudden bloom at the hundreds thousand-mile line, as the body count their fire reaped spiked. The sudden bloom of dead on the holo was deceptive because if you didn't look carefully, you might miss the drones continuing to move forward, if slower than before.

This was what made the drones forming into a spear against their spearhead formation not as stupid as it first appeared. The farther their weapons traveled, the less effective they became. It was another phenomenon for which no one had yet provided an acceptable answer. And that was with weapons and ammunition that were hand-built, loaded, and fired by humans, which, for whatever reason, made the weapons eighty percent more effective. It's too much of an increase not to take advantage of.

But that was beside the point when the drones formed a spear some three hundred yards across, touching each other as they drove right at the center of a formation. It was far more effective than spreading out in a vast wave. All of the space swarm drones could change directions and accelerate beyond the capabilities of any human starship, even if they were unmanned. Some of the drones were dramatically faster than others of their kind, but none were slower.

This made no sense because the only apparent method every swarm unit had to propel themselves — except the leviathans, which had nothing — were fins and wings along their bodies. Those body parts glowed with violet light and were filled with catalyst, but that did little to provide a reasonable explanation. It was one more thing to chalk up on the endless list of bullshit about the swarm. Then again, they ran on catalyst, so anything was possible.

With those wings, the drones are able to completely reverse their momentum in a moment. At their combat speed, the maneuver would result in them moving at an eighth of their top speed, but they would be heading in the other direction. It would also cause them to be unable to alter their velocity for a few minutes as they drifted through space, making easy targets, but that was if they wanted to completely reverse their direction.

If they were, say, within the center of a spearhead formation and shot to the side in a surprisingly quick dash to intercept a starship for a shot or just ram it, then they could. An attack against the side where the shields were intentionally weakened to reinforce the outer side could be devastating. Enough hits would cripple the starship or force it out of formation, letting in more drones. Neither of which were optimal results.

While an enveloping wave looks scary, it takes time to actually perform, and there is nothing to hide behind in empty space, so we would see it coming. Also, the more area they are spread out, the more gun crews are able to pick out a target and probably hit something based on the numbers they are dealing with. And the whole time, the ships would be moving, causing those drones behind and to the sides to play catch up, making them targets for longer. However, that assumed the fleet didn't just punch through the wave before creating distance. Really, unless a fleet wanted to be enveloped, there was no reason for it to be.

It made the most sense for the swarm to focus their numbers along a single path only to explode outward so long as they could close the distance. Because, at the very least, their bodies would damage the starship's shields if the fleet didn't break off their attack.

"Sir, five seconds to impact," shouted the young man at the short-range sensor station before he started counting down. "four, three, two—

"Fire the MPC down the spear, and keep firing it as fast as possible." Quickly ordered gray, though he still managed to sound disinterested in the events on the holo.

The entire half-mile length of the dreadnought shuddered as the railgun embedded along its spine fired. The core of the round was some type of composite meant to be extremely magnetic and heat resistant because the forty feet around it was compressed plasma, containing the energy of a small solar flayer.

Exiting the breach of the massive cannon at over a fourth the speed of light, the effect was nearly instant. Without the magnetic confinement of the rails, the plasma expanded as it traveled, and ten thousand miles of the spear of drones in front of them vanished, enough to buy them another second before their living and dead bodies started slamming into their shields.

The whole ship shuddered and jerked like some kind of old navel ship in the heart of a storm. It got so bad that Gray was forced to get a solid hold on his left armrest so as not to be continually thrown from one side of his chair to the other. Being thrown around like a rag doll would completely destroy his practiced disinterested and relaxed lounging.

Another shudder ran through the ship as the MPC fired again, but without such a lengthy charge, the attack was far less than before and only bought them an instant of peace before they were thrown back into the storm.

"Bow shields at Sixty percent." Reported Shield One, his voice tight, as his hands darted around his display, swiping the flashing red pop-ups away one after another while he continuously diverted and rerouted power from failing generators to operational ones. "Fifty. Forty. Thir—

"Were threw!" Shouted the Helm.

"Forward shields holding at twenty-seven percent. Dorsal shields at an average of fifty-four."

"The fleet reports minimal damage," Reported the ECO.

"Relax, people. This is where the real work begins." Gray said, eyeing the eleven leviathans on the holo display, each hundreds of miles long. Between them and the leviathans were more swarms of drones moving to intercept, even as tens of thousands of drones poured out of the leviathans every second.

The ICO started speaking, "Admiral Holt orders us to change our course to—

The world rippled. The hull of the ship twisted and flexed like a pool of water a rock was dropped into, and then, like it was a wrinkled sheet snapped tight, it all realigned, clicking back into place.

Every klaxon in the room started blaring.

"Captain!" shouted the Helm. "We are in the upper atmosphere of a planet and are being pulled in by its gravity!"

Captain Gray was about to bark an order, but his words died as he watched the 3D map populated with contacts. Tens of thousands of starships from each force in the coalition were intermingled with countless swarm units, all appearing in the space above them. What in the nine hells just happened…

Then his eyes widened as he noticed that every contact was coming closer at a high rate of speed. The realization broke him out of his shock and he shouted, “Forward at full thrust! And divert all power to the shields on the upper hull! Get us the hell out of here, Helm!”