Eight days later, we experienced our first true battle. Five orange, Y-shaped ships, with the two lines at the back, suddenly warped into space around 160,000 miles from Hopper’Kli station. The ships sat there for a moment, before three more warped in, though these were a lot bigger, with another two lines halfway up the central pole. They then began to slowly approach the station on slower sublight engines, going about 1/12 lightspeed. I received an urgent signal, jumped up from the table I was sitting at having a late breakfast. I dropped the spoon I was eating the cereal with, and ran to my command station on one of my ships. I immediately recalled all ships from other duties, asking them to jump to the sides of these ships, which were about twice as big than our standard ship, and that was the small ones. All three of the ships in the Hopper’Kli’s ship bays leapt out, and began manning the battle stations. I was on one of those ships. Then six others began to pour in on the sides of the strange other ships. We had preemptively, marked them as enemies, because I had a strong suspicion of whose ships they were and opened comms.

“Identify yourselves, and state your business.” I hope I didn’t get the answer I thought I would get.

“We are the Zekkromian Conquerors,” My blood turned cold, and goosebumps rose on my skin. An officer the communications were connected to cursed under her breath. “And we are here to purge the xeno filth that you are.”

“Surrender now, or face our guns,” I responded with a fury. They responded by shutting off communications, and powering up their weapons. I would have given the order, but my fellow commander beat me to it.

“Fire 10% of torpedos! Target the far right smallest ship! Obliterate the closest to us with our railguns!” He said. Purple streaks leapt across space, and most were stopped by a few quick lasers, however a few got through, and the antimatter contained within tore into the armor of the ship, exposing a few spots to space, which were filled back in within 20 seconds, however the center ship was a bit less lucky. The shells flew across the battlefield, and ripped through the ship, and also hit a few others. The began to repair, but it took 30 seconds, and still was in tatters by the end. Then they released their salvo. Orange beams flew across the battlefield, holding for half a second. The laser-like beams burned across the shields of the three ships, mine included, that were nearest to Hopper’Kli station. The beams weren’t organized, however the four beams that hit my shields put them down to 17% not wanting to risk another hit, the shields were dropped, same with one other ship that was hit. Railgun rounds launched again, this time finishing off the center ship. It was torn up again, this time the shells tore through the thin barriers replacing the armor that had been there before the previous railgun salvo, and explosions tore across the ship. Blue-white plumes tore the ship into three pieces. 1 down, 8 to go. I ordered an abnormal order.

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“Launch 5% of our torpedos, targeting the bigger ones, no particular target. Then follow up with 30% at the same targets, 10 seconds after launching the first, and continue bombarding the ship closest to us with railguns, targeting the main beam gun.” I ordered. The short salvo of torpedos targeted the bigger ships, and each and every one was stopped by the point defense. Then the second salvo launched. The point-defense had already fired, and couldn’t fire again, my guess was overheating,(lasers were quite hot) whatever the reason though, this time very few were stopped and the ships were heavily damaged. One just floated off into space, dead. The the six remaining suddenly turned to the sides, and charged towards the ships on their sides, releasing powerful orange beams. They evenly split off, with one bigger ship and two smaller ones both going to each side. Suddenly, a whole array of close range weapons began to hit. Another railgun salvo was fired, scraping another ship partially. However, that wasn’t before one of my ships was reduced to scrap after it was repeatedly hit by blue plasma and lances of strange extremely hot energy that ripped through the ship. A Quenlyl lance managed to be released, and it stabbed through one of the bigger ships, tearing it apart. Something similar happened on the other side, though no more ships were killed.

I was mad. No, furious. “LAUNCH EVERY MISSILE WE HAVE!! I DON’T WANT TO SEE ANY SHIPS NOT FIRING UNLESS THOSE SHIPS ARE GONE!!” I screamed through the channels. It was like it was slow-motion as the ordinance slowly flew from it’s containers, and destroyed the ships. One more of our ships fell before the battle haze was gone, and the ships were scrap. I calmed myself down, barely managing to contain myself as I filed the report, hitting each letter as hard as I could, jamming one of my fingers, and breaking a key. It read, torpedos were most effective, point defense doesn’t work very well, only a shot or two before overheating. Five shots from long-range beam overload shield, devastating close range weapons. DO NOT let them get close.

I took a deep breath. “Send out the harvester drones. Let’s see what we can learn from their ships. Get as many of the bodies of the fallen crew as possible. Send out rescue ships immediately, and save any still alive. I want a proper burial for every single one of those soldiers, and get those ships still being built out as fast as you can.” I sighed. I had let them down. Good people had died, because I was so stupid as to let them close in to close-range.