(Flag Bridge, BSN Hrunting, Sol System)
Commodore Keh Draka stood tall on the flag bridge of her flagship, the Hrunting, it was an odd name, not one she had heard before. But a search through the info net revealed that it was a reference to a very old Terran story of a hero who defeated a great evil. It was the name of a sword given to that hero by a warrior king, so that he might slay the enemy of his people, a sword that the warrior king had carried himself, in his day. It was a good name for a ship.
Her sister ship, Nægling, was also worthily named. Another blade carried by the same hero in his battles, it was clear that the names had been chosen deliberately, to allow the two blades of the hero to fight together once more. She promised herself that, before she was through, there would be tales told and songs sung of these two blades renewed!
Hrunting’s name was fitting, too, as this ship was given to her by a man that could be called a warrior king, as he had fought battles, and carved out a place of his own, which he held by force of arms. Yes, the Admiral of the Black Star Navy could be called a warrior king, like the stories of old. Unlike the fools who ran the Ihm Imperium, who had not seen real combat in their lives. Her eyes focused on the screen in front of her, as that warrior king spoke his commands.
“Commodore, we’ve got the enemy in disarray. Focus your fire ahead, and punch a hole for the Marines. The Tiamat will not be deploying drop ships, but will be using the more… low tech entry method. Get them to the big fucker. We’re officially classing it as a ‘Leviathan-class’ warship until we have something else to go on. I want it either captured, or destroyed, and if you have to kill it, I want anything you can get off it, so we know who and what we’re fighting.”
Draka smiled toothily at the screen. “As you wish, Admiral. It is time for these enemies to learn what fear is.” As the connection closed, she turned to her crew. “All batteries, forward fire! Target any ships in our path! Bombers are to concentrate fire on the corvettes and frigates, while our gunships and assassins take out the cruisers! Battleships, cruisers, and Destroyers are to charge the Leviathan!”
She took a moment to examine the scans they had of the massive Leviathan. The bow looked to be incredibly armored, and absolutely littered with guns, and the engines were, frankly, absurdly huge. But there, on the top side of the ship, was what looked like an exposed bridge? The foolishness of such a design knew no bounds!
She looked at the plot. Hrunting was slightly out of position for a run like that. She’d placed her command on the left-hand side of the formation, while Nægling was on the right. They would have the better angle, without cutting across fields of fire.
“Targeting orders for the group. Hrunting is to target the Leviathan’s engines. I want that thing dead in space! Nægling will strike the exposed bridge there. Killing off their leaders will hopefully spark chaos in the ship, as it has done in these warbands. Cruisers and Destroyers are to sweep the ship, taking out point-defense and anti-ship weapons. Make the road as smooth as we can for the Marines!”
(Flag Bridge, BSN Gugnir, Coldana System)
Slave-Commodore Hirata Konomi grit her teeth as her flagship shuddered under another series of blasts from the enemy vessels that had poured out of the rift that formed where the Harvester had been destroyed. The enemy ships were light and quick, looking like some kind of dart you’d throw in a game, with what her analysts told her were solar sails, and some kind of cloaking device. They were fast, and damned hard to hit.
Worse, they had powerful forward-facing weapons that passed through normal shields like they were made of paper. The Black Star ships were light enough to keep pace, but they didn’t have the armor that the Consortium ships had, to take a hit. Right now, the whole situation was devolving into what the fighter pilots called a furball.
“Commodore, we have energy readings from the rupture! Much larger than before. I think we’ve got a massive enemy ship coming through!”
She looked at the plot. Gram was closer to the rupture. “Tell Gram to launch a full broadside of Starbolts into the rupture immediately!”
“But ma’am, the distortions—”
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“I don’t care about the damn distortions! We can’t let that monster through, especially if it has upscaled versions of these aliens’ weapons. Tell them to fire at once!”
“Gram acknowledges. Firing now.”
(Bridge, BSMV Tiamat, Sol System)
Captain Dih Chex unknowingly mirrored the Commodore’s posture as she stood on the deck of her Heavy Assault Transport and watched the battle unfold. Calling her ship a ‘transport’ was only technically true. Yes, it was true that they transported Marines to where they needed to go, but this ship was so much more than a mere conveyance, something that would be proven beyond all doubt in the coming battle.
“Final report on the Energy Distributors?”
“All systems in the green, Captain. The system will be ready on command.”
“Very well, begin feeding power to the distributors. Marines to the boarding tubes. Keep us in formation with the Navy for the time being, use their shields as much as we can to keep the bombardment off us until it is time to charge. Keep the Crows in our shadow until we get into engagement range, as well. Fighters to attack enemy fliers, bombers to work on targets of opportunity.”
Chex moved to her command chair, and began fastening her harness. As she worked, she watched on the main screen as Second Group drove hard at the Leviathan. Their weapons hit true, but there was simply too much mass there, and, for all the fact that it looked like welded together scrap metal, the fact was that, even on the sidewalls, the ship carried an impressive amount of armor. But there was only so much armor could do against the weapons of the Black Star Navy.
Rail gun rounds and Dragonbreath torpedoes reached out and impacted the shields again and again, with the two battleships focusing their fire on relatively small areas of the ship. The Nægling did not fire its four massive rail guns at once, but in sequence, rapid-fire style. The first two impacts strained the bridge shields to the limit. The third one shattered them. The fourth shot destroyed the bridge.
Hrunting, too, was putting up a good showing. She’d managed to get several hits on the engines, but destroying them was going to take some time. There were simply too many engines for a single hit to take them all out, not while Starbolts were off the table.
The Destroyers, known as the Sin Squadron, since they were all named after sins from an old religion worked on clearing the point-defense. Meanwhile, the Four Horsemen, as the Cruisers were known, lived up to their dark namesakes, and brought destruction to the anti-ship weapons. There was still some incoming fire, but nothing they couldn’t handle.
It was not without loss, however. Many ships in the fleet were damaged. None had been destroyed outright, not yet, but that had less to do with the ships themselves, and more to do with the decision to decapitate the groups in front of them, sending the enemy into disarray. And the fighters and bombers were so fragile that, if the frigates they were targeting got a clean shot, they were done for. Losses mounted.
“We’re within effective range!”
Chex leaned forward as much as she could in her harness, a feral look on her face. “Ramming speed!”
(Flag Bridge, BSN Ama-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, Sol System)
“Sir, the Tiamat is beginning her attack run!”
“On screen!”
I took a moment to look away from the ongoing battle, as the various groups of the Black Star Navy and Imperial Navy took on the enemy forces. They were more numerous, but they didn’t have the discipline of actual military. However, the sheer number of weapons being used meant that my ships were being pushed to the limits. I didn’t doubt that I’d probably have to scrap some ships altogether. And the number of dead and wounded would not be pleasant to consider.
The Tiamat was made to get my Marines into position where they could do the most damage. Sometimes that meant a hot drop onto a contested site. Sometimes that meant ship to ship combat. But drop ships were weak, and easily targeted, when compared to the transport. So the designers gave the transport a way to get into the fight against larger foes.
Modern warships simply didn’t ram other ships except as a final act of desperation. Anything that your ship could survive ramming into could probably be destroyed with means that didn’t hurt your ship as much as it did the enemy’s. Tiamat was not like other modern ships. The High Energy Distributor Array projected a spinning energy field in front of the Tiamat’s hull, like a drill. The ship accelerated towards the Leviathan, even as the Second Group hammered away at its shields, and reduced its attack abilities.
And when it hit, the drill ripped open a hole in the side of the Leviathan, which the Tiamat quickly filled. I couldn’t see from here, but I knew what was happening. The boarding tubes would extend, and my Ihm Marines would charge onto the Leviathan, intent on causing all manner of mayhem, and securing the ship. I had no idea what they’d face over there, but if anyone could take that ship, it was the Black Star Marines.
“Admiral! We’re detecting a surge of energy from the rupture!”
I barely had time to curse the news, before everything changed.
(Throne Room, Aurum Throni, Terran Orbit, Sol System)
Empress Merida Vaughn watched the screens from her throne in the center of the Terran Empire’s might. If there was to be a battle fought in Sol, the least she could do, since she was no longer allowed to captain a ship herself, was to watch the battle, as sailors sacrificed themselves to protect the Empire. That was her duty as Empress.
The battle was going well, but it could easily have gone the other way. Without the warning from the Black Stars, the Home Fleet would have been on its normal patrols, rotating crews for shore leave, and the like. The time to respond to an attack would be too much, and they would have been seriously outnumbered by the enemy. Even if they were a rabble once their leaders were culled, she was under no illusions about how this could have gone the other way, with only a little change in circumstance.
The news from Pluto was concerning, but there was nothing she could do about it, except hope that the Marines saved all they could. For now, she watched as the Black Star ship used its energy drill to ram into the Leviathan, and shook her head. “That man has gone and changed the face of war in the galaxy, yet again. And I doubt he even realizes it.”
“Empress, sensors are detecting a surge of energy from the rupture!”
“Cityshields to full! Reinforce internal bulkheads. Prepare for—”
She never finished her words.
In Sol System, at the height of the battle between the defenders of Sol, and the invaders from the chaotic realm beyond the veil between worlds, a massive surge of energy blew out through the rupture. Faster than light itself, this light traveled, like a wave across reality.
There was fear, of course, as the wave approached. But there was no damage as the wave passed, not even a strand of hair pushed out of place on a young child’s head. Which is not to say that there was no effect. Indeed, there were quite a few very pronounced effects! Most pronounced, however, was that in the throne room of the Aurum Throni itself, the Empress of the Terran Empire began to shine as brightly as a star from within, overflowing with power.