The war had been going on for fifty years. Earth, Mars and Venus against Saturn, Mercury and Pluto. All over the latter three wanting to become independent bodies from Earth. Countless lives had been lost on either side, with Earth's United Planetary Alliance nearly collapsing due to internal affairs, and the Pro-Independence forces coming close to defeat on multiple occasions.
But now the war was coming to a close. The UPA's elite force, Ironclad, were assigned the mission to attack Titan. The Pro-Independence force's final stronghold.
Ironclad had three state of the art ships at their disposal. Two cruisers and one battleship. The cruisers were named the Everest and the Atlantis, with the battleship being called the Olympus Mons, after both the capital of Mars and the extinct volcano that the city sits beside.
The three ships were drifting silently through the darkness of space, Saturn hovering over the scene in the far distance.
Almost like a lumbering giant, Saturn could be seen from almost anywhere, yet Saturn itself would not be able to see something as small as their ships in comparison to itself. Its pale yellow glow cast a subtle light across the hulls of the ships, as their destination grew larger and larger through their windows. The blue orb that was Titan, and where Ironclad's target were hiding.
On the bridge of the Olympus Mons, the operation's commander stood with his arms folded as he watched out the window. Dasyil Treyton was his name, and he was an esteemed commander who led many successful operations in the past against the PI forces. He was a very broad man, with a muscled figure and a noble face with sharp, yet blunt features. Wrinkles were beginning to form underneath his rather shiny golden eyes, with a scar going across one of them whilst leaving his eye unscathed.
His hair was a dark blue, with a short and clean haircut that was swept to one side. It was commonplace for UPA commanders to make themselves flashy. However for Dasyil, it was his natural hair and eye colour due to a mutation in his genes.
He wore a standard uniform for a commander, a simple white fabric with golden trims and two large epaulettes with the Ironclad insignia engraved on it.
Dasyil adjusted the buttons on the coat before turning round and walking down the long catwalk like command center, with computers and workstations sitting on both sides of the walkway, looking down at it.
Dasyil continued walking forward before reaching a set of stairs that went around a small platform, where his seat and command desk was. He walked up the set of stairs and sat down on the imposing chair, looking over to his crew members.
He reached for a blue button and pressed his finger down on it, keeping it there as he spoke with a very slight Russian accent.
"Attention all ships. This is Commander Dasyil. We're entering hostile space. I need everyone on full alert and ready to fight at a moments notice. This war has affected every single one of us. And today we carve a path into the history books by ending this, and all the lives lost can finally rest knowing that when they paid the ultimate sacrifice, they helped light the path to this very moment. To victory, and to glory"
Finishing the final word, he took his finger off the button, and those in the command center gave him a few moments of applause, before going back to business.
Dasyil sat in his chair and looked over the control panel, before a red light began to flash on his control panel. One of the men on another computers spoke up "Sir, we've got visual on the enemy defenses" as he spoke a camera feed flickered up onto Dasyil's screen. It showed four ships and a single defense platform.
Dasyil had a confident face, looking over to a group of people on a deck above him, he spoke with pride and confidence "Ready weapons. Fire the main gun at that platform"
The crew members on those computers turned in their chairs and typed away. Whilst on the outside of the ship, the Olympus Mons' monstrous guns began to turn and face the unsuspecting enemies. The ships main weapon however went right down the spine of the ship, so the entire ship was rotated to aim directly at the large platform.
The platform itself was made out of a large tower in the center, and four structures coming off of it in a corss pattern.a
The other four ships floating around it were older designs. The Pro-Independence forces never had the resources or influence that the UPA had. The ships were slower, less armored and less armed. However the platform would be a problem if it wasn't taken out quickly.
Dasyil stood up out of his seat and looked to the ships on his screen. He reached over and pressed his finger against the communications button, uttering "All ships, fire when ready" as he took his finger off of the button.
There was a pause for a few brief seconds, before the deep, bassy echoes of the guns firing rang out through the ship. As sound could not travel through the vacuum of space, they could only hear things through the vibrations on the ships hull.
Each gun fired out enormous shells, with one gun with two barrels equating to the firepower of an entire battleship on the ocean.
The shells left the barrels at breakneck speeds, hurtling towards the clueless ships in front of them.
The first volley hit them like a train, shells carved through their armour and hull, hitting vital points and causing fiery explosions to burst out of the side of them. Only one ship was unscathed during the initial attack, and one seemed to have been put out of action as the blue flames of its engines flickered out, and it began to drift away from the main group.
The element of surprise had worked for Dasyil and his ships, but the PI forces now knew they were under attack.
Within moments, shells were being fired back at them, zooming like fiery meteors. They were smaller shells however, and although they did hit, they only caused minimal damage. Dasyil watched as the shells came toward them and sat back in his chair as he felt the ship shake at the force of the impact that some of the shells had.
Looking out of the window, the Atlantis had lost two of its topside guns, and the Everest was getting more hits than it would be comfortable with.
Dasyil was quick to place his finger on the blue button once more "Everest, pull back, put the Olympus Mons between you and them" he ordered, his voice protective of his men.
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The Everest's engines dimmed down as he began to slow its pace, and used the manoeuvring thrusters to hide behind the Olympus Mons, peeking out to take potshots at the enemy.
But before Dasyiil could tend to anything else, the ship was violently shook, much more intensely than when a normal shell hit them. He turned to face the scene, and the enemy battle station was facing them, its main gun pointing at them. The tower in the center of the station was used for two purposes, to coordinate any ships around it, and to house the main gun. And although it was only one, slow firing cannon. The shells were the size of buses.
Ironclad had to deal with the station quickly or it would chew through even the Olympus.
As the shells continued to rain down from both sides, Dasyil set the ship's main gun on the defense platform. A low humming noise became audible, building up strength and becoming louder with each passing second. It charged up for a few moments, before the gun fired.
It rattled the ship, with computers shaking from the immense force.
But looking out the window would show a streak of blue shoot across the battlefield in the blink of an eye, hitting the platform directly in the middle.
There was a blinding light that gleamed over every ship, and when it subsided only the burning wreck remained. The magnetically accelerated shell had cleaved right through and melted a large chunk of the platform's gun into molten slag.
Dasyil seemed pleased at the results of the gun. But they couldn't slow down, as the enemy guns continued to pelt down on them.
Alarms begin to sound off, with a robotic voice mentioning a loss of pressure in multiple sectors of the lower hull.
Drones were dispatched to do what they could, but they wouldn't be able to do a complete repair in the heat of battle.
As the crew focused on the three remaining ships, a bombardment from the Atlantis shredded the upper hull of one ship, decimating their systems and disabling their main bridge. That particular ship's guns stopped firing, and its engines shut off. Joining the ship that was disabled in the initial attack, drifting off towards the moon without any of its thrusters keeping it aloft.
One of the crew monitoring navigational systems stood up and called to Dasyil "Captain, they've scrambled enemy fighters!"
Dasyil looked to them for a split moment, before turning to the weapons control team who were in a large area of the floor that had been lowered into the ground, with their computers lining the walls.
He sat on his chair and ordered "Activate point defense, scramble drones"
The weapons team turned to their computers after hearing the order and carried it out. Much more gunfire was heard trough the vibrations, which almost made it sound like they were underwater.
Mixed in between the heavy, bellowing blasts of the main guns, was the much faster and sharper sounds of the point defense guns, with smaller shells fired at a far faster rate like a giant machine gun.
Out of the windows, the enemy fighters were doing strafing runs, flying low to the hull and dropping bombs on the point defense turrets.
Of course with no gravity they couldn't drop them like they could on a planet, they were more like rockets that were pointed downward and lacked any targeting systems. Which was a cheap alternative at the expense of the pilots' safety.
Dasyil held onto the armrests as the bridge was shaken by the shockwave of a nearby bomb, which destroyed two of the point defense guns.
But he wasn't concerned with how many guns he lost, as he looked up at the battle above and watched as bullets riddled the enemy fighters.
It was only then that he took in what they looked like. They were very industrial looking, with rough angular shapes. The most common type that he watched fly over them featured a rectangular main body with a hollow triangle shape on adjacent sides, with the engines attached to the tip of where the wings met.
The weapons were attached right under the cockpit, two light autocannons and one missile launcher, as well as the bomb bay on the underside.
The enemy were losing far more fighters than they lost turrets. Their numbers dwindled, and the only significant damage that they caused was disabling the Atlantis' main engine, which brought the ship to an almost complete stop.
The Everest was quick to aid, drifting over and picking off the fighters harassing the halted Atlantis.
Over the comms, the captain of the Atlantis contacted Dasyil, the static faded out before he spoke "Olympus Mons, this is Atlantis. Our main engines have been damaged and we're unable to move. Weapons are still up but we're dead in the water"
There was a sigh from Dasyil as he placed his hand on his chin before he replied "Affirmative, Atlantis. Don't take it too hard. Diverting drones to aid in protecting you"
"Much appreciated Olympus. Atlantis out"
Dasyil looked over to the window, and then the two remaining enemy ships that were continuing their assault. He frowned, almost at the fact that they were still there, before looking back to the weapon crew
"Spin up the Magnetic Cannon. Take out the two ships left and let's get some troops on the ground before they have a chance to move their leaders"
And that they did, the hum of the Magnetic Cannon charging up went through the ship once more, as the whole ship angled itself to fire at the last two ships. And within minutes both ships had been obliterated by the Olympus, Atlantis and Everest's combined fire. Leaving only burning and smoking wreckages drifting towards the moon.
Dasyil leaned back in his chair and exhaled deeply, taking a few moments to relax, before sitting back up and standing, placing his finger on the communication button "Olympus Mons to fleet. We may have won the fight up here, but the fight on the surface will be even more challenging. They will use whatever they can to make sure we cannot get to their leaders"
he took a breath, pausing to let the information sink in
"We're going to deploy our land-based mobile operation center, a project created by the scientists at GEAR. Our UPA's weapons development group. The P.L.T-32. Or, Pellet, for short. Any non ship critical crew is ordered to gear up and make their onto the Olympus Mons for immediate planetside deployment. Olympus Mons out"