Erica.

Erica had figured out were her masters home would be but to her disappointment it was on the complete opposite side of the universe even using the fastest ship in Aaliyah’s fleet it would take them over a thousand years to cross and that was only calculating only travel time she would have to add on extra time for the logistics to travel that far. For now, she would just have to wait and see if there is another option that will present itself to her. But for now, she had a job to do.

Erica stood on the bridge of the retribution. All the positions filed and a full complement of ground assault troops waiting for their deployment on the battlefront. The assault troops were all members of the demon’s hand mercenary group. Aaliyah had helped with the creation of the small group and helped with implementing a training program making what would have been a very weak, mercenary group into a small but strong group consisting of three ships including the retribution they were all suitable for planetary landing and each had a compliment of ground assault troops the only issue was that the ships that were given to her were old clunkers with weak shielding and only a set of rotary cannons meant for point defence similar to the ones on the retribution. The new ships were capable of limited FTL, but could never leave the galaxy they were in. They looked a lot like converted cargo ships that matched the asterisks of the retribution. Only with obvious differences for example the bridge was not at the front of the ship but on top of the ships main structure, the bridge was also low profile only sticking up out of the main hull by one level at the front of each ship was a large cargo hatch that would lower once they landed.

Aaliyah hired the mercenaries for the mission of making a breach in the enemy line and securing a landing zone on the surface for her people to conduct a landing on the planet. She also promised the payments for this job to be a fleet career with a complement of 15 light fighters; the only issue was that the new ships didn’t come with weapons or shields, so it was up to Erica to gather the equipment and the mercenaries to crew them. I total the demon’s hand mercenary group had two hundred people in its ranks and of those fifty were non-combatants and it took another fifty to just crew the ships they had so in total Erica had only one hundred troops to take and hold the landing site. Erica gave command of the retribution over to her second as she left the bridge, heading for the aft of the ship to talk to the troopers.

“Lady Blake, it’s nice to see you down here with us ground pounders.”

“I wouldn’t miss such an occasion. This is our first large-scale mission and your first command. I’ve just come to check that everything is going well for you, commander Estella?”

“What’s the situation Mark?” Estella asked

“Everyone is raring to go, sir.”

“all ready and accounted for, my lady.”

“Good, now run over the plan with me one last time. What will your men be doing and will you have support?”

“The retribution will be our fire support; it will be in the atmosphere giving close in support provided by its solitary belly mounted point defence cannon. The other two ships, after dropping us off, will return to home base. We are to clear the landing zone and set up defence systems on the perimeter and hold till relieved.”

Over the intercom, one of the bridge officers said, “coming up on the first line of defence.”

“activate magnetic locks.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All teams report in.” Estella said through his command line to his troops

“Ship one set.”

“Ship three set.”

The command line went quite fat a second before cracking to life.

“Ship two set.”

“Ship two, what was the problem?”

“A Minor issue with the one of the men’s magnetic locks.”

“Is it all fixed now?”

“Yes, sir.”

Estella opened up a channel to the ship’s bridge

“all troops secured and set to conduct damage control.”

“Good hunting command Estella.” Erica said before she left for the bridge.

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Ground Pounders.

“Men, get ready. We will be touching down in three minutes.”

As the ground got closer, antiaircraft fire of all kinds was being thrown at them. from mage’s using spells up to rockets being launched from large crawlers they were big lumbering machines that move across the terrain using metal tracks connected a top the main hull of the crawlers was a giant metal humanoid shape with rocket pods on its shoulders and for area it had two rotate cannons flinging baseball size projectiles up at the lead ship.

Upon approaching the landing zone, the two other ships had to fall in line with the Retribution in order to reduce the damage they were taking. At the last second, the two ships split their line formation and landed on either side of the retribution. The two troop ships unloaded the cargo of troopers and the six tanks they had. They fitted the tanks with large calibre cannons and short-range rockets. The Retribution ground pounders commander Estella ordered his men to exit the ship. Every trooper on the Retribution carried a storage device with assorted defence devices. These devices were designed to not require monitoring; they only needed to be set up and would automatically attack anything that moved in front of them. Running out of the back of the retribution with his weapon of choice, a simple wooden staff used to form magical attacks and defensive shields, commander Estella formed a five metre barrier and told his men to secure the area as he set up the command post. After three other members of the mercenary group entered the barrier commander Estella slammed his staff into the ground activating the skill battle sight, this skill displayed four images of the battlefield three of them at ground level and one of a top-down view with every combatant labelled blue for friendly forces, alleys were in green, civilians were purple and the enemy was red. The other three images were from the perspective of three different troopers; the images could be moved to any member of the demon’s hand mercenary group personnel active on the battlefield.

“Keep those images moving, survey the battlefield, and communicate with your sections.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the status on the deployment of the defence systems?”

“One up on the west flank, two on the right, and one at the rear.”

“What’s the holdup on the forward defence positions?”

“Heavy enemy presence. They have a crawler that is pinning them down.”

“Take a team of heavies from the right flank and tell them to flank the crawler. They have full authority to use the special weapons if required.”

As the commands were relayed down the chain and the map image was examined, chatter went out over the radio, and a team of five broke off from the right group to head for the crawler.

The team of heaves were moving in on their target they could hear the tracks clanking over the stones that covered the landing site, coming up to a large mound of rocks one man gave hand signals for the team to split one taking this mound and the other moving to a different firing location. Crawling up to the top of the mound and looking out over the battlefield.

“That’s fucken huge.”

“Yer, we’re going with new weapons on this one.”

The team took out two shoulder mounted rocket launches, each with a high yield warhead.

“Are the others in position yet?”

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

As the man said that, the side of the crawler tracks lit up a small fireball. Expanded and rolled up the side of the crawler, leaving superficial damage.

“What are they doing? They need to hit it with something bigger then that.”

Spinning its body around, the crawler lit up the area with rounds from its cannon.

Ripping into the tree line. The three men were no more. Not even a trace remained for the once proud heaves.

“You fucken ass holes.” one of the final remaining heavy’s yelled.

The man then spread his legs out wide and opened his mouth as he launched the rocket at the crawler beside him. His teammate also fired, the concussion rattling the man’s brain. Down range the crawler’s left track exploded from the first rocket then the second hit its torso, ripping into its armour and detonated, causing secondary explorations to rip through the crawler blowing it to pieces, chunks of metal falling from the sky.

“Commander Estella, the forward team, destroyed the crawler and is now setting up the defence systems.” The forward team is now setting up the defence systems.”

“we have full deployment 5 up left right and rear waiting on forward confirmation.”

“We have a large group of enemy forces moving in on our forward positions, sir. It looks to be infantry and some light armour. The front is requesting urgent fire support on their positions. It seems the enemy has broken the first line of defence.”

“Retribution, retribution, this is commander Estella of 1st company, requesting fire support on enemy positions 30 metres forward of grid point alpha 5.”

“Fire mission denied, outside minimums,” the retribution’s firing officer replied.

“If you don’t fire, we’re all dead.”

The radio went silent for a couple of seconds before.

“Commander Estella, fire mission approved, round incoming, keep your heads down.” Erica said.

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The retribution

Erica stood on the bridge as the request came in.

“Fire mission denied, outside minimums.”

“If you don’t fire, we’re all dead.” Estella said

“Commander, what should we do?”

With a worried expression Erica said, “fire on the target location.”

Then communicating back to the ground that the rounds were incoming. She turned her attention to her next problem.

As the ships in orbit fired down on the retribution, impacts reverberated throughout the ship. The retribution’s dorsal point defence system was being overwhelmed as the weapons fire came raining down.

“The shields are failing command.”

“Remove shielding on the lower hull and increase dorsal shielding power.”

“Yes, commander.”

“What’s the ETA of Aaliyah’s fleet?”

“I can’t raise them.”

“Well, keep trying. We can’t hold on for long.”

Ten minutes later, the communications officer spoke up in a sobering tone .

“Commander, they’re not coming. We’ve been told to surrender and save our lives.”

Erica looked around the bridge and said.

“If you wish to surrender to the enemy, I will drop you off on the planet’s surface, but as for this ship, it will never fall into the hands of any enemy force. I plan to attack the planetary blockade to make a path for our ships to pick up the survivors. Does anyone want to leave?”

After no one said anything for a long time Erica said,

“If no one wishes to leave, then Okay then. Communication’s officer send a secure message to the ground forces and inform them of the situation. Also, contact our ships and tell them to be on standby for an emergency pickup. Engineering, we are going to be entering combat. Get your people ready, weapons once we break orbit. I want a full salvo on the closest enemy ship.”

“Commander Estella says good luck and they will be waiting for our safe return.”

Over the ship wide intercom, Erica said. “All hands, we will be braking into orbit and making an attack run on the enemy fleet. We must punch a hole large enough to allow access to the planet and hold position till all the members of the demon’s hand mercenary group have extracted.”

The retribution lifted its nose and with one last burst from its cannon on the enemies below, it went to full impulse, blasting towards space.

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Aaliyah

Aaliyah was walking down the corridor of her ship as she did. Confusion filled her as she wondered why her fleet had not entered the battle yet, knowing that the mercenaries should have secured a landing zone by now. She got to the bridge in record time. Entering the bridge, she saw it was under crewed.

“Where is the first offence and the others?” she yelled at the first person she saw.

“Don’t know, my lady. He just told us to hold position and then told the mercenaries that we weren’t coming and that they should surrender. Ordering a shuttle for himself and the bridge officers to leave.” The man said.

A female that Aaliyah had not seen before said in a startled voice. “My lady, half of the fleet just activated their FTL engines and left the system.” She said before vomiting on the deck. Aaliyah looked over at the lady and said, “how much of the fleet remains and what ship classes are they?”

“We had 350 ships, and now there are only 50 left. All of them crewed by Nordicless, my lady. The classes of ships comprise five cruises, fifteen destroyers, ten corvettes, and the remaining are converted cargo ships.”

“What’s the load out of the converted ships?”

“Capable of planetary re-entry but not equipped for full scale combat lightly armed with a single defence cannon and weak shields the same as the two we gave to the mercenaries, my lady.”

“Tell the converted ships to head to the demon’s hand mercenary group’s territory. Then communicate with the rest of the fleet that we will, be providing support for the evacuation of the mercenary group stuck on the planet’s surface, and if any of them wish to leave, they can take the shuttles as compensation the same goes for any of you.”

Not a single person left any of the ships.

“Get ready for an emergency jump to FTL in 3 2 1.”

Every remaining ware ship jumped into FTL then a second later they appeared over the top of the enemy fleet below Aaliyah’s flagship the retribution was engaged with multiple ships the retribution tossed and turned as constant streams of cannon fire came from its weapons its nose mounted weapons lit up every few seconds blowing apart ship after ship but no matter how hard it fought the enemy fleet captain sending in ship after ship.

Aaliyah opened up a channel to her fleet “fire all weapons on the enemy fleet. Make a path for the mercenaries to retreat.”

As a path was cleared, two cargo ships swooped in at full speed directly for the planet.

“What are they doing?” One of the bridge crew said Aaliyah tried to contact them on the radio.

“Cargo ship cargo ship, this is Aaliyah. I order you to turn back now.” She repeated the message three times before an abrupt reply came back.

“This is the demon’s hand vessel, Ranken. We don’t work for you.”

“Aaliyah, this is the retribution. Thank you for the assistance. But we don’t leave our people behind to be slaves.”

“What is going on with them?” Aaliyah lent back in her chair and sighed before grumbling, “give me a full volley of fire on the enemy and bring the ships into formation Charlie 1.”

Aaliyah’s fleet made a circle around the retribution as they waited for the cargo ships to return. After five minutes of being bombarded by the enemy fleet, the two cargo ships returned and jumped into FTL followed by the retribution.

“Not even a single word before they jumped.” One of the bridge crew said,

“All ships jump to FTL. get us out of here set course demon’s hand territory.”

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Erica

Erica was standing on the bridge of the retribution she was being briefed on the situation of the demon’s hand mercenary group.

“What’s our losses?”

“Out of the hundred and forty personal, we entered the battle with thirty died on the planet and ten died on the Ranken when a round ripped through its hull on extraction. We also have 29 wounded with nonlife-threatening injuries. They should be back in action soon.”

“What about damage to the ships?”

“The retribution needs its dorsal hull plating completely replace, and the two converted cargo ships require significant repairs to make them flyable again.”

“Get the Ranken and Jaxxen II to land in the moon’s construction zone as, for us, we will be headed for the dry dock in orbit.”

The dry dock, which the retribution was surrounded by, was a lattice structure equipped with everything necessary for a smith to rebuild a ship completely from the ground up. Once the ship was in dry dock, Erica finally relaxed.

Only to be interrupted by the communications officer. “Commander Aaliyah would like to talk to you about what happened and the payment.”

“Well, if she wants to talk, let her talk.”

“Well, the thing is, she would like to meet on the moon.”

“Send her a message. Tell her that the retribution is in drydock and we have no shuttle’s but she is welcome to come here.”

It took two hours before Aaliyah got to see Erica.

“What may I ask brings you to see me?”

“I would like to offer my apologies and to pay for your services.”

“What are you offering as clearly you can’t pay the original fee?”

“I will offer you this token and two more converted cargo ships.”

Item

Transport token

Locked to Aaliyah La flame’s home world cottage. can transport 100 lifeforms

Can be Soul bound to Erica Blake

“We are going to be pulling out of this sector of space, so I’m hoping this will work as compensation. I will also upgrade the cargo ships you have with a better hull plating shield and a full set of weapons for them and also a set of six rotary cannons for this ship. That is the best I can offer you at this point.”

“Will you be coming back to this sector any time in the future?”

“Probably not. It is a long way from my territory and I was originally only here to raid the space docks around the planet.”

“Okay, we, the demon’s hand mercenary group, accept your payment.”