Admiral Fernando “Fearless” Villa

I gave a sigh of relief on seeing the small notification that the civilian that ignored the evacuation notice was back in our custody and on his way to an evac point. That’s one less loose end. I thought to myself as I was jostled out of my trancelike state and back into the battle we had no hope of winning. I looked down at the readout of the functional point defense system still on board. Only about ten percent of our defenses were still operational, with that number rapidly diminishing as time went on.

“What’s the status of the escorts?” I asked, already knowing what answer I was going to get.

“The Failure to Communicate, and Bells N’ Whistles both activated their Broken Ties protocol with the Roosevelt about a minute from activating theirs. All friendly QE transmitters are down,” the sensors took a shaky breath. “Sir, I think it might be time to consider breaking our own ties.”

I took my own shaky breath before hitting the shipwide emergency broadcast system. “Attention all hands, this is Admiral Villa speaking. I will be enacting Broken Ties protocols in two minutes. If you aren’t in an escape pod when it activates, then you will be remembered by United Terra and her people. All hands, abandon ship.” With that the emergency overhead lighting kicked on and flooded the room in blood red light. I straightened out and turned to the bridge crew. “I don’t expect any of you to want to stay when this ship goes critical, so you are all relieved of your duties. Get out of here. Live to fight another day.”

No one spoke as the only thing that could be heard was the sound of salvo after salvo hitting the hull of the Strength Through Diplomacy, the notifications for the depressurizations overflowing the interface. Finally, one of the weapon’s officers spoke up. “With all due respect sir, we’ve been serving on this bridge since before we made contact with the aliens, we’re not going anywhere.” I looked around at the collection of individuals around me. They came from all walks of life, some older, some younger. I could see the resolve harden in their eyes as they all squared their shoulders and started making preparations for the self destruction of the ship.

I nodded, secretly grateful that they stuck around. I pulled out the key and put it into the lock. Breathing heavily, I turned the key and typed in two minutes into the self destruct timer. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at this moment. I had never imagined that in my time as the fleet admiral for one of the most important ships that humanity had ever put together, that I would be the one making the decision to blow it up. Doubt started to creep in as I wondered if this was the best idea at the time, but I was quickly shaken out of it by another salvo hitting the ship. It was probably the most important thing that I could ever do to deny the enemy, or any non-human for that matter, access to Terran systems, and most importantly, the location of the Sol system. It didn’t take me long to punch in the necessary time frame for the ship to go critical and let the civilians on board get onto escape pods. With any luck, they would all be at their evac points anyway, so the only question would be the soldiers fighting for this ship. I had no doubt that they would fight to the last man in defense of the civilians not already in escape pods.

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“Line us up with the biggest target that we can take with us,” I said firmly, thinking about the sacrifice of the Rabbit’s Foot earlier in the day. I got confirmation from the navigations officer, who sent the course to the engines.

I closed my eyes as I felt the acceleration of the ship. Not a bad way to die.

“Sir, we have an incoming transmission!” shouted the comms officer, elation in her voice. “It’s the fleet!”

My eyes shot open and looked at my console. Just like they said there was a notification from the Sol First Defense fleet. I rubbed my eyes and accepted the communication. On the other end of the line was the admiral for the fleet, with his graying hair and eyes that could pin down a buffalo. “Admiral Chaplain, it’s damn good to see you again!” I said eagerly.

He nodded before looking at what I assumed was the battle map of the region. “It looks like we have our work cut out for us, so let’s not wait any longer. Admiral Villa, get the Strength Through Diplomacy as far from combat range as you can, we’ll take it from here.”

I nodded and motioned for navigations to make the necessary course corrections. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, but this time for an entirely different reason. Hope bloomed in my chest for the first time in the last forty-five minutes. We were going to make it out of this.

—

High Commander Thagath

I directed the fleet to focus on the Strength Through Diplomacy now that the sensor suite confirmed that the last of its escorts was dead in the water. It was only a matter of time before those pitiful Terrans finally surrendered.

“High Commander, we have new contacts that have just jumped in!” shouted my sensor officer. “They seem to be Terran!”

I froze as I saw the enemy’s numbers jump to well over a thousand. All of the known vessels that the Terrans had were all accounted for, either by the Conclave itself or by our allies, so where were these ships coming from?! They must have a place larger than the one I'm seeing here. I sent that information back to high command and focused on the new ships coming in. They haven’t gotten any damage, but we still had the numerical advantage, so I had no question about who was going to win this battle.

—

Admiral Elin Chaplain

“All units fire at will and prepare for boarding actions. Protect the Strength Through Diplomacy at all costs.” It was only a moment before the carriers disgorged their fightercraft and the battleships started steaming ahead, almost breaking safety regulations of the Navy.

Plasma cannons and kinetic salvos buried themselves into the hulls of the Yalayan crafts before us. As soon as the area directly surrounding the Strength Through Diplomacy was secured we could send in relief ships to try and get the civilians off of it and the Yalayans out of it. We may have been too late for the rest of the ships in the escort, but at least we got here in time to save them. Thank God for that.