The Klaxon faded into the background noise as Centarus focused past it to the task at hand. A second fleet, fifty ships strong was burning hard for orbit. They had dropped much closer than he had dared, which had been a particularly unpleasant surprise. Their immediate transmission, although encrypted, betrayed the fact that this was a planned maneuver. “Status on the withdrawal.” He growled.
“The last of the shuttles are approaching the surface… We..” The crewman at Coms paused, obviously listening to something urgent. The Crewman visibly paled, taking on a more ashen hew as he dropped the pad he had been holding. “Uh… Cen… Centarus… New reports from the surface… the enemy has attacked.”
“Crewman, that much as obvious. Where, may I ask, have they attacked” Centarus growled, more than slightly annoyed at the lack of professionalism in these critical moments.
“Everywhere, Centarus” The crewman hastily picked up pad, handing it to his commander and transferring the new data that was now frantically streaming in.
Centarus snatched the slate away from the crewman, the data scrolled past along with a tactical map of the situation. He no longer faulted the young crewman for his reaction.
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“TWO EIGHT EIGHT, MARK! THREE THREE POINT ONE… CONFIRM!” The bawling of the Demlar staring at a screen was only matched by the scampering of men who surrounded an absurdly large metal monstrosity. It looked like a giant tube with hydraulics hanging from it. It was attached to a strange set of wheels with a pair of long feet that had been dug into the ground. It was one of six such contraptions all laid out in a row and “dug in” as Maj. Partrilus had called it. The stately Delmar officer presided over the situation from a pair of screens before him. The entire front had been set ablaze on his order. Every individual and squad-level weapon was hammering Vorath positions with a relentless viciousness that General Ura had not seen in his entire service to the Unity. Delmar were not known for their aggression, but these “Humans” seemed to draw it out of them. His defense force troops gave the First C.I.D. soldiers a wide birth, especially after a few drunken brawls had revealed that these new weapons were not the only new brutalities this new species had brought upon the Galaxy.
Still, Ura did not understand this exercise. What was the point of expending energy and ammunition when you were not advancing? Major Partrilus seemed to recognize his line of thinking. “Do not fear, General. We will be advancing shortly.”
“Forgive me, but… why would you bother, the element of surprise is gone. Unlike your predawn assault, you did not lead with artillery.” Ura pointed out as the last of the giant metal contraptions were finished being futzed over.
“General, that was not artillery. They were only indirect fire from a squad-level mortar batteries. This..” The Delmar Major waved to the line of machinery in front of him. “Is artillery.” Partrilus picked up a comm unit as it beeped.
*Firemission ready, Sir* came a crisp transmission.
“All Batteries, Commence.” Was all Patrilus stated. Setting the com unit down and slipping on a pair of protective earmuffs.
Ura quickly did the same, having learned that when the Major did something, he would be wise to do the same. Moments later, a massive sequence of explosions merged into one long deafening bellow, and every one of the 155mm Howitzer’s in the battery line belched smoke and flame. The barrels sank down against their recoil buffering hydraulics, driving the already dug in spaded struts more deeply into the soft ground.
The concussive force nearly drove Ura’s breath from him and the men crewing the Howitzers scrambled to their purpose, quickly reloading the massive weapons only to fire them again. Ura looked to Major Patrilus only to see the Delmar officer grinning fiercely as he seemed to embrace the organized violence being dispensed with gusto. The M777 was centuries old at this point. It had survived the magnetically accelerated revolution on a quirk of physics. MAC guns fired at incredible velocities, needed for their direct-fire role, long distance interstellar warship duels. They were also excellent when scaled down to man-portable, and squad level direct fire weapons, but they had a fatal flaw when it came to adapting them for ground-to-ground artillery purposes.
They were too violent. The G forces exerted on the projectile being fired were orders of magnitude higher, and imparted more sharply than conventional propellant was capable of. These realities mandated that MAC systems almost exclusively required a solid projectile for the ammunition to be able to simply survive being fired. ground-to-ground artillery, which was far more mobile, and far more versatile under adverse conditions than orbit-to-ground strikes, simply could not create the levels of Kinetic force to be useful with a solid projectile. Ground-based artillery NEEDED an explosive payload, and an explosive payload was simply too expensive to make safe enough to survive firing, and yet still powerful enough to be effective. The only exception to that rule was a nuclear payload, and even Humanity was less than enthused at the prospect of slinging canned sunlight this close to its own troops. Thus, the chemically propelled one hundred fifty-five millimeter HE projectile still had a place on the battlefield, and so did the venerable M “Tripple Seven”.
Ura wondered just what had just been unleashed upon his Rawkir, and he feared that he would soon find out. The General was pulled from his consternation by a movement from the Major who picked up the Com’s unit on the table and switched frequencies.
General Ura had to suppress a shiver as Patrilus keyed the mic, “All Units, Advance.”
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Dozer was in a SOARD Pod, hurtling toward Rawkir for the second time of this Campaign. His readouts confirmed that his squad, less one Grenadier, were in formation. The shuddering morphed into a windy howl as the red faded from the porthole. “Our target will be 129 from our drop zone. Follow the plan, hit the shuttles then move for the heavy emplacements,” Dozer paused as he noticed the counter reach 15 seconds, “no prisoners” he released the mic just as the drop pods hit the ground. Every one of the Riflemen in his squad had been issued a 30 calibre belt fed, and a disposable AT-14 in addition to their full load out. This would have been a suicidal demand if it were not for the MACE MkII armor that each of them wore. Dozer’s team had been fired directly into the heart of the enemy LZ, and two of his men had landed directly on or near enough to an unsuspecting enemy soldier to remove them from existence. Everyone exited their pod, leading with the belt feds, and the distant rumble of impacting artillery was drowned out by the staccato maelstrom erupting from the heart of the enemy evacuation. Dozer vaguely heard a “clear backblast” call, stepping causally to the side as the man next to him lit off his AT-14, instantly detonating one of the shuttles. Two more took rocket fire in quick succession, rendering them to smoking hulks.
“One-four-zero, the tree line,” Came a cold calculating call, Dozer swiveled his fire, using the servo augmentation of his suit and the datalink sight displayed in his helmet to fire from the hip. Over a dozen Vorath came charging out of the tree line fourty yards from where he stood. Dozer never released the trigger, absent mindedly intrigued by the slight jumping of the transposed sight as it registered his weapons recoil. 50 rounds later, the charging enemy was cut to ribbons and Dozer lifted off the trigger, only to swivel onto a pair of light vehicles that came overing into the opening at entirely too much velocity. The first little hovering scout craft started taking fire, holes appearing all along its panelling that was obviously designed to reflect energy fire. The hover mechanism gave way almost instantly, plummeting the nose of the craft into the soft earth. Six Vorath were ejected from the stricken vehicle as it summersaulted. Four of them didn’t get up, leaking from several holes in their torsos and arms.
One of them landed thirty feet from Dozer. The Warrior stood, bellowing his rage as he drew a blade from his waist. Dozer smiled under his helmet, tossing aside the empty machine gun and drawing his own blade. His opponent hissed as he recognized the blade and charged him. Dozer took a single step forward, flicking his blade clean through the right arm of the Warrior before reversing his blades direction with ridiculous ease. Without his armor, in normal gravity, the blade weighted as much as a sword, but inside of his MACE, it was but a feather. The reversal took his opponents stomach, slicing it laterally and releasing the Voraths internal organs to the ground. The man screamed again, this time in pain. He didn’t scream for long as Dozers final strike took the Warriors head from his shoulders.
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Dozer didn’t bother picking up his foe’s weapon as several heavy laser bolts slammed into his chest armor. Alarm bells rang in his helmet as he rolled out of the way, pulling his own rocket launcher from its straps. “Clear backblast!” He growled, waiting just a heartbeat more before triggering the AT-14. The emplacement, another dismounted coaxial Laser cannon ceased its fire as the rocket slammed into the tripod just below the weapon, misting the crew and blowing the weapon into several smoking pieces.
“CLEAR!” called one of his men, Dozer looked around, pulling his regular service rifle over his shoulder before returning with a “clear” of his own.
“Two shuttles got out, but the rest are done.” One of the riflemen stated. “orders?”
Dozer lifted his rifle, putting his helmets hud over the head of a writhing injured enemy and pulled the trigger. “As soon as the artillery stops, we hit their rear. Kill everyone.” Dozer growled, turning to begin stomping towards the sound of Explosions.
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“They WHAT?!?” Centarus couldn’t believe it. A single squad of these Human soldiers had just obliterated his landing zone, almost 400 defenders, and 150,000 troops in shuttles on the ground and barely taking off. His Two shuttles Were barely in the upper atmosphere, frantically burning for orbit. They would not be able to make a return run. His rear guard had taken the Oath of Devoted, they knew this could be their fate, and accepted it eagerly. He watched one of the escaping shuttles recordings as Being’s in armor unlike anything he had seen, tore through his men like they were cadets. The monitor switched recordings just as one of those suits of armor cut a Captain into ribbons, and He forced his face to stay neutral as he recognized the blade as one of his own peoples. It was the warrior from the Prisoner exchange, and Centarus could only look on as the human took several direct hits from a laser cannon, seemingly with no real effect before silencing the position. “Signal the Devoted, Tel them…”
“Centarus! The enemy fleet!” The Sensor station interrupted Centarus, but he could not fault the crewman. He noticed it the moment he heard the call out. All across the orbital horizon, every human ship in orbit above Rawkir crested. They were in three and four ship formation, and He instantly recognized the shared energy shield strategy blended with mobile battle groups.
“Deploy the fleet! We will give the shuttles the time we can.” Centarus stated.
“Centarus, their reinforcement fleet is moving to cut us off.” It was his flag captain, the man he swore a blood oath with, “You know my feelings, but we must save what we can. Vengeance can wait, but two shuttles are not worth the fleets. We will have to fight past them anyway, it is still better than fighting through them.”
Centarus regarded his flag captain with respect. The man had the rights by honor to press the attack, yet he was here advising his superior for the betterment of the fleet. “Agreed, Signal the fleet, we make for open space. Send word to the Devoted, we will not be able to fully implement the protocol. Die well, detonate all preparations you can.”
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The Vorath ships turned toward open space, sending parting salvo’s of plasma and laser toward the infrastructure centers within range. 3 million souls died in the short rain of terror. The Devoted got the message, but only partially in time.
Admiral Steven clenched his fist at the wanton disregard for innocent life. It felt like a failure, failing to save those people from a needless death. “Time to Intercept.” He growled, watching the battle unfold as an almost reverse of his first meeting with the Vorath. Several of the sensor readings matched vessels he had faced that day, including its flagship.
“We can engage now, but another five minutes until we can uncouple.” Admiral Tagarin stated from next to him. “Are you sure this.. shield wall.. is capable?” as if on que, several enormous plasma projectiles slammed into the shields being projected in front of the battle group.
“I believe they will be up to the challenge.” Steven smirked, “All USN vessels, maintain course and speed, fire at will.” He stated with an absurd calm, turning to the Lycan Admiral, “We will begin phase 2 in a few moments, good hunting admiral.” Tagarin cocked his head slightly at the outstretched hand of the human before taking it in his own paw. The Human admiral shook it once, releasing it just as a midshipman stepped up next to them. The Delmar crewman saluted Tagarin, “Sir, I’ll be guiding you to the shuttle bay. If you will follow me.”
Several minutes later, the first of the incoming Vorath fire splashed harmlessly off the shield wall of USN Texas and her escorts. Stevens had split up the main fleet into smaller battle groups, each centered around a titanic Ship of the line. It was a traditional tactic from the GSW, one that Folmuri had adopted with Gusto. The two admirals had split up, Stevens staying on the Texas and Folmuri Moving to Tharsis to provide a unified yet decentralized command structure. Their charges, the Legion and Unity forces who originally responded to Rawkir had shifted almost entirely to the northern pole. Wisconsin and New Jersey were the only ones left to attack from subjective south as they were the only vessel in the responding fleet with the pure unadulterated firepower to make the ruse believable. They were to join up with the reinforcement fleet and press the pincer attack from that pole. The southern attack, lead by Unity High Admiral Karmarin and aided by Captain Harrison was to be coordinated from a freshly repaired USN Galveston. Every officer in the United Sol Navy knew that Harrison should have been an admiral long before the end of Humanity’s civil war, but Wild Bill had turned down the promotion on multiple occasions. So, while still only a captain, Bill was the perfect liaison to ensure that any confusion was kept to a minimum. Karmarin’s fleet had done the same, splitting into combat groups, fanning out over one flank of the withdrawing Vorath ships. Stevens and Folmuri unfurled their formation on the other, but they had a final surprise for their enemy.
“Signal Admiral Tagarin, Decouple.” Stevens ordered. Texas shuddered as the clamps in her capital ship bays deactivated. The opposing fleets were within two hundred thousand kilometers as every single Legion ship capable of doing so decoupled from the Unity ships originally defending Rawkir. Their charges were not capable of linking their shields, so they had been shepherded into the effective range of their energy weapons. Every surviving Unity ship capable of direct combat fanned out from their hiding spots filling in the gaps between the legion battle groups. And opened fire.
The running battle to the edge of the Rawkir system was a brutal slugfest prosecuted inside of point-blank distances for every ship involved. The Vorath may have been withdrawing, but they were still incredibly dangerous. Their remaining fighters boiled from their carriers, being met by Human and Delmar fighters of their own. The Human destroyers could not enact so brazen a tactic as before, and their electronic warfare was mitigated somewhat by their inability to operate freely. The following 3-hour maelstrom of laser, plasma, missile, and kinetic bombardments wielded the reapers scythe through both sides. While one-sided, the combined fleets began taking losses. Tharsis took several direct hits from fighters that had broken through the allied screens, She lost three of her main batteries and two main drives. Her Port side generators overloaded, briefly causing the shield wall on that side to falter. The Gales took no less than 12 direct hits before the shields were reestablished, and she fell from the formation, her back broken, and under a complete power failure as her reactor was barely shut down before overloading.
DDS Bastion, one of the original ships to escort Traveler to Delmar space all those years prior took a planet killer laser amidships. It overloaded the shield wall she was behind before punching clean through her. Eighty percent of her crew were killed instantly. With the rest fighting for their lives in the three surviving pieces that were once her hull. Dozens of Unity ships fell, unable to combine their defensive abilities, but willing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their new allies.
New Jersey had pulled in front of Simo, shielding the Eros bodily from another planet-killer laser. Her shields had failed her, but her ablative armor proved worthy. Nonetheless she lost every main gun on her starboard side, and a third of her crew was killed in the blast. Simo had been in the process of cooling down her massive power banks required to fire the Vulkan that was her centerpiece. A disabled New Jersey slowly tumbled just the right way to clear her muzzle, and the Captain of USN Simo hot-swapped his fire sequence to Ithica. Simo poured her vengeance back at the enemy that had crippled her compatriot. She fired the molten shotgun round at well inside minimum effective range. The round never properly segmented, but it didn’t matter. The Vorath heavy cruiser simply ceased to exist, Its wreckage being added to the Ithica fragments that proceeded to murder 7 other ships before loosing enough energy to do damage.
Martina, Ivar, and Ja’krin had launched together. Ivar and Martina activated their shield generators in anger for the first time since receiving R’Cari and Sombra. Stealth was not to rule this day, only strength, speed, and brutality. Over fifteen hundred fighters met each other in the vicious knife fight that developed between the dueling warship line. Buzz revealed the other half of his callsign. He had taken a liking to kinetic weapons more than most of the other up and coming Delmar fighter pilots. His Raptor had been “modified” to carry a pair of extra GAU 34’s at its wing roots. He could only carry half the normal missile count, but Buzz proved he didn’t need them. He refused to carry a single Pheonix missile, preferring to carry only heat seekers. The Delmar pilot sawed through his opponents with an almost reckless use of his MAC guns and occasional Fox2 fired at almost point-blank range. His wingman was a Human by the callsign “Woody”, and Ivar had to be promised a movie night to explain just why that was so hilarious. Woody and Buzz effortlessly traded lead slots every few kills, each Harvesting swaths of enemies like a murderous runaway combine. Martina and Ivar shared their pride in their student as they danced among the enemy. Their ballet of death was almost the antithesis of “Buzz and Woody”’s wake of carnage. Single short bursts, a missile slipping from the rail, often hitting a target not even being engaged by the vessel it departed from, Martina and Ivar became one mind in two places. They focused on filling gaps, using their massive sensor and computing advantage to pick off enemy fighters that had fallen through the cracks, gotten too close to a friendly, or decide to make the mistake of engaging them directly; of which the latter were many.
Despite their efforts almost half of the Human and Delmar pilots did not make it home. Of the three hundred pilots sent out, one hundred and fourty made it back under their own power. Another thirty pilots were recovered in the aftermath having either bailed out or been disabled. Those three hundred Legion fighters had faced twelve hundred, and the fighting had been as brutal as it was one-sided. Only four hundred Vorath fighters returned to their carriers. Of the three hundred fifty vessels that Centarus had committed to this operation, seventy made it to the jump out of the system. The Unity had lost three hundred and fifty of their once four hundred strong defending vessels. Humanity and Delmar had sent sixty-two ships between the two fleets. They had lost fourteen vessels total with another eight taking enough damage to require a shipyard-level repair.
Sevens took a deep breath as the last Vorath ship blinked out of existence, “All units stand down. Away rescue teams. Let’s get back to…”
“Admiral!” the Coms crewman interrupted. “We have an urgent message from the planet!!”
Stevens turned to the crewman, brow furrowing at the interruption, “Put it up.” He barked.
“Jesus Christ in heaven preserve them..” came the ghost of a prayer from behind Stevens as he turned to see the main viewer.