7183-9-7, 14:00 EDT
“Today, 20 years after the Kyreikon attacked us unprovoked, will we return to our home, the planet were the UE was born. In an hour, to coincide with the suspected time the Kyreikon came to us, will we move through the Gate. The Kyreikon will give us time to form up, because they are scarred of our handheld weapons. They do not dare to come in front of the moon, especially not with their heavy units. When the fighting in space is joined, our men on the ground will begin storming the few remaining Kyreikon strongholds. Admittedly, their ability to show up in those aforementioned strongholds might be just a tad unfair, but all is fair in war. Especially in one as this, which we can easily see as an attempt at extermination. Now, make the last preparations necessary, hold a motivating speech or two to your crews and be ready for battle.”
After he finished speaking, Admiral Yoshinori Struesse continued to answer a few last minute questions, but then followed his own advise to get himself ready.
The UE, in form of the United Earths Navy, whose ship designation was United Earth Ship, was fielding a larger warship fleet than the Kyreikon, but also a lighter one. The Kyreikon had figured out that light ships, especially the 200 odd meter long ships the humans classified as destroyers, were incredible vulnerable to ground based anti-space weaponry. Which meant that they only had a few of those ships.
The Kyreikon heavy element as well as most of the rest of their fleet stayed behind the moon, at least from Terra’s perspective.
Still, even though it was expected that the UE ships would outperform their Kyreikon counterparts in most ways, it was still an untested design philosophy against an enemy with potentially hundreds if not thousands of years of real life experience in this regard.
But, luckily, there was that small little plan of using infiltration units. The special forces of the UE were by now well trained and experienced in combat against the Kyreikon ground element, and the scientists were reasonably certain that they had found a way to get them on board the enemy ships. They would be deployed through shuttles in a different universe, and Gate directly into the enemy ships. This manoeuvre was not without its dangers, and surprisingly easy to counteract, considering the shuttles could not change direction or acceleration while the Gate was open, but as a preplanned attack it could work.
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The plan for them was as simple as it was complex. They would move into position, with the help of stealthed satellites brought into position over a month earlier, and roughly a minute before the UE fleet was likely to be detected, the soldiers would attack. The hope was that this operation could ensure the capture of at least one enemy ship, as well that the confusion would help equalise the numbers. Thanks to the lesser experience of the UE, as well as the near complete non existence of space based yards, they had built very few heavy ships.
Which meant that to the enemies 5 battleships, 8 heavy cruisers, 16 light cruisers and 6 destroyers as well as 8 transports, the UE could only field 3 Battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, 12 light cruisers and 21 destroyers.
The numbers were far better than they looked however, considering that the UE had help from the ground elements as well as the attempted attack on every single one of the enemy ships by volunteer troops. Most of those attacks would fail, but some would succeed. And even those that failed might be enough to bring victory.
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The UE fleet was beginning to move out of the Gate an hour later. The battleships UES Therion and the UES Terra would move over one side of the planet, supported by 5 heavy cruisers as well as 10 light cruisers and 8 destroyers.
The Battleship UES Revenge would move, supported by a single heavy cruiser as well as 4 light cruisers and 13 destroyers over the other side of the planet.
The poles were not covered by ships, and ignored by the fleet, which was only possible because the Kyreikon seemed to dislike flying over the poles, and they were thus relatively safe from orbital bombardment. Which meant that there were actually permanent, or semi permanent in the north poles case, ground to space weapons stationed. Still, the people manning them would be very happy when they did not need to fear sudden death because they missed something or the Kyreikon decided that they did not care anymore and sent a dinosaur-killer asteroid their way.
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The boarding teams were engaging. Some of them were wiped out in the first few minutes of the engagement. Some managed to find cover and defend themselves appropriately against the crew of the attacked ships. Others were advancing, encountering only light resistance. But that would change.
The Kyreikon fleet took 3 minutes longer to begin reacting to the threat of the UEN than expected, but how much of that was because of the infiltrators and how much do to other, internal issues was never understood to completion.
While the Kyreikon ships were fighting of boarders, they began to manoeuvre. Very few of them were actually in danger of being taken by the UE forces, and those that were tended to be the transports, as well as a single light cruiser and two destroyers. Still, the reaction was panicked. Which was understandable, if unhelpful, considering that suddenly there was an attack from nothing and now there was suddenly a fleet.
The Kyreikon admiral decided to split his ships half and half, which was good for the formation that was built around the UES Terra, but bad new for the UES Revenge.
The Kyreikon had forward elements on both sides of the planet, consisting of two light cruiser and a destroyer each, showing the dearth of destroyers under which the Kyreikon laboured.
The battle was joined between the main battle fleet of the UE and the forward elements of the Kyreikon Space Navy.