USS Rushmore Approaching Leviathan Fleet Designated Beta

“Good lord those things can take a punch.” Gallagher said to the other Admirals.

“The Chinese were able to knock quite a few of them out of commission and disable them, but very few were actually destroyed.” Sokolov said.

“At least we know to avoid using the slugs on them, whatever their outer hull is

made up of it seems to be designed to absorb kinetic energy.” Gallagher said.

“A combination of the two ammunition types then. The lighter rounds to strip away their outer armour and then slugs or nukes to try and finish them off.” Sokolov added.

“What’s wrong Jacobs? Still pouting over the poor performance of your missiles?” Admiral Gallagher said.

“I’m thinking about fleet Alpha, they are close enough to fleet Beta that they could be able to intervene in any prolonged fight.”

“Then it won’t be a prolonged fight, we maintain speed through their lines doing as much damage as possible. We even have their number now, their weapons might be impossible to dodge, but they aren’t capable of doing damage quickly enough to really be a threat to our larger ships.” Gallagher said. “By my calculations even if their fleets were to join together we would still have the numbers to be able to destroy them.”

”I’m not so certain Admiral Gallagher, I don’t think we’ve seen everything the Leviathans have. Even during the fight with the Chinese, if the Kraken had joined the fighting earlier they could have done far more damage to the Chinese fleet but instead they held back until the end. I think they still have a few tricks up their sleeves, and we’ve shown them just about everything we have.” Jacobs argued.

“There is no indication that the Kraken have any other weapons than what we have seen, and the Chinese were able to use suppressing fire to render it mostly useless for half of the battle, and the next time we face them most of its support craft will have been destroyed or damaged. The battle may not be over, but it has turned our way.

“I’m not so sure, even now the Guppies are docking with it to make repairs, my crew has watched several of the Guppies replace large portions of their armor in just a short time, by the time we face them they could be ready for us again. What do you think Admiral Sokolov?”

“I agree with you Admiral Jacobs, this fight is far from over, but still I think we should stick with our plan for a limited engagement. Do as much damage as we can and not put our fleet in extra danger by staying long enough for the Leviathan Alpha fleet to engage us from behind.”

“I’m actually a little worried they might be close enough to engage us anyways.” Jacobs said.

“Your being paranoid Jacobs. The Leviathans first used their weapons when the Chinese were 80 000 kilometers away, we are almost 150 000 kilometers away. I agree they might have been holding back their true capabilities a little, but it would be, not just insanity, but pointless to hold back that much. They could have finished off the Chinese easily if they had that kind of range, and taken far less damage than what they did.”

“They could have been playing a very long game, allow us to feel confident then catch us in a pincer when we let ourselves fall into their range.” Jacobs said.

The two Admirals stared at each other over the communications screen. After a few moments the Admiral Sokolov quietly muttered something in Russian, the translation program built into the coms, unit could only catch the words ‘measuring tape’. “Gentleman please, neither of you is wrong, they could have been holding back, and almost certainly were, but Admiral Gallagher is also correct that cutting their effective range in half would be foolish and completely unnecessary. But it also does not matter, our course is set, and we are too close to the enemy to alter our plans or our course now. Arguing about things we cannot change is just sowing discord in our own ranks.” The normally quiet Russian said with a fair amount of heat in his words.

The American and European Admirals both held each other gaze for a few moments before admitting the Russian was correct.

“Now gentleman we have managed to work out a battle plan that we have all agree upon so unless anyone has anything new to bring to this discussion, I think we should see to our fleets and any final preparations.”

“I do have something from my stealth ships regarding the two Kraken attached to the Leviathan space station over Jupiter, however I do not think it will effect the outcome of the battle so we can shelve it until after the battle is over.”

“You can’t mention that and then not go into detail Jacobs, what is it?” Gallagher asked.

“Let me show you.” Pushing at his tablet for a moment Admiral Jacobs face was soon replaced by the Image of the two Leviathans connected to a cylinder almost as long as they were and at least 2 kilometers thick. Most of the cylinder was made up of the same white material they had seen on the inner hull of the Guppies the Chinese had damaged, but it was covered in thick ropes of muscles, layers of what may have been flesh or chitin and pulsing veins running up and down its length including attaching it to the other almost identical cylinder and the 5 km long ring in the middle.

What the stealth ships had seen though was obvious. The cylinder itself was pointing down at Jupiter and an extremely bright light was pulling up the atmosphere directly from Jupiter into the cylinder. The back of the cylinder was glowing with an incredibly bright light being emited.

“What in the name of god is that?” Admiral Gallagher asked

“My peoples best guess is that it’s some sort of a hydrogen fusion power plant. They think the cylinder is drawing hydrogen directly from the atmosphere of Jupiter for fuel.”

“How the hell can you draw the atmosphere off of a gas giant like that?”

“We are not sure, our best guess is that they use same technology we use for gravity. Only much much more advanced than anything we even considered.” Admiral Jacobs answered before continuing “Once both power plants are operational they will likely be used to power the ring which we now believe to be a form of faster than light travel.”

“And you didn’t think this was important enough to mention before the battle?” Admiral Sokolov asked.

“While it is important it won’t have any impact on the battle itself.”

“No impact?! Are you crazy if they can start bringing in reinforcements… This could change everything.” Admiral Gallagher shouted.

“Yes but we must still deal with one battle before the next.” Sokolov said. “Do your people have any idea how long it will take until the 2nd cylinder is ready?”

“Based on estimates of how long it took to complete the 1st roughly another 32 hours. None of my stealth ships are in position to damage or destroy it before it is completed. Not at the speeds stealth ships can safely move at.”

“So we have maybe 32 hours to fight two major fleet engagements and destroy the biggest objects in the solar system or untold numbers of Leviathans will come pouring into the solar system?” Gallagher said with none of his usual confidence. “Well I can’t believe you weren’t going to share this information with us before the battle, you are correct this won’t affect the battle we are about to fight.”

“There is one other thing gentleman. The Pearl Gourami also reported that the Kraken are being removed from the generator, whatever they were needed for it seems they are no longer needed. The next time we face force alpha they will have three Kraken, not just the one.”

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The grim faces of the Admirals spoke well enough to how they felt about that. Simply nodding Admiral Gallagher disconnected, and Admirals Sokolov wished Admiral Jacobs and his crews luck before also disconnecting.

With this the Admirals each prepared for the fight ahead of them.

As the combined fleets approached the Guppy fleet on an intercept course the American fleet launched a full 80% of their drones, totaling 400 drones. They were however not launched directly at the Guppies but rather on a parabolic arc well out of the Guppies observed maximum range and over the Guppies themselves.

When the combined fleet was entering their own weapons range still out of the observed weapons range of the Guppies the drones finally began arcing straight down onto the Guppies from above. This left the enemies with two choices; turn to face the drones exposing their stomach to the fleet or face the fleet and allow the drones to approach unmolested.

Unfortunately for the Human fleets Admiral Jacobs was correct, the Leviathans had been holding back.

The rear most Guppies turned themselves up to face the threat posed by the drones and began firing at them at a range of almost 120 000 kilometers. This was an almost a 50% increase in their observed weapons range. As the drones were well armored, they did not start being destroyed right away but the damage would begin to build up as they approached. The drones upon detecting the enemy fire began a series of evasive maneuvers, complex and fast enough that a human pilot would have broken their neck if they were inside. Shaped like a five-sided star the drones had thrusters on all sides so they could accelerate in any direction at a moments notice. With a short range communications net encompassing all of the drones they could even coordinate their movements ensuring that when one drone dodged out of the way the drones behind it were already moving as well, making sure they would not be hit by the weapons fire that was now missing its target.

The swarm of drones danced and jigged in unison avoiding fire like a swarm of high explosive tipped bees, but still over time they began to fall to the weapons of the Guppies. Just before a drone would be destroyed, if possible they would launch all of their missiles. Far smaller than a ship based nuclear weapon they were really intended for damaging ships and stripping them of weapons and point defences instead of killing them outright. Nonetheless with each drone having half a dozen missiles onboard together they packed a considerable punch. As the drones continued their approach more and more drones started to fall. Fortunately, this was just a distraction attack designed to occupy the attention of as many of the Guppies as possible.

The 15 guppies that were still facing towards the fleet were vastly outnumbered, but they were still fierce fighters. Their weapons firing the small number of ships co-ordinated their fire, concentrating as many of their weapons on one ship at a time as they could. Very quickly turrets and sensor towers were damaged or destroyed, and hulls were scarred by the weapons before hulls began to be breached in a few small areas. Once the hull was damaged in one spot the Guppies quickly worked on making it larger and larger until the ships would explode in a titanic fireball.

The Allied fleets however were not silent during this time. Their own weapons were loaded with the light anti ship rounds and fired in volley after volley at the creatures and in all their potential retreat paths. Each smaller task force inside the joint fleet worked in concert to bracket and strip each of their targets of its outer hull and weapons. The small ball bearings penetrated the enemies soft flesh and continued through ripping out very small chunks of flesh, however with hundreds of the small balls striking their enemy over and over again the damage quickly added up and several Guppies were quickly stripped of their weapons and front armor.

As the Guppies had the layers of their outer hull stripped away the human weapons started to be less and less effective until faced with the hardest part of their enemies hulls the small ball bearings simply bounced off with almost no damage. When this happened the Guppies weapons would also have been destroyed as well and the Human ships would consider the Guppies mission killed and focus their weapons on the next closest ship. All Human ships except for the dreadnoughts.

The largest of the human ships would switch their fire to solid armor piercing rounds and fire dozens of 10-20 kilogram solid tungsten tipped slug at their enemies. From the range they were at now and with damage the Guppies had taken dodging was impossible.

The shots from the Russian Dreadnought were enough to smash straight through the Guppies armor in a single volley and as few as 2 volleys from the smaller European Dreadnoughts. American Carriers unfortunately did not have the same large main guns as their counterparts did and were mostly forced to use their limited number of smaller guns to help strip their enemies of their outer hulls.

Despite some losses from the concentrated enemy fire and several ships having many of their guns stripped away the human ships were dominating the battle and it looked like this would be an overwhelming victory.

Until the first human Dreadnought exploded.

Several thousand kilometers off the port side of the Rushmore the 850 meter long Frederick the Great exploded in a massive fireball. The ship was one of two that the European Union sent to the outer system with the fleet, fortunately it wasn’t Admiral Gallagher’s flag ship.

Almost 250 000 kilometers behind the task force the Leviathan forces that the Chinese had fought were now turning and accelerating towards the task force ships, and for the first time the 7 kilometer long beasts humanity had taken to calling the Krakens had used their main weapon.

On the front of creature, a massive hole had opened that was almost 250 meters wide and from this hole protruded the front of a weapon. Made up of a mass pulsing and squirming flesh was what almost looked like a long thick tongue. Veins and muscles ran up and down the weapons length, bulging with blood and things more exotic. A series of large cysts were growing on its side while the tip of the weapon glowed a vibrant red color.

On board the Rushmore the CIC was a frenzy of activity.

“Have the Bakersfield, Philadelphia, and Little Rock as well as their task forces get between us and the Leviathan group alpha.” Admiral Jacobs ordered. The three ships he named were Heavy Cruisers that were originally waiting on the flanks waiting to screen the Carriers as they retreated from the Guppies to ensure the valuable ship was not attacked as they left the battlefield. However, with the Leviathans possessing weapons capable of firing far further than Humanity had thought possible they would now be used to cover the carriers from the new threat even at the cost of their lives.

As the fleet continued to exchange fire with the enemy in front of them once again a Human ship exploded with no warning, this time a European cruiser.

Noting the time on the mission clock Jacobs thought to himself “Roughly every 1 minute and 27 seconds. Not an amazing rate of fire, but if they get a kill with every shot it will be devastating.”

What Admiral Jacobs said was “Prepare for the next phase of the plan.”

“All ships report ready for a full salvo sir.”

As the human ships finally approached knife fighting distance the damage to the Guppies was apparent. 15 of the creatures had been almost entirely stripped of their outer hulls and were no longer even firing, 7 had been cracked like an egg and were drifting in space. Of the 9 remaining Guppies, all had at least some damage and most were leaking a viscous red fluid. The drones finally approached to the ships as well and began launching their own missiles prioritizing the undamaged ships. Unfortunately, drones had very few nuclear tipped missiles, most of their armament was designed around damaging enemies point defences or other critical systems in order to allow the other larger missiles to make it through and finish their enemies.

As the Guppies had very little in the way of point defences, engines that humans recognized or even sensors Admiral Jacobs decided that the drones were far more effective as a distraction than anything else, and set them on a course that forced the Guppies to split their attention and expose their bellies to the Human guns.

Nonetheless with 95 surviving drones firing six missiles with the equivalent of a half a kiloton each the drones were still a significant threat. Although the Guppies were able to shoot down swaths of the weapons several hundred of the missiles began slamming into the least damaged Guppies. Large chunks of their outer hulls were blown off the creatures leaving small craters in their flesh as more and more missiles struck them. The missiles that targeted the already damaged Guppies were successful in blowing most of those creatures into small pieces bit by bit. By the time the human fleet passed through the Guppies debris field almost the entire swarm of enemies had been reduced to floating chunks of flesh.

“Sir I am showing 25 of the 31 enemies in the engagement area have been destroyed. There are 6 left still in full retreat.” The weapons officer said.

Upon the news the Admirals crew let out a loud cheer. People began shaking hands and hugging each other.

“EVERYONE,” Admiral Jacobs yelled. “Back to your stations we are still in the engagement area.”

As if to punctuate his words another European cruiser exploded.

“Have the rear guard target those things, a full salvo of nuclear weapons, I want 20 missiles per enemy. Nothing is escaping.” Admiral Jacobs yelled. “Weps Have the drones fall into formation behind us, try to have them block the fleet as best we can. Navigation plot us a course closer to Europa and increase speed I want us behind the curvature of that moon. No matter their range, if they can’t see us, they can’t shoot us. Coms contact the other fleets and recommend the same course change.”

“The European fleet is already moving Sir, their formation is a mess. If we’re not careful they could run right into some of our ships.”

Cursing Gallagher under is breath Admiral Jacobs just nodded. “Hoe much time until we can be behind the curvature of Europa?”

“Roughly another 23 minutes Sir. The Russians are in our way so we can’t change our course as quickly as I would like.”

As the time ticked by and the fleet moved closer and closer to Europa the Leviathans opportunity to hit them grew smaller and smaller. But inevitably every minute and 27 seconds another ship would explode. Sometimes some drones would explode as well when they were caught in the weapons sights, when this happened the targeted ship would have a few extra milliseconds between the weapon hitting them and their ship being destroyed. But no matter what they did ships kept exploding. By the time the allied fleet managed to get close enough to Europa to break sight lines 1 dreadnought 7 cruisers and 9 frigates had been destroyed by just the single Kraken.

In total 1 dreadnought 17 cruisers and 30 frigates were destroyed in the battle for a total of 31 enemies. The Kraken had killed almost as many ships than the entire Guppy fleet.