"… It is neither technology nor numbers, that determine the outcome of a battle.
The combatant which holds the initiative, is the one who shall ultimately, prevail in every engagement.
Though technological and numerical advantages are definitely important, they are only so because they facilitate the seizing of the initiative.
To hold the initiative, is to dictate the terms of the engagement. It is the ability to dictate when, where and how the battle unfolds, to force the enemy into employing the predetermined tactics you want them to utilize.
To put it simply, to hold the initiative is to force the enemy to dance to your tune, allowing you to control every aspect of the battle, forcing the enemy onto a predictable path, while you, yourself, remain unpredictable. In a battle, that is the deciding factor between victory and defeat..."
- Bayne's Law
~~~~
Valyra had swapped her formal gowns for something less flashy and more practical, a similar two-piece outfit to the one she'd worn while sparring with duchess Yelena, back on Kalidan. This time, though, she was not wielding her shardblade and had not even brought it with her. Instead, she complemented her outfit with a Terran-made ballistic vest that almost fit her and was currently in the process of figuring out how to work the magnetic clasps which fastened the spare magazines to the armored plates.
"You twist it like this, then you pull," the silver-haired duchess instructed her, a rather impatient expression upon her features. Through the Veil, Valyra could sense the cold, seething hostility radiating from the Kalidani woman, a sentiment the duchess was no longer making an effort to conceal, though outwardly she had remained as disciplined and professionally cordial as always. "We do not have neuroweave technology, which means Terran equipment cannot be interfaced with mentally, at least not without an implant," the duchess continued to explain with a hint of condescending smugness in her tone that the Alvari heiress did not appreciate at all. Indeed, there was no doubt in Valyra's mind that the only reason Yelena was helping her at all, was because Kainan had ordered her to.
And the princess knew her blade wouldn't be enough on the battlefield. Even with her legendary skill in the Rinathay art, a battle was not the same as a duel. Psionic foresight and mind-reading could only do so much and more importantly, had a limited range easily exceeded by enemy sharpshooters. That meant she would need a ranged weapon as well and since she had no way of obtaining a raycaster until the fleet reached Alvari space, that meant mastering the clunky human guns. Thus, she set aside her own animosity towards the duchess and focused on the task at hand.
"Guns are not energy weapons," the duchess continued in that infuriatingly smug tone, as if Valyra were some fresh recruit who couldn't already tell such basic facts. "They are kinetic weapons. They have mass and recoil. Bullets fly along ballistic trajectories, not straight lines."
Valyra gritted her teeth, ignoring the Kalidani woman's tone, which was undoubtedly intended to provoke her. She had no intention of taking that bait and giving Yelena the satisfaction of making a scene, instead she had something else in mind, something to put the irritating duchess in her place and remind her just who she was dealing with.
Taking a deep breath, she locked her gaze onto the holographic targets with a predatory intensity. She did not aim down the sights, did not even raise the heavy handgun in her hands. But her warrior's mind, honed by a lifetime of training, had already calculated the trajectories of the moving targets and ran the math. She turned to face the duchess, pinning her with an ice-cold stare that could freeze the molten, nuclear heart of a star. And then she spun, the motion fluid and graceful, her balance perfect despite the unfamiliar weight and rigidity of the Terran ballistic vest, such was her mastery over her body. She threw her arm out and squeezed the trigger. Once, twice, thrice. All three targets blinked out of existence one after another, each shot dead center.
Up above, the scoreboard updated to display the new rankings. Record time. Perfect score. The other soldiers who had paused to watch, were now muttering among themselves, while a veteran Cosmonaut let out a low whistle, suddenly regarding Valyra with a newfound respect. She shoved the handgun into the duchess' hands and strode past her before the woman could recover her wits, pausing only for a moment as she spoke. "Do not mistake my appearance for inexperience, duchess. For while it is true that I am youthful by the standards of my species, I have been watching the stars since before your kind made first contact with the rest of the galaxy. And I have been using that time to master every single skill I learned, to a degree you can't imagine."
To Yelena's credit, it did not take long for the stunned expression on her features to be replaced with her usual cold discipline. The duchess fell in alongside her, taking her defeat graciously instead of further humiliating herself with pettiness. "With all due respect, your highness," she called out, her voice crisp and professional. "What is the point of all this?"
Valyra did not look at her as she answered. "I have no intention of sitting around in a guest suite and sip ambrosia while someone else fights in my stead," she said, her tone crisp and final. Earlier, she had argued with Kainan about this very same thing. "And I do not intend to be a liability on the battlefield."
The duchess had nothing to say in regards to that, so she chose to remain quiet. "Where is the warlord now?" Valyra finally broke the silence, deciding to change the topic. The duchess' eyebrow curled into a barely-perceptible frown, the only sign of her own concern, which must have been quite significant if it caused her composure to slip. "Still in the combat information center," she answered.
The princess kept her composure perfect, her posture and expression pristine and unreadable. But deep down, she was worried that Kainan was pushing himself far too hard, for nearly seventy-two hours had passed since the beginning of their current predicament and the warlord had not so much as sat down to have a meal since, let alone get any rest.
~~~~
Valyra found Kainan still staring at the holographic display currently hovering above the command dais of the Agamemnon's sprawling bridge, or rather, combat information center, as the humans preferred to call it, though the function was identical. His silver eyes were glued to the projection displaying their current problem while the bearish fieldmarshal was reciting the reports from the fleet's last attempts to find a way to circumvent it.
"And the asteroid fields here and here are mined with null-field warheads, making that approach impossible without considerable casualties as well, considering the risk of a Kessler chain reaction," fieldmarshal Bayne explained. Null-field mines would not be a considerable threat to a fleet the size of theirs under normal circumstances, as the range of microsingularity devices were fairly limited and the combined sensor capacity of the Pact armada would have been more than sufficient to defeat the cloaking fields of the mines, allowing them to be avoided or picked off from a safe distance. However, inside a densely packed asteroid field, they could pull cosmic objects out of their regular orbits and trigger a cascade of collisions that would quickly prove catastrophic to any fleet attempting to pass through. And the sensor interference from the asteroids would make it very unlikely to detect all the mines in time, not that it would make much of a difference.
Even if the fleet set off the minefield from a safe distance, it would take weeks, if not months, for the chaos to settle and that was simply time they did not have, for it would allow the Dra'var'th time to reposition their own fleets and force the Pact armada into a pitched battle it simply could not win. Their plan relied on tackling the forces of the Dragon House piecemeal, before they could regroup for a counteroffensive.
"I am of the opinion we should just commit to the offensive," gestured one of the Chett admirals, Swarm Leader Zrix, who's range of vocalizations made it impossible to verbally communicate with a large segment pf the other Pact species, a problem that had been circumvented with the invention of a simple, yet effective form of sign language. "We have Darkspace on our left flank and a mined asteroid field on our right, the only path forward is to push ahead."
Kainan sighed. "If we do so, the death ray on that defense installation will tear the fleet apart. We could lose as much as ten percent of our entire force before we even get close enough for our railguns to return fire," he responded, one of his metallic talons raking an angry-looking scratch over his brow as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Normally, his motor control would have been fine enough to avoid such a thing from happening, but his hands were currently shaking badly enough for such accidents to become inevitable.
This was supposed to be a vulnerability in the defense grids of the Dra'var'th, an approach vector into the Beta Draconis system that was not as well-guarded as the others. Ultimately, it had turned out to be a trap, for in the time between the latest intelligence-gathering mission and the present, they had repositioned one of their defense platforms at the very end of the corridor that the Terrans and their allies were hoping to pass through.
The admirals parted as Valyra climbed the steps up to the command dais. "Warlord Wolfe, may we discuss something privately for a moment?" she said, her tone formal and appropriately distant in the presence of all the officials, though Kainan could sense the whirlwind of her emotions through the bond they shared. "Mhmm," he muttered. "My office." He waved his guards away as he stepped away from the tactical display.
As soon as the elevator doors slid shut, he leaned heavily against the wall, raising a hand to his temple. Valyra stepped into his personal space, grabbing his wrist before he could accidentally cut himself again. She watched him silently, her brows curled into a frown of concern she no longer bothered to hide. Still holding his hand, she stepped out of the elevator with him, pulling him along past the guards stationed in the corridor beyond and through the doors to his office. The room was not excessively large, though it was furnished in such a way as to give it an imposing and dramatic quality that seemed to be typical of the Terrans. A desk of genuine wood sat at the far end, painstakingly engraved by hand to display abstract motifs reminiscent of Eastern European cultures, framed by a wall-to-wall viewscreen that currently displayed the stars outside the ship. Opposite of it, a pair of silver reliefs framed the doors through which they'd entered, displaying a scene from one of Earth's forests, a pack of wolves hunting a deer, their lips peeled back into predatory snarls, revealing deadly rows of fangs. The other two walls were dominated by bookshelves, but the office was otherwise empty, aside from the imposing form of the whisper cat currently curled up against the heating unit, blissfully asleep.
The princess ignored the décor as she guided Kainan towards the nearest chair. "What is it?" he asked, a hint of irritation in his voice. Valyra pulled the ration pack she'd clipped onto the ballistic vest she was still wearing and placed it on the desk between them. "You need to eat. And rest," she said, her voice firm, the tension visible in her shoulders. She reached down to wipe away the single drop of blood that was pooling on his brow, her touch gentle and soothing. "I can rest when I'm dead," Kainan muttered with a sigh.
"You will be soon enough, if you keep this up," the princess said gently as she tore open the seal on the ration pack, pulling out a single bar of something the color of concrete. She took a small bite, wincing slightly at the bitter taste. "Still as bad as I remember it from the interceptor," she remarked, though she continued eating.
"Nutrient bar type two," Kainan responded with a smirk as he grabbed one for himself. "It contains everything a soldier needs to keep functioning, in a compact, light-weight package. Efficient."
Valyra let out a small laugh, the sound filling the room with a warmth that seemed to break the tension for a moment. "It tastes like burnt plastic and despair," she teased, her lips curling into a mischievous smile. "You humans… With all your technological and diplomatic achievements, one would think you'd have figured out how to make food taste like something edible, at least."
Kainan shrugged, then tapped a button on his wristcomp, a holographic display of the star system flickering to life above the desk. The princess let out a small, exasperated sigh, her hands working the magnetic clasps of her ballistic vest, stripping it off with a single, fluid motion and tossing it casually onto the desk, causing the holographic projection to flicker. Before Kainan could protest, she wrapped an arm around his neck and sat herself in his lap, her other hand reaching for his chin, tilting his face away from the hologram and forcing him to look at her. "Kainan, you need to rest," she insisted, more firmly this time. "The defense platform…" he protested.
"Will still be there in a few hours," the princess cut him off, her voice laced with frustration. Kainan groaned, his nerves just as frayed as hers and everyone else's aboard the fleet. They needed that system, otherwise the invasion force wouldn't have a supply corridor and the entire campaign would flounder before it even started.
Valyra leaned closer and rested her forehead against his, her fingers gently tracing the line of his jaw. "You're not going to find the answers if you don't get some rest," she whispered softly. "You are far too tired to think clearly right now."
The warlord let out a heavy sigh. He knew she was right, of course. He just… couldn't lay down and rest while the fleet and the entire invasion plan depended on him finding an answer to the problem. He was the one who led them here, who built the alliance, who convinced thirteen species to put their faith in him and he felt responsible for all of it, for their future, for all their hopes and dreams. The mere thought of resting felt like a betrayal.
"I know…" Valyra murmured, sensing his thoughts and worries through their bond. Kainan's hands went to her waist. "I never expected you to be so… warm," he muttered. Valyra snickered, pulling back slightly so she could look him in the eye, her lips curling into a teasing smirk. "We Alvari are more at ease with showing our emotions," she said, a hint of mischief creeping into her voice. "We have long ago learned to find harmony in all things, especially within ourselves. It is you humans who are always so… stiff, I believe is the right expression? Like you have an iron rod bolted to your spines, always fighting stubbornly against the wind, instead of flowing with it."
"Stubbornness is just one of the many qualities of our species," the warlord scoffed and rolled his eyes, though his features lit up with a slight smile. "It makes us disciplined and resilient, determined to keep going when others would have given up. Its the secret ingredient behind all our successes."
"Clearly," the princess responded, eyeing the ration pack that lay forgotten on the desk. Kainan let out a short chuckle, he knew exactly what she meant. One did have to be stubborn to put up with Terran field rations.
Her expression softened. "Why did you choose to call yourself a warlord, Kainan?" she asked, tilting her head slightly. A shadow settled over his eyes, the heavy shadow of a burden too long carried alone.
"In most cultures…" Kainan said, his voice slow and measured. "That title means something savage. Lawless. Brutal. But long ago, in the lands of my ancestors, it meant something else entirely. To them, the warlord was more than just a man with a crown, he was a ruler who took up the grim task of wielding the sword to protect his people against those who would subjugate and destroy them. Bloodline births emperors and kings, but the warlord is not born." He let out a heavy, tired sigh. "He is made by duty. Bound by it. To take responsibility for the wellbeing of his subjects, to carry their hopes and dreams on his shoulders, to safeguard their future and bleed and die for them, if that is what it takes… To do the hard and necessary things that keep him awake at night, so they may sleep with a clear conscience."
"Heavy is the hand that holds the blade…" the princess murmured, her own worries mirroring his as she rested her head against his shoulder. They sat there in silence for a few heartbeats, sharing the same air and trying in vain to shut out the rest of the universe for a few precious moments. The hologram on the desk flickered again and Valyra slowly pulled herself away. "Turn it off for a few hours and get some sleep, Kainan, before you collapse," the princess insisted, taking his hand and pulling him away. He let out a sigh and reached out for the controls, only to freeze as something in the projection caught his eye. He frowned.
"What is it?" the princess asked, her gaze following his, to the small planetoid orbiting just beyond the edge of the asteroid field, grazing the Darkspace anomaly. The warlord let go of her hand and tapped something on his wristcomp, shifting the projection to focus on that planetoid and pulling up the data they had on its orbit.
"Something you said…" he muttered as his mind ran the calculations and an idea began to take shape in his thoughts. "About flowing with the wind instead of fighting against it…" It was an audacious idea. An insane idea. Insane enough that it might just work… He pulled up two more files, one on the fleet's nuclear arsenal and the other, the technical data they had about that minefield. And the exhaustion on his features was replaced by a grim, defiant smile.
~~~~
"Do you realize how absurd that sounds?" the Fyrrathi matriarch accused, unhappy at being woken up at such a late hour and summoned to the CIC of the Agamemnon. The fieldmarshal stood firm under her withering gaze. "The calculations check out, provided the specs you provided on your stealth cruiser's antimatter warheads are correct," he barked back. Shyiuna glanced at him as if just noticing a particularly annoying insect, which made Bayne's jaw clench in anger.
Deciding to intervene before the situation degenerated into a shouting match between overly fragile egos, the warlord took a step between them, fixing the matriarch with his steely gaze. "Its orbit is already unstable due to the Darkspace anomaly. All it needs is a big enough push and those null-field mines will do the rest," Kainan insisted. "But we need your antimatter warheads for that, our nukes just aren't enough."
The matriarch let out an exasperated sigh, reaching up to rub her temples with a pair of manicured temples as she paced around the command dais, her gold-flecked, predatory eyes flicking to the holographic projection hovering in the center, currently displaying a set of complex equations, along with the small, oblong planetoid that was the object of the discussion. Her vulpine ears swiveled towards Valyra as she spoke. "And you, princess? Please tell me you see just how unhinged the human's plan is," she addressed her in High Alvari, her eyes still studying the projection.
"It could work, matriarch," Valyra answered her in Colonial, which was, itself, enough of a statement to make the frown on Shyiuna's features deepen. The princess ignored her irritation, if their alliance was to work, it needed trust and that began with not having discussions behind each other's backs. Besides, she knew at least one of the humans currently present, spoke her people's courtly language, if not all of them, along with the other Pact admirals. "I ran the mathematics, myself," she insisted, her grasp of the dominant human language becoming increasingly fluent the more time she spent among the Terrans.
When Kainan first laid out his idea to her, she had been as skeptical as the House Kitsune matriarch, taken aback by the sheer audacity of it. She had quickly come around, though, once the simulations started displaying the results. "If we time the detonations correctly, we can disrupt the planetoid's orbit enough for this to work."
The Fyrrathi's shoulders slumped, her ears flattening. Valyra knew why she was so hesitant, it wasn't just because of the apparent absurdity of the plan. House Kitsune's cloaking technology was advanced enough to keep the presence of the stealth cruiser concealed from Dra'var'th sensors, especially at this distance, but there was no cloaking field in existence that could prevent every sensor in the system from registering the sheer power of an antimatter warhead's detonation. The Dra'var'th would immediately know who was responsible for aiding the Terrans and even if they couldn't really prove it to the degree necessary to legally justify retaliatory action against a fellow Great House, in reality the disparity of power between the Dragon House and House Kitsune was vast. The Dra'var'th were the third oldest member of the High Table, after all, having been there since the Dawn War itself, while the Fyrrathi had only ascended five millennia ago. If they declared open war against the foxes, they could wipe them out before the rest of the Great Houses could intervene.
Kainan's thoughts mirrored Valyra's own, as he'd been pondering the same problem since he sent the summons out to the Fyrrathi vessel, two hours ago. "We'll blind their sensors," he said, tapping his datapad to pull the schematics of a tachyon lance up onto the main projection.
"I fail to see how that weapon of yours can help us do that," Shyiuna retorted, though the warlord had definitely gotten her attention, as she turned to face him fully, her tails swishing pensively behind her. "We would have to hit every capital ship and space station in the system and as far as I know, tachyons only affect shields, not sensors."
"We're not firing at their ships. We're firing at the Darkspace anomaly," Kainan continued. Tachyon particles and Darkspace did not play along well, it was one of the reasons faster-than-light travel was nearly impossible in those anomalous pockets of space, along with the gravitational distortions which practically made them natural interdiction fields. "We'll destabilize the local anomaly enough to produce a gamma ray pulse. It will temporarily blind every sensor in the system."
"That is going to be a complication for us as well, but manageable if we prepare in advance…" the matriarch muttered. Every ship in the fleet would have to synchronize perfectly with the other vessels, since the entire formation would be flying blind for several precious seconds. Any mistakes could cause collisions. "That leaves one more problem. Those null-field mines will accelerate that planetoid to relativistic speeds, how will our ships keep up with it?"
"Tractor beams," answered the stern fieldmarshal. "We tether every ship in the fleet to the planetoid's surface. It also negates our lack of sensors, allowing us to maintain the formation. We just have to set the missiles on a programmed course and time everything correctly. Our computers have already dealt with that issue."
Finally, Shyiuna acknowledged Bayne with something other than dismissive disdain. "Well, well…" she chimed. "Consider me impressed. You have put a lot more thought into this plan than I thought you might. I assume you also have a way to decelerate once we're in range?"
The fieldmarshal gave her a single nod. "The gas giant," he said simply. The matriarch sighed, shaking her head slowly. "Alright… Let us give it a… shot? Is that the correct expression?" she chirped, tilting her head.
~~~~
The combat information center of the Agamemnon was abuzz with the ordered chaos of a military operation, the chatter kept to a bare minimum of information that needed to be relayed. "Gravlines deployed," announced the navigation officer. "All units, report in," called the communications officer.
In the cold vacuum beyond, fifty thousand vessels repositioned themselves into a tighter formation than a fleet this size had ever done in all the recorded history of the galaxy, their hulls mere hundreds of meters apart from each other. The Fyrrathi stealth cruiser would remain behind, along with one of the tachyon lances and several escorts, something Kainan wasn't fully comfortable with, as he didn't quite trust House Kitsune yet, but there was no other choice in the matter. The rest of the armada maneuvered itself into designated positions, demonstrating a degree of coordination that would impress even the Great Houses' most seasoned admirals and military planners.
"Seventeenth Fleet Section, in position," called out the communications officer. "Ninth Void Swarm and the thirteenth and twenty-seventh Star Hordes moving." The atmosphere aboard the Terran flagship was electric, almost ecstatic, despite the exhaustion and the tension of the previous three days. This would be a battle that would be written about in the history books and military manuals for ages to come and every individual aboard the fleet knew it. A legend was being forged in front of their very eyes and they got to be a part of it.
"Start the countdown," Kainan ordered, his voice stern, the look in his eyes firm and steady as he strapped himself into the crash seat. "Set combat condition throughout the fleet." Klaxons blared throughout the battlecarrier as the order was relayed, the neutral white lighting changing to a dark red as the holographic projection began counting down to zero.
"T minus thirty minutes!" announced the tactical officer. Thirty minutes until the firestorm began. The entire ship, no, the entire universe held its breath as the chronometer counted down the seconds, the tension so thick it could be parted with a sword. "Eleventh Astral Pack in position! All ships reporting green! Tachyon lance, standing by for orders!"
This was it! The moment all of their carefully-laid plans boiled down to. The moment that would decide the course of the war. Kainan slammed his fist on the command console as he relayed the order they were all waiting for. "Fire."
The tachyon lance ignited, illuminating the void with a brilliant, blinding flash of white. The beam surged forward, cutting a path through the vast emptiness of space and slamming into the Darkspace anomaly with the boiling fury of a coronal mass ejection. The anomaly bucked and heaved, like an angry predator disturbed from a long slumber. It recoiled as the beam of tachyons speared itself right into its heart, the space around it twisting unnaturally. And then, it erupted.
It wasn't a visible explosion, for gamma rays were outside the visible light spectrum of every species in the galaxy except, perhaps, the Golems. But every shield aboard every ship in the fleet suddenly flared brightly as the lethal radiation washed over the Pact vessels. All the sensors, temporarily overwhelmed by the sheer power of that surge, failed at the exact same time.
On the opposite side of the planetoid, the missiles which had already been deployed ahead of time, activated in a precise sequence timed down to the millisecond. They raced forward along preset vectors, their targeting systems fried by the gamma ray surge, but the rest of their systems intact. The planetoid's crust burst open like a gunshot wound, bleeding superheated, molten magma into the cold vacuum of space as wave after wave of antimatter and nuclear missiles slammed into it at precisely timed intervals. The shockwave traveled up the tractor beams and into the ships that were anchored to it, causing everyone's bones to rattle. Valyra's hand shot out across the small space between the crash seats and gave Kainan's a brief squeeze before she tucked herself safely into the adaptive, shock-absorbing foam. They had no way of knowing if the crazy plan had worked, not until the planetoid struck the asteroid field and triggered the mines and this was the part everyone hated the most, the waiting and the wondering.
Kainan glanced over at the princess and gave her a reassuring nod. He could feel her presence in the Veil, could sense her emotions through their bond, a heady mixture of worry and excitement. He projected his thoughts into the bond, steady and reassuring. Then, the ship shook even more violently and the G-force readouts spiked sharply, indicating the sudden and powerful gravitational pull of the null-field mines.
Shielded from their destructive power by the planetoid below them, the ships were spared the worst of the chaotic hunger of the artificial microsingularities, though Kainan knew there would be casualties. He also knew many of the civilian outposts and stations within the system would lack appropriate shielding against a gamma ray burst like the one they had just triggered. He gritted his teeth. Yet more ghosts to haunt his nightmares…
"Sensors coming back online in five… four… three…" captain Ishida shouted over the rumbling roar of the vibrating hull. As the holographic projection finally updated, it revealed a scene of apocalyptic pandemonium. Just as predicted, the asteroid field had been thrown into complete chaos, null-field mines detonating and hurling asteroids in every other direction. Some slammed into the already fracturing planetoid, while others spiraled in towards the system's binary stars, where they would be a hazard for years, if not decades, to come. Others were launched outwards, ejected from the system entirely and into the vastness of the interstellar space beyond.
Pulled along by the detonating mines, the iron-rich, dense planetoid accelerated to impossible velocities, surging through space on a parabolic trajectory that would cause it to skim over the topmost layer of the system's outermost gas giant before continuing along a path that would cause whatever would remain of it to be shot out of the system, disappearing into the galactic expanse, where it would roam until the end of time.
The casualty reports began scrolling along on the display, announcing which ships had fallen prey to the chaos unfolding around them. Some had their gravitational tethers snap, while others had been clipped by fragments from the exploding asteroids around them. Others had been torn apart by gravitational forces, their inertial dampeners failing and others more had simply collided with each other. Hundreds of ships had been lost, but hundreds weren't thousands.
"We're through the asteroid field!" announced the captain. The antimatter warheads, the null-field mines, the nukes, they had done their job. The poor, sacrificial planetoid had acted as both snowplow and now, their shield, carving a path through the otherwise insurmountable obstacles laid out by their enemies, a path the Pact fleet now poured through, hidden from the defense installation and its death ray by the shattered surface of the dying cosmic body. The easy part was over. Now, the waiting game. And then, the hard part.
Matriarch Shyiuna's hologram flickered to life in the center of the Agamemnon's combat information center, her expression one of pure, unadulterated shock. "You insane, reckless humans!" she remarked. "Your absurd scheme actually worked! The Dra'var'th fleet is in disarray, scrambling to reposition. They won't catch up with you in time."
Valyra flashed her a feral, predatory grin. "Leave it to the humans to play a game of billiards with an entire solar system," the princess chimed, referencing something she had read about in the Terran database.
"A game of what?" responded the Fyrrathi matriarch, her vulpine ears twitching in confusion. "Nevermind. You have eight hours until you reach that gas giant. Unfortunately, the defense platform will be at the very limit of the effective range of your weapons."
"We have a solution for that," the fieldmarshal interjected, his expression smug. "Something of an unpleasant surprise for the red-skinned devils, a little trick from ancient naval warfare, back on Earth." The matriarch's ears twitched, her nine tails flaring behind her, apprehensive, though she didn't voice the question. She'd find out soon enough just what the human meant.
~~~~
"Prepare to disengage tractor beams on my mark!" fieldmarshal Bayne shouted into the comms, a fierce look in his eyes despite the bags under his eyes, his balding head covered in a sheen of sweat. For eight hours, everyone had remained strapped into their crash seats as the remains of the planetoid, along with the fleet anchored to it, hurtled through the system at relativistic velocity. Eight long hours of enduring the bone-rattling shudders of the ship, of the insane G-forces which pulled at every nut and bolt. The worst part was yet to come.
"We're entering the gas giant's sphere of influence now!" announced the navigation officer. "Cut the tethers!" barked the Fieldmarshal. The Agamemnon shook violently and for a moment, fell still, a sudden, eerie sensation of weightlessness causing Kainan's head to spin. He blinked away the nausea, though not everyone was as stoic as he was, as sounds of retching could be heard throughout the combat information center. "Brace for lithobreaking!" someone announced.
Then, the warlord was thrown back into the seat, the shock-absorbing foam molding itself around him as the flagship and its companions slammed into the atmosphere of the gas giant. The shields flared with a bright, crimson glow, the superheated plasma enveloping them like the breath of a raging dragon. Thrusters fired at full power and G-force indicators jumped to values that would have vaporized every ship in the fleet, were it not for the inertial dampeners which were struggling to keep up with the strain. A dozen alarms flashed onto the viewscreen as systems throughout the battlecarrier were pushed to their absolute limit. Some of the other ships did not fare as well as the Agamemnon did, flickering out of existence with bright flashes as shields failed, or inertial dampeners overloaded.
The universe around the fleet was reduced to an ocean of fire as the Pact ships cut a burning path along the gas giant's atmosphere. Beyond them, the doomed planetoid finally broke apart into several fragments that continued on along their eternal journey. The nameless ball of rock and metal had served its purpose and its noble sacrifice would be memorialized in songs and legends for millennia to come.
The ships decelerated back to something resembling conventional speeds, repositioning as they crested the churning clouds of the gas giant. Then, they were through to the other side and the battle had begun. "Tachyon lances in position," announced the tactical officer. An alarm klaxon blared as several ships went silent, their hulls raked by the Dra'var'th defense installation's death ray, the nervous systems of every crew member aboard, fried into a crisp. "Target locked!"
The tachyon lances returned fire, beams racing across millions of kilometers to strip the defense platform's shields, leaving it exposed and vulnerable. The Dra'var'th fleet, still recovering from their awe at the audacious maneuver of the Terrans and their allies and unused to finding themselves on the back foot after so many eons of dominance, lost its cohesion. Even across the interstellar distance, Valyra could sense the panic sweeping through their numbers, such was their shock at the horrid, rumbling growl of the tachyon beams. Sound in space was something that should not have been possible, yet here it was, heralding the wrath of the Terran forces which had now reached nightmarish proportions in the imagination of their foes.
"Execute capital phalanx," Kainan ordered, his voice psionically amplified over the ordered cacophony of battle chatter. A new klaxon blared, its tone unfamiliar to the princess as the fleet scrambled to obey the command.
"Capital phalanx, capital phalanx!" echoed the comms officer as the holographic projection shifted to display targeting data from the entire fleet. Fifty thousand ships rose from the atmosphere of the gas giant, their hulls covered in soot and wreathed in fire. Fifty thousand ships flared out like the petals of a steel flower, unfurling to face the enemy forces surrounding the defense platform. The computers aboard every one of those fifty thousand ships, synchronized, feeding targeting data to each other and working out firing solutions.
Across the distance, the Dra'var'th ships, their hulls black and jagged, with silhouettes that reminded Kainan of hateful, jagged spikes of obsidian, arrayed themselves for battle, unleashing a barrage of plasma bolts and particle beams at the Terrans and their allies, while remaining far enough to dodge out of the way of any return fire from the primitive kinetic weapons of the Pact vessels. They were unaware of the unpleasant surprise which awaited them as every single warship in the allied fleet slaved its targeting computers to the Terran flagship. "All systems synchronized!" announced the tactical officer. "Calculations complete, targets locked!"
Dodge this, you bastards, thought Kainan as his taloned fingers dug into the edge of his seat. "Fire!" he barked out the order and the Pact vessels unleashed their fury. Every single weapon aboard every single warship, fired in a precise sequence calculated so that all the projectiles would impact simultaneously. It was something reminiscent of the broadsides once employed by wooden galleons on the ancient seas of Earth-That-Was, but on a scale none of those ancient admirals could have comprehended. A wall of tungsten shot forward from the Pact ships, too dense to dodge, too swift for the Dra'var'th computers to even finish processing what was heading their way. "Fire again!" the warlord ordered and a second wave of death followed behind the first.
The projectiles slammed into the enemy fleet with the fury of a dying star. The defense platform, already stripped of its shields, shattered like a bottle in the face of a shotgun, its death ray silenced forever. Two of the dreadnoughts, struck by the cataclysmic force of several axial railguns, listed like wounded fish, their hulls venting oxygen and plasma as onboard systems flickered and died. It was a display of stunning coordination, planning and discipline, the kind of supreme discipline Valyra had come to recognize as a defining feature of the human species.
"Break and engage!" Kainan commanded and the Pact ships peeled off into their individual fleets again, each pursuing their assigned objectives under the command of their admirals. The Agamemnon and its escorts raced across the void, a spearhead thrusting into the very heart of what remained of the enemy formation.
Captain Ishida, now in her element, took back command of the flagship. "Lock mains and secondaries onto that cruiser!" she ordered and the imperial flagship's turrets swiveled to pound a Dra'var'th cruiser that was attempting to peel away from the main formation and swing back around in a flanking maneuver. Combined salvos of nuclear cruise missiles from the Agamemnon's escorts overwhelmed its shields, then the flagship's railguns put an early end to its failed attempt at cleverness.
The colossal battlecarrier shuddered as plasma bolts from an enemy dreadnought splashed against its shields. Around it, strike craft surged forward, swiftly overwhelming enemy fighters through sheer weight of numbers, then continuing on to unleash barrages of nuclear torpedoes into enemy capital ships, or hunting down escape pods, for no quarter would be given that day, not to the Dra'var'th fleet which was responsible for so many atrocities.
Someone screamed as a console overloaded and exploded, medics rushing forward to render aid to the beleaguered astronaut. Sparking wires fell from a detached panel overhead, the lights they'd been connected to, flickering and dying. The Agamemnon shuddered again, this time from the recoil of its own axial railguns, which shot a pair of tungsten darts, each eight meters in diameter, straight into the hull of an enemy dreadnought who's shields had failed.
Casualty reports kept pouring in. Here, a frigate died, cut in half by a pair of particle beams. No survivors. There, a pair of destroyers were losing atmosphere, their reactors going critical. Screams echoed across the comms, cut short by static as the ships they hailed from, died across the void. And yet, the Terrans kept pushing, surging forward with a grim, relentless determination amidst all the violence unfolding around them. Human ships died at a ratio of five for every Dra'var'th vessel they destroyed, yet on they pushed, driven by a fanatical fervor that sent chills down Valyra's spine.
Eventually, inevitably, the Dra'var'th vessels did fall, claimed one by one by the never-ending barrage of kinetic death and lasers unleashed by the Pact fleets. What remained of the enemy formation faltered, then broke, the morale of the defenders finally shattered in the face of the relentless assault. "Pursue and destroy!" called out the zealous fieldmarshal, the veins on his neck bulging with fury. Several Dra'var'th ships attempted to broadcast offers of surrender. Their desperate calls were ignored. "No prisoners! Kill them all!" the fieldmarshal barked out.
No one had any objection to this. If the roles had been reversed, those same ships now offering their surrender, would have delighted in torturing every single person aboard the Pact fleet to death, in manners so horrible, that most languages in the galaxy did not even have the words to properly describe. What the Terrans and their allies did, was merciful by comparison. At least the Dra'var'th died swiftly, a mercy they perhaps did not deserve.
In ages to come, the battle of Beta Draconis would be written about and studied in military academies across the galaxy. Military planners from every civilization would one day adjust their tactics and change their naval doctrines in response to the events that unfolded during the opening battle of the war that would reshape the galaxy. It would not be the greatest battle of the war, or even the final one to take place within this very system, for the Dra'var'th still held the colony on the fifth planet revolving around the twin stars, an orange, main sequence sun and its red dwarf companion. But none of these thoughts currently occupied Kainan's thoughts, neither did the ragged cheers currently echoing throughout the ship, as he unstrapped himself from the crash seat and turned towards the elevator.
Valyra appeared at his side, the Alvari princess still as impossibly graceful and ethereal as she always was, even after spending close to half a day strapped into a crash seat just like he had been. Her hand slipped into the warlord's as soon as the elevator doors hissed shut, her fingers interlacing with his. She turned to face him, her iridescent eyes bright with gentle affection. She said nothing, for nothing needed to be said. No words of celebration for the groundbreaking achievement of the battle, no words of comfort for the new ghosts that would be joining all the others in his nightmares. She was just there, her silent presence grounding him in a way that nothing else could, comforting him with her proximity.
Tomorrow, the invasion of the colony would begin, for the Pact needed to secure that planet as a logistics hub for the campaign. And the ferocity of the space battle would pale in comparison to the grinding horror of a planetary siege. But that was a problem for tomorrow. First, a shower and a proper meal and some well-earned sleep.