Saxon Andrew - A rose grows in weeds

The second group of ships coming from the planet saw the strange ships run from the first group and turn their way. Their excitement rose; here was a chance to hit the enemy. Then they saw the unbelievable speed of the approaching ships and knew that they would be on them is less than forty five seconds and then they saw thousands of bright lights leave the strange ships and come even faster toward them. “Fire missiles and beams, the Plant Fleet Leader ordered but by the time the ships fired the strange ships were on them and going above and below their formations. Their thousands of beams killed more than 400 of the strange ships but then they were past and more than 600,000 penetrators hit them followed by 600,000 missiles fired by the first Plant fleet. Those missiles were programmed to avoid Plant ships but there were too many of them and they couldn’t turn fast enough to avoid their ranks. Once the anti-matter missiles started hitting the Plant ships, the destruction was total. More than a million missiles and penetrators hit those 8,000 Plant ships. As the SR ships turned and came back around to attack the survivors, there was nothing left to attack. As the SR fleet split and went over and under the Plant formations, the Plant missiles lost the ships they were locked on because they could not turn as fast so their sensors locked on one of the penetrators and chased it into the Plant fleet. Most of the Plant ships were hit more than 60 times. Nothing remained, not even dust, especially when the anti-matter missiles they carried on board went off.

“How many ships did we lose?” Smith asked Chen.

“We lost 467, sir.” Smith hung his head a moment and then said, “All ships, move back into formation and prepare to attack the first group.”

The rest of his ships moved quickly and efficiently into formation and the members of the fleet felt a huge confidence in their commander. They had lost more than 400 ships but if a fleet action had been necessary, they all knew that the number would have been tremendously higher. “Attention all ships. We will move in on the first group at flank speed. We will fire two volleys of penetrators and follow them in 200 miles behind them. I want a minimum of ten ships to target their focused primary on every Heavy Battle Ship the Plants have remaining. Weapons, arrange the spacing between each primary to 600 feet. You have 2 minutes to set up your firing solutions. The penetrators will be impacting just as we fire the primaries. Once we fire, all ships turn 90 degrees and fly straight up from their fleet. I’m sure we will have more missiles to dodge.”

Chin programmed the instructions into the weapons console and downloaded them to all of the ships. The computer then assigned the ships to each of the remaining Plant heavies that sensors had targeted and the weapon officers on each ship sighted in on their assigned section of the Heavy’s hull. The distance was decreasing rapidly. “Approaching launch point for the penetrators, Sir.”

“Weapons free, fire penetrators at three hundred miles.”

The salvo of 300,000 penetrators was fired and moved quickly ahead of the fleet. As the fleet reached 200 miles the penetrators began hitting the Plant fleet and every ship fired their primaries at the Heavies. The Plant fleet fired more than 100,000 high energy beams into the SR ranks and those ships unlucky enough to be hit by 100 or more had their screens overload and blow up. The remaining ships turned and rocketed away above the mayhem taking place among the Plant ships. Of the 5,000 heavy ships still in operation before the attack, only two remained able to steer and navigate and they had ten 100 foot wide holes blown completely thru them. The remaining huge ships had the misfortune to have their anti-matter magazines hit and there was nothing left in a forty mile radius around it. Since most of the heavies had support ships to protect them, most of them were destroyed in the resulting blasts. Of the twelve thousand ships that initially attacked the SR fleet, only 2,800 remained that could fight and more than half of them were damaged to some degree. They still would not retreat and turned to chase their attackers.

“Helmsman, come about and make for the remaining Algean ships.” Seven hundred and twenty nine more ships were lost in the second attack against the Heavies but of the original 10,000 that began the attack, 8,804 still remained. They made very short work of the remaining survivors and they then turned to face the massive fleet moving into the system to face them.

The Algeans had lost more than 20,000 ships including all of the heavies that had been collecting the harvesting of the food source for the Algean Empire. The loss of those ships was going to be felt and the incoming fleet was bent on making the intruders pay.

The Algean Fleet Leader that had jumped into the system had been watching the conflict between the ships from the planet and the strange ships as his fleet formed up and began moving in system. “Those strangers are more than twice as fast as my best ship. If we can get close, we can destroy them. The only ships they lost were when they came into range of our beam weapons. Firing missiles at them is an exercise in futility. They can out run them. How am I going to trap them?” He thought as his huge fleet continued to move in toward the strange ships.

Suddenly, the Detection Leader said, “Strange ships coming out of Star Drive behind us.”

The Fleet Leader looked at his display and there were more of the strange ships and these dwarfed the ships that had come in earlier but there were fewer of them. At that point things went bad very, very fast.

Admiral Mikado looked at his display and was amazed at the size of the Algean Fleet he was facing. He had faced twenty thousand ships before in battle but the biggest ships were dreadnaughts that were only 3,600 feet long. The Plant heavy ships were more than 100,000 feet long at 23 miles in length and there were more than 40,000 of them in the ships facing him; his ships at 5,180 feet long looked tiny in comparison. He had to decide now about what direction he was going to take. One part of him said to do as much damage as possible then run; but then the remaining 2 million Pydres would be facing a death sentence once the Plants continued the harvesting of their planet. He turned to Captain Kelly and said, “Get Kosiev and Dorg on a channel right now.”

Kelly turned to his communications officer Cheryl O’Sullivan and said, “Make the contact, Lieutenant.”

He waited for a minute then his display came on. He saw the two Admirals looking at him and he said, “I’m sending you a feed of the Plant fleet sent to rescue the ships at the Pydres Planet.” On his display he saw both of them look away and he could see their amazement at the feed they were receiving. “Before I continue this operation, I want to make sure that this is what you think we should do.”

Kosiev said, “You’re the commander on the scene; what are your thoughts.”

Mikado looked at the feed and then said, “If we back off now we will be running from now on. I recommend that we jump the forts and transports in to the Planet and start the ground action against the Plants. We may have to leave the system if our fleet can’t defeat this large an enemy but I am going to trust that even this fleet won’t be able to defeat the forts. The new weapons should keep them at long range. I would rather fight them here and now than at the Dremels planet where there are billions of lives at risk there.”

“Do you think the forts and Marines can hold out over an extended conflict?” Dorg asked worrying about his brother leading one of the divisions.

“I took the liberty of using the Cainth transports you sent to load them with munitions and structures for the troops to erect to fight the Plants. Those transports are huge and the troops and the fort should have enough to last 6 months. If we have to retreat, I will park the Empire class ships under the forts shield to support the drop troops and then the Ultras and my Megas will just jump out of the system.”