Ivan Kal - What War Had Wrought

December; Year 58 of the Empire — Empire Command Ship Gallant

Adrian’s fleet dropped out of hyperspace almost a light month away from their target. Far enough away that they were out of the Erasi’s active sensors range, and sufficiently away that there was no chance for their exit from hyperspace to have been seen. Adrian turned to the command room crew of the command ship Gallant. “Is everything ready?”

“Yes, Lord Sentinel. We are in contact with the forward element, everything is ready to go,” Fleet Commander Rtsaar answered.

Adrian nodded at the Guxcacul, and turned to look at the holo, which started showing him a real-time image of the Erasi fleet that they were receiving from the stealth ships in the system. The plan was to hit them hard, hit them fast, and before they could react. He checked the positions of the Erasi ships in the area of the massive cloud-like formation of the Erasi fleet that he was planning on attacking. With his implant, he adjusted the targets a bit to account for the slight shift in the Erasi formation. Then he turned back to the Fleet Commander.

“Send the first wave,” Adrian ordered.

Rtsaar manipulated her console, and a moment later, she relayed the order. Fifty-one cargo ships released the skim missiles from their holds, five thousand one hundred in total, and their thrusters fired up, sending the missiles forward towards the system as they settled into a formation. The cargo ships then turned around and entered hyperspace, going back to Kaleras. As soon as the missiles achieved max velocity, just over two hundred missile pods activated their skim drives and disappeared, followed quickly behind by the skim missiles. A timer appeared and started ticking down over the large holo-table, one counting down until the missiles and pods arrived at their destination.

“What is the chance that they would notice the skims and react before our wave gets there?” Adrian asked.

“Less than twenty percent,” Iris answered.

Adrian nodded and turned to the holo. Everyone around him watched and waited as the timer ticked down. Then when it hit the halfway point, Adrian gave the order for the fleet to enter skim. The twelve fleets entered skim. Twenty and a half thousand warships started on their way towards the Erasi fleet that outnumbered them thirteen to one.

The Empire’s missile pods exited the skim first, dropping out of it inside the outer layer of the large Erasi formation. Six pods didn’t survive the trip as a small group of Erasi ships moved into the area. The pods smashed into three Erasi battleships, blowing them to bits and destroying the pods in the process. Their targets had been well chosen in advance, and before the Erasi even had a chance of detecting them, the pods started releasing their missiles. With the element of surprise, the pods got the first strike. Each of the pods carried three hundred missiles, and they were firing them as fast as possible, but the first missile struck against an Erasi warship long before the last missile left the pod.

Confusion reigned, and just as the Erasi were figuring out what was happening, a mere minute after the pods had exited skim, the skim missiles arrived. Five thousand one hundred missiles, or something more like shuttles armed with nuclear weapons, dropped out of skim, and their thrusters pushed them towards their target, across the section of the Erasi formation. Nuclear fire blossomed, destroying super battleships in its wake, and the EMP taking down the systems of the surrounding ships.

Caught unprepared, the Erasi couldn’t respond. Across their fleet, chaos spread.

Adrian’s fleets dropped out of skim at the furthest edge of the Empire’s missile range. Immediately, his holo updated, and he saw the devastation that his attack had wrought.

“Order all ships to fire,” Adrian told Rtsaar, and she relayed his orders.

Every Empire ship started firing missiles as fast as their launchers could handle. The drones and cruisers started firing explosive kinetic shells intended to overload their shields in the direction of the massive cloud of ships. Battleships and dreadnoughts targeted their k-turrets in the general direction and started firing the ship killer kinetic weapons. Tens of thousands of missiles left his fleets every second, countless slugs of metal, and hundreds of kinetic ship killers, and soon the Gallant’s holo was filled with missile signatures streaking across space towards his confused and disoriented enemies, who wouldn’t even know of danger until it was much too late.

Adrian had chosen the types of missiles his forces equipped for this mission very carefully. The pods were armed with a mix of MAHEM MK VII and Enforcer MK X missiles. MAHEM for their powerful magnetic force generators that would shape the missile’s liquid core into a spearhead and penetrate deep into an unshielded hull to deliver their explosives inside, ensuring if not a complete destruction of the enemy ship, then at least critical damage. And the Enforcer missiles were chosen for their sheer destructive power. They were simple explosive warheads equipped with small, shimmering fields, enough that they could survive point defense long enough to reach their targets.

Most of the missiles that his warships had fired were Swarm MK IX missiles, with ion missiles mixed in. By the time those missiles reached the Erasi, they would have gotten their shields online, and would actively be searching for the enemy. At the highest rate of fire, the last of his ships finished emptying their missile and kinetic magazines almost half an hour later, just as the first fired missiles passed the halfway point towards the Erasi.

“Order a retreat,” Adrian told Rtsaar, while his eyes were still glued to the holo. His twelve fleets had fired more missiles for this one engagement than what the Empire had used in the entire war with the Sowir. And by now, the Erasi must’ve noticed. His ships turned and made their way towards the hyperspace barrier. The Erasi ships were faster, and Adrian did not want to be caught by a force far larger than his; the counter above him told him that the skim drives across the fleets would be recharged in around twenty minutes. He would be able to escape long before the Erasi caught up, but he didn’t want that, not yet. His ships were not moving at their top speed, because he wanted them to follow.

Adrian’s attacks had targeted a part of the formation that was dense, and occupied only by Erasi warships. He could’ve attacked their support fleets and probably destroyed far more ships, but that would’ve harmed only their force’s long-term capability, and Adrian needed to harm their short-term capabilities. Another possible target had been their levy fleets, but from gathered intelligence he knew that they were a mix of races that were less advanced than the Erasi, with a few exceptions that were on par. Adrian needed to hurt them, and that meant attacking Erasi ships of the line. He had wanted to take a shot at one of their massive ships, of which there were now two, and one of which had probably been a part of the ambush on Numvani, but unfortunately those ships were at the center of the formation. Impossible to get with a skim missile without it hitting something before and losing most of its destructive potential. So Adrian had settled with destroying as many of their warships as possible.

And by the look of it, he had succeeded. The pods and the skim missiles had been effective. There was no way for him to tell the exact number of destroyed ships, not with all the confusion and destruction. But he knew that the number had to be high; he had caught them completely off guard.

Then his attack reached the Erasi. Not surprisingly, they had managed to recover enough from the sneak attack. The Erasi ships had their shields online, and they had a semblance of a formation in the first line reestablished. It didn’t matter. His missiles overwhelmed that first line, smashing through and destroying it in its entirety and pushing deeper into the formation. Kinetic shells pelted the shield of any ship in their path; his ship killers shattered against their shields and, in the cases of them coming against a smaller class of ship, punched through entirely, destroying the ship in the process.