Ivan Kal - What War Had Wrought

The Erasi force started to move deeper into the system, one massive cloud of ships coming to destroy them.

Anessa watched as the Erasi formation divided, a large portion of it heading towards the fifth planet in the system and its defenses. The station there was mostly warehouses, with a few habitats that were mostly used for making trading deals. But close to the planet were two trans-points, both incoming and both defended. Unlike the Empire, which typically had one massive station as the defense of a point, the Shara Daim had four smaller defense stations surrounding the point. The points must have been a priority for the Erasi; the trans-points were the only reason why one would want to take a hub system.

Anessa started giving orders. Her fleets had been divided and placed strategically across the system, as they hadn’t been sure where the Erasi would arrive. She ordered two of her forces, each consisting of ten fleets, to move to support the defenses at the points. The rest of the Erasi formation was moving slowly, almost unconcerned as they moved to take positions above the sun’s plane. Then another two formations moved away from the main Erasi force to attack other points of interest in the system and she sent out more orders. The main force even without those three formations numbered almost as much as Anessa’s and Adrian’s combined fleets. Anessa knew that this was a delicate dance; the Erasi wanted to force her to overextend, allow them to take a large part of her force with overwhelming numbers, and she needed to poke at them and take down their numbers. The Erasi couldn’t allow themselves to be caught unaware, so they were going to be moving slowly, working their way through the system destroying any threat and taking control of the trans-points, setting up defenses to prevent any reinforcements that would come behind their back.

Then the first Erasi formation began their attack on the defense stations. The Erasi had launched kinetic projectiles, rocks, at her stations, and Anessa grimaced as she realized that Adrian had been right. The Erasi had a way of dealing with her fixed defenses. The crews of the defense stations tried firing at them, but they were extremely hard to see; the only reason they even knew they were coming was because they had been watching the Erasi ships and saw them being launched. Then the Erasi ships started firing missiles, which made it even less likely that they would manage to take the rocks down. Her own ships started firing their own missiles, and the stations fired their own.

The space between them was filled with exploding missiles, as both sides’ point defenses started taking them down. Her side seemed to have an upper hand, as fewer of the Erasi missiles passed through the combined defenses of the stations and her warships. Then the kinetic weapons hit. Rocks smashed into the stations’ shields, illuminating them in bright showers of fire as they broke apart on impact. The stations held for a time, until they didn’t. The shields failed and the rocks hit the stations, blowing through them and taking them apart.

Grimly, she gave the order for her ships to start retreating slowly while firing at the Erasi, who were now moving to take the orbit of the planet, destroying the few defensive platforms there and taking possession of the warehouses in orbit.

The second Erasi taskforce was attacking another incoming trans-point and there, instead of taking shots from range, they had pressed their attack, surprising her forces. The Erasi ships surged forward once the stations and the defense platforms were gone, engaging her forces. Her taskforce started suffering losses and she opened a channel to Adrian’s ship, asking him to help them. The Empire’s fleets and her own First Legion were her best weapons, the only ships in the system that had the skim technology. And she needed to use them wisely. Adrian sent his acknowledgment, and four of his fleets disappeared on their way to help her Legions.

Four of the Empire’s fleets dropped out of skim flanking the Erasi fleets. Immediately, they started firing proton beams and kinetic shells into their flank, forcing them to evade the shower of metal slugs. The Shara Daim ships, seeing a chance, pressed a counterattack, forcing the Erasi to begin a retreat. The Empire and the Shara Daim forces followed them and fired at them until another Erasi force detached from the main force and set a course towards them.

Seeing a much larger force on its way, the Empire and Shara Daim ships turned around, executing a retreat of their own.

Kaleras

A day later, Adrian woke from his short two-hour nap, which was all he generally needed to be rested, and rushed to the command center. Thankfully, nothing major had occurred while he slept; there were a few skirmishes as the Erasi and Shara Daim ships got too close to each other, but other than that, the Erasi had been happy to bombard another trans-point from afar, and secure the points they had captured. Their auxiliary ships obviously included cargo ships, as they had brought defense platforms of their own and had placed them at the incoming trans-points, ensuring that any force coming through them would be met with instant response.

An hour later, the situation changed, as Adrian noticed a very big chunk of the Erasi formation moving, signaling another big push. The fighting until now had gone mostly equal; both had suffered almost equal losses, with the Shara Daim of course losing their defenses at an alarming rate. The new Erasi formation headed towards an area where there were several incoming and outgoing trans-points, and significant defenses protecting both the points and the stations in the area.

Adrian knew that this was going to be the first larger battle of the siege. This was a point where they could hurt the Erasi. And the Erasi knew it. The force they were sending was almost half of their total number, almost equal to the entire defending force in the system. Anessa’s orders came through to the Gallant, and Adrian started relaying them to his fleets.

The thing that bothered him the most was that this was the first time that the Erasi’s new type of warship was joining the battle. Adrian assumed that that was the flagship of the O’fa. The problem was that they knew very little about its capabilities. From the scans on Numvani, he knew only that their shields were far more powerful than anything that the Empire or the Shara Daim had, that its hull was made of an unknown material, and that it possessed a weapon capable of cutting right through their shields. They weren’t sure if any other Erasi ship had those weapons, but so far they hadn’t used them, which didn’t mean anything.

He had debated with Anessa about sending a couple of skim missiles at it, but it never gave them a clear shot, and Adrian wasn’t about to waste a skim missile just to test that ship. Thankfully, only one of the ships had come with the Erasi force, which was a small blessing if that ship was as powerful as Adrian suspected.

Shara Daim forces moved into the protective envelope of the defenses and waited for the Erasi. Like before, the Erasi sent rocks at the defenses, but this time Anessa’s ships and defense stations started taking them down with pinpoint accuracy. Adrian had scattered enough stealth drones around the area that they could triangulate the speed and trajectories of the rocks. The Erasi would need to come into the range if they wanted to take that point.

And they did. A mass of Erasi ships entered the range and started firing missiles, just as the Shara Daim did the same. The Erasi outnumbered the defenses and could put out more missiles, but the advantage of the defense stations and platforms was enough that they were near equal, both taking small losses, but nothing that would break the defense. That is, until a large group of Erasi ships, almost five fleets, among which was the Erasi flagship, started moving forward, while the rest of the Erasi ships adjusted their formation to cover their advance.