The Terran Calamity

Streaks of Light

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Location: UTNS Excalibur

Admiral Donathin Keyes

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The bridge was lively as the feed cut out and the Republic admiral and his staff winked out of existence. Keyes sighed, he was a bit old for this bullshit. The younger person who was obviously a Jedi had the arrogance to quip his quote reminded him of young recruits at boot camp, motivated by all those military videos, clips, and an excessive amount of video games and media, overconfidence that would be painfully wrung out within 4 seconds by a hardass drill sergeant, and those drill sergeants don't beat around the bush. They get right to the damned point, something he would do today for the Republic.

"What's my status for the fleet?" he asked a bit tiredly as Henry glowed red for a millisecond, indicating his calculations as he returned to his normal colors as Keyes straightened himself.

"100% of the fleet is reporting full charge for the Magnetic Accelerated Energy Cannons and are ready to fire on your order, fighters and smaller spacecraft are currently in reserve screens and are out of the way, Republic fleet is within our firing arcs and should enter missile range in 3 minutes at their current burn m'lord," Henry cheerfully quipped in his tough and roughened english accent as his personality for his knighthood shone through. Keyes hated when he did that but he didn't say anything.

"Light 'em up and guns free!" Keyes said loudly, though not yelling levels of decibels he still had authority. He looked out the viewscreen to see the 4 frontal O-MAEC's discharge each of their 1000 ton Ferro-Tungsten Slugs mixed with above average plasmic elements, a trademark of overcharged cannons as they made streaking patterns across the Strangreal system.

The other 131 vessels also fired their munitions as hundreds of slugs streaked across the sky, ranging from the smaller 300 Tons fired by the Frigates to the gargantuan monsters of the 1,500 ton slugs being fired by the only Nebula Class Fleet Carrier of the ask group, the Quasi which were joined by the hundreds of beams of energy from the Terran and Sangheili vessels racing with the slugs with the same malicious intent, to slaughter.

Traveling at 30% the speed of light had its benefits, as both ionized plasma and pure metal mayhem slammed into the Republic fleet. From afar Keyes could see the winking of orange and blue lights as he tried to trace his shots but had no luck, luckily for him each MAEC Round came with a tracker and sensor system to confirm long range kills. For the Republic who had to brave the waves of plasma, tungsten, and pure 'fuck you' power, it was not a battle but a fight for their survival as MAEC Rounds slammed into shields, cracking them with pure kinetic energy and projectors slicing and dicing the Republic fleet like a raw onion.

"Sir, multiple kills achieved, 9 made by us, half capital ships and the other smaller escort and support vessels, kills across the fleet are reported to be an estimated 200 and possibly more, though our numbers may be closer to 300," said Henry as the kill readout from all the sensory data came flooding back in as Keyes looked and marveled at it for a second.

"Well pardon me m'lord, we have confirmed 294 kills made by the fleet," said Henry, correcting his estimate from before, Keyes however didn't really listen to it, he could see the readout on screen. A majority of the kills were smaller escort vessels but he had scored a bunch of kills on the Republic's mainline ship classes.

"How many minutes till they are within firing range?" asked Keyes. He knew he had the long range advantage and he intended on using it to the best of his ability to. He knew from his intel sources that while considerably weaker than a Mini-MAEC and a Railgun which had obviously more firepower and density, the cannons used by the Republic would by far overtake the UTSC's secondary armament in fire rate and volume, meaning if the Republic had the numbers, which they had now, and got close enough to the Terrans, it would essentially allow the Republic to rip into the UTSC's vessels like no tomorrow from the amount of spam that would make shotgun users blush.