Fate of Terra

Chapter 13.2 - Adaptation

The Fleet Master sighed impatiently at the delay. "Very well," He grumbled, making notations on his display. "Open up the ranks here, here, and here... Let the rocks fly through and then get back into formation again. Tell the ships that anyone who doesn't move fast enough will be fed to the Rha'kovsk." Going back to watching the assembled fleet of this primitive race, he wondered who was responsible for helping them achieve such a feat. They had made many enemies throughout the galaxy. Perhaps the Rhemish or the Laksurcians could have been responsible. He supposed those pesky traders could have managed it as well...

As the asteroids neared the ships, the Sensor Manager frowned at his display. "I'm getting some odd readings about their composition. There are trace elements that faintly show up beneath the surface. I think-"

He stopped as alarm spread throughout the B'Amuf fleet like wildfire. The asteroids had suddenly accelerated madly, moving onto ballistic trajectories towards the unsuspecting ships. The B'Amuf ships all along their line began to open fire, but the incoming projectiles were already inside their formation. Many rocks split apart and began opening fire, others simply found a capital ship and attempted to ram it.

The sudden ferocity that ships began dying with caused fear and surprise to radiate through the B'Amuf as they were caught flat-footed. The attack was all the more devastating and psychologically traumatizing when they realized just how destructive the Terran nukes packed into the rocks were. At last, the rocks were expended and they managed to make it through the asteroid belt, leaving hundreds of hulks behind. However, the real damage was that their formation was now in complete disarray.

Wanting to capitalize on this, Michael had sent forth an expendable force of AI-controlled ships, like the peasants that had been sent before the knights in the Middle Ages to soften up the enemy. Following this force, the TDF had sent thousands of missiles that would hopefully be covered until they could reach their targets. The B'Amuf were so preoccupied by this surprise offensive, hardly any of them noticed the Terran fleet splitting into two ominous prongs.

The expendable force finally closed and began pouring light blue, green and orange pulses of plasma onto their targets, their ion cannons firing full bore, knowing they wouldn't survive for long. Ships on both sides exploded. The B'Amuf attack craft weren't used to fighting anything larger than a fighter and thousands were shredded before multiple capital ships could concentrate their beams and get through the shields of the oncoming ships.

* * * * *

The sensor officer aboard the Intrepid intoned, "Twenty-two thousand kilometres until enemy contact at the forward lines... twenty-one thousand... twenty..."

"Start the weave," Aurora ordered. 

All along their line, dreadnoughts began to move, exchanging places with those behind the front ranks. This was to allow their shields time to recover and would ensure they wouldn't be exposed for more than thirty seconds.

Battlecruisers supported individual dreadnoughts, switching places with each other. Destroyers would field enemy fire without exposing themselves -overlapped by the bigger ships' shields while fighters would fill in the gaps and watch for enemy attack craft. The formation was pulled off with a machine-like efficiency that was impressive to behold.

The Council's attack prong was much different. For one, they had a great reliance on missile technology and released them by the hundreds of thousands, trying to simply overwhelm the oncoming B'Amuf ships. Their fighters actually acted as mules, releasing their payloads and then returning to their carriers to rearm. They didn't use dreadnoughts or battlecruisers, but battleships that tried to incorporate the armour of the former with the speed of the latter. The battleships would bear the brunt of the B'Amuf line while the destroyers, fighters, and their attached carriers would remain behind them and unload their missiles unhindered. 

Finally, the organized Terran death machine crashed into the far larger but disorganized B'Amuf fleet. Michael knew the math said their shields ought to hold, but at magnitudes of this scale, that didn't mean much. If 5,000 B'Amuf rays all hit a dreadnought at once, it was going down no matter how much armour and shielding they'd provided.

All along the human fronts, ships began exploding as their shields were overwhelmed. Michael noticed the weave helped their chances of survivability, but in many cases thirty seconds was still too long an amount of exposure. He knew that if the B'Amuf formation hadn't been in chaos, they would have been easily overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

And then they were among the B'Amuf shuttlecraft and Kat was flying like a demon, Michael's personal guard struggling to keep up. As he was assaulted by G-forces, he tried to pay attention to their lines and reinforce points before they could collapse. Onboard the Intrepid, scores of tacticians did the same with capital ships, operating terminals on the lower level of the bridge. Pandora struggled to handle the math portion involved in carrying out their decisions. 

After a half hour of fighting, clear distinctions between their forces became obvious. Every time the AI ships would retreat into the weave, the B'Amuf ships would follow and then become quickly enveloped by the ships that were coming up to replace them. This formed a very effective grinder that was chewing through the B'Amuf forces, actually requiring them to pull forces away from the Council's side to face them.

Having identified Michael's flagship, the B'Amuf would make suicide runs through their lines to try and take out the Intrepid. As the largest ship in the area by far, it was also the most capable. Not only did its Rail Guns bite into the enemy ships at an extreme range more than three times what the B'Amuf ships were capable of, but the oncoming vessels were absolutely shredded when under the full assault of the Ion Cannons.

No ship was able to come close to damaging the Intrepid as it had five shields that shut off in sequence to allow the outermost to recharge, then covering the innermost while they regeneraged. In other words, if the enemy ships took twenty seconds to break through one shield and another twenty to break through the next, before they could breach the third shield the first would reactivate and they'd need to do it all over again. They'd need to pour an insane amount of fire all at once to even think about getting through the shields. The immense battlecarrier still had problems with ships trying to ram it though, and the crews worked feverishly to make sure that didn't happen.

"Master," Pandora informed him, sounding strained. "The Council's line is about to collapse. Their missiles are being negated by the tens of thousands of attack craft, while the battleships have to concentrate on all those individual swarms instead of the B'Amuf capital ships."

Michael grimaced and made some notations on his pad. "Reinforce them with our reserves in Quadrant II and tell whatever idiot is in charge of their destroyers to move them up to support the battleships. They must be about empty of missiles anyway and they can use their cannons to handle the attack craft."

"Yes, master," She responded, as if simply communicating was taking a toll on her. Just then, the strange B'Amuf ships in the back of the formation moved up. Four large ships formed a diamond with the B'Amuf flagship behind them. Between the four, there began to radiate a massive ball of energy that first topped their scales, then fritzed them out in a shower of sparks in the smaller crafts and frying circuits in larger ones. 

"They seem to be building up a tremendous amount of kinetic force," Pandora exclaimed, sounding alarmed. "If they release that, I don't think we have a shield that can stand up to it. Luckily, I don't think they can fire it very far, so-"

Suddenly the ship in the rear fired a beam into the ball of energy and the four ships that made up the diamond exploded. From that, a beam of pure energy miles wide shot out on a direct path towards the Intrepid. They apparently figured it was worth the sacrifice to destroy the flagship of the force that was giving them so much trouble. Michael frantically made some calculations. Fifty seconds for the Intrepid to see it, another ten to be able to make any noticeable change in direction... 

Pandora answered for him, sounding resigned. "Not enough time. I've sent the override orders on a tight beam for them to take the most effective evasive movements, but it will still hit them. They planned it perfectly to aim right where the Intrepid was going to be next in the weave. We were too predictable."

Michael began moving AI-controlled ships in between the beam and the Intrepid anyway, even though all of his readings said they'd only be torn to pieces. He felt fear for his loved ones and desperately stamped down on it before it could turn into hopelessness. "Back to the Intrepid," He ordered Kat. The beam was actually faster than them, but they had less distance to travel. Kat looked grim, but did as he asked.