SYSTEM: ULFRHEIM
DATE: 2404
The fleet dropped out of warp, and Vitor gave an order to adjust their course parallel to the world as he waited for the sensors to update. Soon enough, the long-range data started coming in, and it showed a wall of red.
“Any sign of the Union fleet?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“No, Admiral,” the sensor operator confirmed a moment later.
Vitor wasn’t surprised to hear that. Char had been pretty clear with her intention to pull out the moment the Shican arrived.
“What about the planetary defenses?” They had been too far away to back up Lagertha Char’s forces, but if the defenses were still holding the enemy back, maybe they could do something.
“Negative, Admiral,” the same sensor officer confirmed. “The planet is showing significant dust in the upper atmosphere, suggesting nuclear bombardment as well.”
“Show me,” he ordered.
The holo updated, showing a long-range view of the planet. The enemy ships circling it looked like tiny bright dots, but he wasn’t concerned for those. His gaze was fixed on the planet and the ugly brown haze that was starting to circle around in bands large enough to see even from their distant vantage point.
Vitor knew this was the most likely outcome, but it still made him sick to see what the Shican were willing to do. “Compare the current count of enemy contacts with our previous records. I want to know how many of the bastards died to the defenses.”
The officer confirmed the order.
While she was working on that, Vitor sent a command for the fleet to cold launch their missiles. He fully expected to have the enemy notice them and jump on top of them shortly, and he was going to make them regret that decision.
The enemy’s Grand Commander was good; the enemy didn’t give a single sign that they had noticed his fleet. One second, they were around the planet, and the next, over two hundred enemy ships arrived close enough to lock down space with a gravity trap. A moment later, the holo display updated to correct the sensor lag.
There was no hesitation from either side as every ship opened up. The enemy was not expecting the hundreds of missiles, however. The weapons activated their drives and zipped past the enemy point defenses to slam into unprotected hulls before the enemy had time to bring up their ECM.
Thanks to the Shican prisoner’s information, the fleets now had a better idea of which enemy vessels had defensive fields and which didn’t. Only the enemy battleships and destroyers were equipped with the defensive field, while the frigates and carriers weren’t. The missiles targeted the unprotected ships, while every laser in the fleet was aimed at the destroyers.
“Captain, we have a targeting solution for the EFEC.”
“Fire!” he ordered.
Through the chaos of the fight, one round blasted from Judgement’s main cannon, and an enemy battleship exploded. As much as he would like to sit by and savor the minor victory or pick off more of their battleships, more and more enemy ships were arriving every moment.
He sent a command to the fleet to jump. A moment later, they vanished from the system, using the Shican’s own tactic against them.
***
“You let them slip through your claws?” Thesska growled.
His vessel had been on the backside of the enemy world when he gave the order for the fleet to engage. By the time he was able to come around the planet, the enemy had already ravaged the fleet and fled, which they shouldn’t have been able to do.
“The gravity traps were deployed, Grand Commander,” Commander Kynel hissed angrily. “Your tactic seems to be flawed.”
Thesska had picked this commander as one of his primary subordinates after arriving because he was one of the few with a spine.
“No, Commander, you just failed to deploy it properly. You should have jumped in front of the enemy or within their fleet. That would have disrupted their warp fields, even without the gravity trap.”
The Commander growled quietly in annoyance, but he flicked his ears in acknowledgement. “That would have been risky.”
“Risky, but it would have paid off,” Thesska added. “How many ships did we lose?”
“Fifty-seven, including Commander Reshi.”
Thesska didn’t know that commander very well, which meant he was barely competent. “How did the humans destroy an Emperor’s blessed vessel in such a short engagement?”
“The same way they did before you arrived. It appears the humans have a new, powerful weapon, some sort of mass driver far more powerful than our railguns. So far, only their largest vessel has deployed this new weapon.”
Stolen novel; please report.
These humans were amusing in their attempts to fight back, but maybe the hunt on them wouldn’t be a complete waste. The planets were turning out to be decently tough targets to crack. It gave the humans time to evacuate the previous world, but not this one. Watching the pathetic humans flee through their streets looking for safety did wonders to sate the fleet’s bloodlust.
It wouldn’t completely quell their desire for direct combat; that would only come when he had time to deploy ground forces. With the enemy fleets poking at their flanks to protect their worlds, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Now they also had a weapon that the Shican could take, making him want to push the armada even harder. He was almost glad the silver aliens had slipped through his claws.
After only a moment of thought, he made a decision. “Gather the fleet, we move to the next world.”
“What about the rest of the targets on the surface of this one?” Kynel asked.
“The majority of the surface targets are destroyed; they won’t be a threat. We will come back for the rest later. In fact, leaving a few struggling humans alive might make the humans more inclined to stick around and fight. They have something interesting, and I want it.”
Commander Kynel nodded. “I will relay your orders.”
Thesska ended the call after that and sat back in his seat with a pleased expression. Losses were inevitable with any campaign, but accelerating his timeline was going to lead to more. He was fine with that. After returning to the fleet, he realized just how much chaff had risen up in Shican society. It would be easy to place the weakest of the commanders at the head of the fleet.
Very few Commanders were like Kynel. He would not lose a moment of rest if those failures got themselves killed like Reshi.
A few of the more skilled commanders might see his actions as a slight, but they would get their turn to shine. There were plenty of worlds to burn and hundreds of human ships to fight against.
***
“The Shican are withdrawing, Admiral.”
Vitor wished he could take that as a win, but he knew a significant amount of the survivors on the surface of Ulfrheim 4 would die in the coming days and weeks from either exposure, radiation poisoning, or starvation.
“Take us closer to the planet,” he said.
They knew where the aliens were heading next, and there was little he could do to stop that. They would have to hope that the much more robust defenses around the next world would hold the Shican off.
The fleet appeared near the ravaged world, and it looked even worse from up close. Wildfires kicked up by the nuclear detonations burned across large swaths of green, adding even more smoke to the quickly darkening atmosphere.
“Any signals?” Vitor asked, not taking his eyes away from the destruction.
“We are not receiving any comm signals from the planet, but I am picking up multiple emergency radio beacons.”
Vitor wasn’t surprised to hear that. The comm node had been located in the capital, and there was nothing left of that but the few ghosts of buildings and fires. The Shican had hit it multiple times, seemingly not satisfied with a single nuke.
Vitor pressed the button on his command chair, and an all-hands alert went out to the fleet. “This is Admiral Krieger. I want teams suited up and shuttles ready to depart with food and water. We might not be able to help everyone below or take anyone with us, but we can take some time to move them to less ravaged areas. You have twenty-four hours before we depart to chase the bastards that did this. Make every second count.”
Over the next day, the shuttles saw more use than they had since the war began. Vitor watched them depart the fleet, then he left them to their own devices while he contacted the resupply ships.
Normally, he wouldn’t have even considered sending out a comm signal or waiting around in such a compromising position, but a helpful tracking program added by Alex’s new friends changed that. It allowed them to determine when the Shican fleet was in warp and thus cut off from normal space. It wasn’t real-time tracking, but just knowing when the Shican couldn’t intercept comm signals made the Union’s efforts to coordinate much easier.
Vitor wasn’t told how something like that was possible, but he had a hunch based on the fact that the signal started to drop out as the gravity plate disruptions grew. Even now, it flickered fitfully. It wouldn’t be too much longer before they wouldn’t be able to track the Shican any longer, and they would be back to doing things the old way without comm messages.
He turned his attention to a second signal, one that popped up shortly after the Shican armada went into warp. The first time he saw it, he contacted the AIs to ask why he was seeing multiple signals. After they explained it had to be two fleets, it didn’t take long to realize what it was. Once he realized the Shican were being shadowed closely by a support fleet, he sent every single stealth vessel in the fleet to try and locate it.
It was not proving to be an easy task. The Shican did not deploy it to the same location in interstellar space after each jump, but the automated ships relentlessly hunted for them after every jump.
“Have our scouts reported in yet?” Vitor asked.
“Not yet, Admiral,” the comm officer replied regretfully.
Vitor grunted. “Alert me as soon as they do.”
He wished they had another few dozen Swordfish to send out to look for the enemy supply convoy. They were running out of time to hit the enemy’s support fleet. Given the state of the tracking system, it wouldn’t survive for more than a week. And he couldn’t direct forces to hunt for something that may or may not be there. It was bad enough wasting resources when he knew there was something to look for.
After the elapsed time was up, the shuttles returned from the surface, covered in greasy soot that would require days of decontamination. It was a small price to pay for relocating over eight thousand civilians.
Vitor had already notified Char of the survivors. She wouldn’t be returning, since her fleet was racing for the next planet in the Shican’s path of destruction. The rescue ships also wouldn’t be coming back, as they were heading for Union worlds not yet on the Shican’s path of destruction.
The aliens were heading in a general direction toward Unokane, but nobody could be sure if that was their ultimate goal. The Shican seemed more concerned with destroying any planet that might pose a risk to their advance rather than pushing forward, so that led to a rather meandering path across Union territory. The allied fleets only knew their next destination because the enemy headed for the closest inhabited system after each strike. They may have only struck two worlds so far, but the enemy had ravaged five other systems along their path, leaving nothing in their wake until now. It was not a good sign.
Once the shuttles were situated, Vitor gave the order to follow the Shican fleet.
***
They were less than a day from exiting hyperspace on the outskirts of the next system when his comm officer gave him some good news.
“The stealth ships have located the enemy supply vessels.”
Vitor couldn’t help but smile. It was time to give those furry bastards a taste of their own medicine.
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