Unity

Chapter 27

"Sir," said Lt. Haas, the Navigations Officer. "It looks like we have more incoming enemy ships."

"I knew that was too easy," I replied. "Return to formation with the Tuleeririan ships.

A message came in from Shahae. "I'm glad to see you had fun destroying their scouts. Brace yourself for their warships."

"Lt. Hass, what are the odds that the new ships will arrive in the same location?" I asked.

"From what we can tell, they should end up exactly where the other ships arrived," she answered.

"Can you predict how long we have until they appear?" I asked.

"Based on what we observed from the first wave, I believe I can," she answered.

"Good. Once you have it figured out, send the info to the gunners. I want to prepare a little welcome package." Everyone seemed to catch on to what I was getting at. Soon, we had a timed cluster missile on the way. Just before the missile reached its destination, three massive ships appeared. They were made in the same fashion as the other Zrynt ships, but on a larger scale. It looked like hundreds of ships had gone into making the three ships that were before us. Seconds after they appeared, the missile detonated. One of the ships was heavily damaged, while the other two were destroyed. As everyone started to celebrate, five more ships emerged.

Thousands of fighters emerged from the massive ships. "It's early to start celebrating. It looks like we might finally have a challenge." I watched in horror as the inactive enemy fighters powered up joined the growing hoard. As we moved forward to engage, the Tuleeriri moved with us. Just as they came into weapons range, I had the fleet engage the AAFG. Once the field was engaged, effectively hiding us from the enemy, I gave the order for the rest of the fleet to launch. Much to their credit, the Zrynt continued to press onward despite the curveball we had just thrown. I gave the order to engage and launched the first salvo. The Zrynt were able to backtrace our location based on our weapons fire. They fired massive lasers at us, but our new hull was able to absorb the worst of the damage. One of the Tuleeririan ships was engulfed in a blinding explosion. The destruction of one of their own seemed to put the Tuleeriri in a fury, and they retaliated with a vengeance. They soon claimed two of the enemy destroyers. As the two fleets drew nearer, we began to be overwhelmed by the fighters. It was like entering a dark cloud. Luckily, their weapons weren't strong enough to do any damage, but they stopped our weapons from reaching the destroyers. What we needed was a new strategy.

"Captain," Lt. Haas announced. "We have incoming. Several ships just launched from the remnants of the destroyed destroyers. They are headed right for us, and fast."

"They're either bombs or a boarding party" I said. "Focus all fire on the new ships. How long until they impact?"

Lt. Haas looked at me with a grim look on her face and said, "About thirty seconds."

I had to think quickly. "See if you can evade any of them. Make the ones we can't dodge hit in non-essential areas and alert the crew of the possibility that we'll be boarded."

The ship was already moving by the time I had finished talking. We were able to dodge and destroy five of the seven inbound ships. The two that impacted, hit areas of the ship that were completely unused. I let out a sigh of relief when the ships didn't explode. My relief was short lived as I realized that we had enemies on board. I pulled up surveillance footage of the two infested areas. There was too much commotion for me to make out much detail, but from what I could glean the Zrynt were large and terrifying. I estimated each ship contained about four dozen soldiers. I sent out an alert ship wide warning of the hostiles on board. The marines were transmitted the location of the two enemy ships. Standard procedure was for personnel who weren't on duty to report to the nearest armory, arm themselves, and relocate to a public space if possible.