God’s Hammer led the way in, the point of a tight phalanx of nine battle cruisers, shields at maximum intensity and weapons fully charged. As space warped around them under the influence of their sub light engines, they swung into the planet’s null gravity sphere between it and its medium sized moon.
“There's comm traffic from the planet, sir.” The communication’s officer tersely reported, his fingers dancing over his virtual interface. Taking her eyes off the image of the planet looming on the bridge’s massive main display, the captain turned them to the communications station.
“Translation?” She asked and the officer’s fingers danced silently for a brief moment over the shifting plane of light and shapes.
“They’re saying we’ve invaded their sovereign territory and command that we cease all hostile acts and withdraw or we will be fired upon.”
The captain looked at the tactical station, its displays tasked to monitoring the planet’s defenses. Flashing lights marking the orbital platforms powering up were already multiplying across the display watching the planet itself, data she took in, in a glance.
“Maintain your heading, navigation.” She rasped after the slightest hesitation, returning her gaze to the communications station.
“Their tech is over 500 years in our past. They’re no match for us.”
Massive squares of pressed metal, plastic and glass, each 100 metres in diameter, the weapons platforms, numbering in the thousands, hung in high geosynchronous orbit over the planet’s muddy surface. With shivers of motion and the dance of lights marking systems activating, each began to come alive as power was pulled from long lasting nuclear batteries to send energy to sensor and targeting arrays. Arrays that quickly swung around to locate the incoming Aggregate vanguard, feeding telemetry to the mechanisms that aimed massive particle cannons and mass drivers. Those weapons came online, their heavy barrels silently moving in the vacuum of space to lock on the rapidly advancing vessels, still only silver dots on their visual scanners.
At the same time, rocket batteries on the moon came alive as commands were sent from control stations on the planet, every holding a dozen 10 metre long rockets tipped with nuclear devastation along with targeting equipment. Commands received, they began lifting from their subsurface silos in silent sprays of lunar dust, pivoting around to find the enemy fleet. And square kilometre, after square kilometre of the moon’s surface went from dusty gray to black as the rocket arsenal lifted out of the ground and came online to begin to actively target.
“Rocket batteries are targeting the vanguard, sir.” Tactical announced as one of her displays tasked with watching the moon began to light up. Fingers danced across shifting light.
“And near planet platforms in high orbit are scanning us.”
Nodding, her expression thoughtful, the captain looked over at Navigation.
“Position of the shield squadrons?”
“Moving in now, sir.” Navigation announced.
Armored with ablative ceramic over their metallic hulls, the cruisers in the shield squadrons looked a bit more bulky than the sleek, kilometre long silver cigars that were the vanguard cruisers. It would be their job to keep the rockets off the vanguard long enough for the quantum cannons to be assembled and deployed.
Grouped in staggered clusters, the shield cruisers swung out from behind the vanguard and into position, putting themselves between the rocket batteries and God’s Hammer and her sisters. Just in time;
“Power spikes.” Tactical abruptly announced. She twisted to look at the captain.
“We have incoming ordnance!”
With silent flurries of light and violence, the lunar rocket batteries began to fire. Instantly the black rockets went from absolute stillness to darting into motion, quickly accelerating to 5 gravities a-top their give everything thrusters. At that speed, they closed within minutes with the nearest shield cruisers.
The first isolated rockets slammed into the cruisers’ shields, their warheads detonating in wild splashes of color as concussive ripples twisted the space around each ship. Well-constructed, the shielding absorbed both the rocket’s momentum and its explosive death with equal capability, the field-suspended particles distributing it evenly over the entire hull to minimize impact. A heart beat later they were coming more frequently, the shields forced to draw more power to compensate. And then they were coming too fast to count, multiple strikes hammering into the shielding with enough force to crack open mountains. Under that pressure, it didn’t take long for the first shield cruiser to succumb.
Barkada grimaced as the main display flared into momentary incandescence, the silent explosion marking the vessel’s death.
“That was Morning’s First Glory.” The captain grimly announced, looking over her shoulder at the admiral.
“Captain Honith’s command; I, I went to the academy with her.”
“And her sacrifice won’t go unanswered, captain.” Barkada quickly replied. “But not now. Now, we need to deploy the quantum cannons. We’re close enough to make our first strike. Relay the form up order!”
Space flared as a second cruiser died, then a third before the ships of the vanguard began to carefully shift their formation. Long hours of practice, high skilled navigators and powerful maneuvering technologies all combined to allow the kilometre long vessels, still moving at speed, to break their wing formations and form massive pentagrams five hundred metres a side, with the cruisers at the points.
Once the cruisers were in position, great emitters began to slowly ease out of the section of hull that faced the other four in the formation. Graceful curves of metal and plastic, they were hundreds of metres long, slender probes that defied the gravitational forces that plucked at them as they moved into position. Then they were locking, forming a lattice between the five vessels.
“Array is locked.” Tactical reported. “Charging pylons.”
Pulling energy directly from the slipstream drives that hurtled each cruiser through both time and space, the pylon generators poured energy into suspended subatomic particles until their very quantum states became fluid and volatile. Those particles were then fed down the pylons where powerful magnetic fields began to weave them into a deceptively beautiful filament of glowing purple energy.
Barkada watched on the bridge’s main display as the glowing purple filaments from each ship reached out to a point in front of them determined by the magnetic field created by the pylons. There they combined, the particles’ hyper-energized state crushed together until they imploded with the force of an exploding star, the crush point a brilliant, purple-white ball of light.
“Cannon is charged.” Tactical said in a hushed voice at witnessing such terrible power being harnessed for destruction. It was her first time seeing the weapon deployed. It would not be her last.
“Fire.” Barkada tersely rasped and watched as the magnetic field shifted, sending a pulse of that super-energized particulate mass streaking at near light speed towards the planet surface.
The pulse quickly darted across the intervening space to blast aside any platforms in the way, lance through the atmosphere to the surface where it impacted with a bright flare that covered hundreds of kilometres. Then it was being joined by five more, fired in rapid succession from the other quantum arrays formed by the vanguard, the blasts swiftly peppering the planet’s near side.
“Burn me a corridor.” Barkada hissed and the cannons focused on sweeping a section of the sky above the planet clear of platforms. Just then the Hammer began to shiver as her shields began absorbing incoming fire.
“We’ve got mass driver and particle weapon fire incoming from the remaining platforms.” Tactical indicated, her eyes peeling off the main display and its vision of luminescent destruction to discover the source of the counter attack. Secondary displays beside the bridge’s main display began to sparkle as the shields they were watching distributed the strikes.
“But it’s coming too late and with insufficient volume to penetrate our shields.”
“As long as it stays focused on us.” Barkada said with a nod. So far the battle plan was unfolding perfectly. Now for stage two.
“Maintain fire rate as the planet rotates with a forward shift of 45 degrees to let the carriers deploy.” She then twisted slightly to wave her hand. A sensor built into the command platform picked up the motion and activated a secondary communications array, complete with a holographic display. A male face quickly appeared in the display.
“General Barkada.” She formally greeted him. The general was her son, and the only remaining member of their family after the horror of the Vreesh’tak Rebellion. She would’ve rather him stay behind, to continue their line. But the Council insisted he command the ground assault, her son a decorated officer with a distinguished service record of his own.
“Admiral.” The face replied just as formally.
“Your corridor is opened. Prep your landers for deployment. You have five tana to drop!"