Existential Threat: Chapter 12 Part 4 of 8 (Patreon)

Dana sat aboard Shoki, the Iron Armada’s ships updated with the latest weapons, armor and ammunition, crewed, loaded and ready for war. All in five minutes. Better than their best training time.

She felt it, the anticipation, everyone working quietly, ready for the next moment, anticipating the drop.

Fleets filled the Dark space warpgates, Boxer fighters had been launched, waiting in their wing formations.

Hellcats loaded in the launch tubes of her carriers, Dropships loaded with bots, carrying tanks or containers waiting behind the first two launches. The whole Armada was accelerating inside dark space locations.

Timers wound down on her screens.

“Silver Fist opening fire,” Leblanc said.

Tens of thousands of asteroid defense systems used hidden jets, coming to a stop, their systems unfurled, but the caps covering their barrels remained closed, wormhole projectors forming a wormhole just over the weapon system’s barrels.

Inside warpgates and hollowed out asteroids with wormhole projectors at their heart, empty of ships. Wormholes formed.

Hellbores, measuring from centimeters to meters, built to take on Dreadnoughts, detonated their payloads.

Markers showed their direction as they crossed from the edge of the Okaran planet’s lagrange, a semi-sphere of wormholes and attacks.

Spent fuel was ejected, smoke pouring off the systems, coolant systems howling as a secondary barrage fired and cooled, then a third.

“Adraxi are firing missiles and spitters at the wormholes.” Leblanc paused, missile markers disappeared in lines. “They’re slowing the hellbores a bit.” Leblanc faked a frustrated sigh, her grip tightening as the hellbore’s lines tapped the ships on the map. “Spitters and missiles will take fifteen minutes to reach target, Hellbore lead time is two to three seconds. Bracketing fireplan implemented.”

Taken from the rail cannon firing solutions that fired rounds together so that even if a ship dodged they would be struck with some rounds.

Hundreds of hellbores, ranging from 50kt to 500kt crashed into ship’s armor. It burned away, the stronger ‘bores with little different visual effect compared to a rail cannon round penetrating armor. Though this added different lightwaves and energies, never interacted with the armor burning through the organic materials beneath. Kilotons of energy interacted with the organics, steam and gasses boiled out of the exposed innards in the best case, others sublimated them into gas so fast it created a secondary explosion, with enough power to break bulkheads, struts, even Drop Carrier armor.

Ships were still bringing weapons to bear as the first Frigate was claimed, cracking apart, as a dozen hellbores poured through the ship, another dozen hitting the expanding debris cloud.

“Adraxi are moving, they’re cutting up their armor doing so,” Leblanc said with grim satisfaction. The hellbores rage, carving grooves into even the Drop Carrier.

Another Cruiser cracked over several sections as hits meant to strike one area were spread.

“Just hit the liquid stores of one of the harvesters.”

The ship shuddered like an over-filled kettle on a stovetop. Spewing out its internals through its weapon ports and cracked its own armor.

“Re-targeting. Internal structure matches what we know, except for the Drop Carriers,” Leblanc “The other two Harvesters are pushing hard for the planet, the Adraxi Frigates and Cruisers are covering them well.”

“Understood.” They hadn’t the time to wait for them to change position. Every second was another Adraxi grown on the planet, and spore spread through the atmosphere.

“Frigate listing and falling into the gravity well, bagged a Cruiser,” Leblanc went quiet as ships detonated, the hellbores super-heating the organic interior of the ships. Others losing critical systems as their weapons went offline.

“Ouf,” Leblanc said the Drop Carrier’s decking blew out in a section measured in hundreds of meters. Armor buckled and twisted, a gout of flame shooting from several sections, cracking a third of the vessel free. “Think we hit nuclear storage there. Adraxi fleet’s fire effectiveness has dropped, ships are accelerating towards us, their formation is opening up.”

While the other ships had dozens of hellbores aimed at them, the strongest 500kt hellbores, DCK’s (Drop Carrier Killers) mercilessly pounded on the Drop Carrier.

“DCK’s are starting to come through the other side of the Drop Carrier,” Leblanc sounded mildly impressed. “We need another name for them.” She muttered under her breath.

Smaller hellbores carved molten runes in the ship’s surface, then they started to hit the open organics section of the carrier.

Sections cracked like a can of spam thrown into a fire.

A flare shot out the engines, that rippled through a bank two hundred metes long, burning blue flame lighting up the ship, spouting through cracks.

The Drop Carrier came apart in five sections.

“Keep firing on the DC till it stops firing,” Dana said. Each standard ship held a billion Adraxi that could drop on a planet, another two that could swarm from the vessel. Based on the size of the vessel estimates put its capacity at five billion.

Troopers are going to have their work cut out for them.

Adraxi ships kept firing as they were torn apart. Wormholes closed and re-opened, the Adraxi missiles intended to go through them-missing.

New wormholes appeared, CIWS firing through, catching out the missiles, seeding their own smaller nuclear furor upon the desolate vacuum.

Hellbores only shifted targets after their targets ships had been pounded into scrap, many pushed into a degrading orbit.

The Dreadnought’s massive engines and those of the rest of the fleet fired, pushing their multi-ton bulks through the darkness, adding miniature stars to the sky.

Projectors extended from their armored casings, power routing through capacitors into the thirsty machines.

Space wobbled and spread, forming a marble, expanding.

“All hands accelerating at one gravity, make sure you are secure,” Klinsky used the ship-wide channel.

There were no stars in the darkspace, wormhole projectors laid out like an oversized warpgate inside the hollowed out asteroid, lit with the harshness of industrial lights and lined with weapon systems pointing at the wormhole.

“Transiting,” Klinsky said. The Iron Armada transited through several wormholes into the Okaran home planet’s first Lagrange point, the closest.

They passed through the event horizon, leaving the, dark space warpgate behind, the universe opening to the stars.

“Wormhole closing,” Klinsky said. “That should mess up anyone trying to follow us. Hard to read stars through several meter of stone and metal veins.”

“There they are,” Leblanc said.

IFF squawked between the ships, going through handshake protocols and greeting one another, the Iron Fleets moving to form into their Armada.

“Military acceleration Klinsky, on your order.”

Time was of the essence, the faster to the planet the less dug in the Adraxi and spread of spores.

A second grouping of wormholes appeared around the Sphere World. Diego and his Phoenix Armada transiting through.

All the while the Silver fist weapon system maintained their rate of fire.

“Have boxers hold at the edge of the L-One,” Dana said.

“Understood Admiral,” Ayambe said.

Iron Armada shifted into their positions accelerating through the lagrange, the Silver Fist moving to fire through and around their formation. The acceleration and speed mounted.

“Prepare to greet incoming missiles,” Dana said.

“Thirteen minutes till fleet intercept.”

Hellbores fired as their fire lanes were cleared, shudders ran through the superstructure, the decking up Dana’s feet and spine.

Their missiles were cut from the sky by CIWS platforms that never entered the system, as Hellbores struck them from places where the primary sun wouldn’t find this system for another hundred thousand years.

Boxers networked into the ships and the Silver-fist fire control.

“CIWS executing fireplan,” Leblanc said.

The linked weapon systems lashed out in streams of tracer. Millions of rounds continued on their silent journey, as Hellbores raced past their wall, crashing through missiles and spitter rounds to strike the beleaguered Adraxi ships.

“Adraxi orbital force has seven cruisers and five Frigates fighting still, as well as sections of the Drop Carrier that refuse to stop shooting. The two harvesters are heading for the planet with the remaining ships covering them. They are our priority target.”

“Keep at them,” Dana said.

More sections of the Drop Carrier went dark by the minute, streaming gasses liquids as hellbores burned through, turning the organic mass into steam, cracking armor and killing the sections.

“Phoenix Armada has finished transit,” Ayambe said.

Diego and his fleets exited at the L1’s around the different ice planets and in distances measured in meters from the broken Sphere World.

The spherical shape had chunks pulled out of it, metals spread around it in a cloud, shining with the primary sun’s light.

“Iron Armada in formation, increasing acceleration,” Klinsky said.

“Boxers and ship hellbores are firing,” Leblanc said.

“Enemy energy weapons are targeting us,” Leblanc said. “Low power CIWS types.”

Dana gave a tight nod.

“Scratch second Harvester!”

Dana grabbed the quick replay, the Harvester, burning from hits across its hull reddened as it entered atmosphere. Three hits burned through its armor.

Sections detonated and blew out, cratering the leading edge of the ship.

Atmosphere, angry at the debris that dared to pass its boundary tore apart the ship. It crumpled and cracked, a ship one second a detonation of meteorites burning through atmosphere the next.

“DCK’s firing!” Leblanc said.

Wormholes from the L1 opened and lines crossed the vastness to the planet, burning through atmosphere to slam into the final harvester, the three hits caused the ship to shudder backwards and then tumbled. Sections were torn off as the harvester came apart.

“Advance on the planet, prepare landing parties. Target the enemy ship by ship,” Dana said, her eyes flickering over Armada information, pulling out a hologram of the planet and updated markers, including the third harvester streaming through atmosphere, losing sections as it fought atmosphere.

The Adraxi laser weaponry raked the Iron Armada, meant to defend against missiles and rail cannon rounds, not wound warships. Hellbores, thousands of times more powerful slammed into their armor plating, melting and carving lines into it, many crashing through and striking at the internals of the craft.

Frigates dropped off of the plot nearly every second. The sublimation lead to ships cracking from the immense pressure. Isolated sections trying to keep fighting.

CIWS culled incoming missiles, the Iron Armada crossing the limit of the lagrange.

“Time to planetfall?”

“Sixteen minutes Admiral,” Klinsky said.

Hellbores missed, stabbing into the atmosphere of the planet, burning off random elements, converting some of them, their power dwindling as they encountered thicker and thicker atmosphere, most dissipating before they struck the ground.

Several mountains were forever altered as shooting spears of light crashed into them, turning snow to steam, Adraxi debris created burning streaks through the clouds, falling into the planet’s gravity well.

“Enemy ships have been rendered incapable of fighting. CIWS clearing up incoming missiles,” Leblanc said.

“Understood. Fire A-bombs among the Adraxi fleet debris. Start refining orbital bombardment fireplan,” Dana said.

“Firing missiles,” Leblanc said.

Missile shutters snapped open, elctro-magnetic accelerators ejecting missiles from the rear of ships towards their prow, the missiles fired thrusters orientating along their main acceleration path and kicked in their main engines, accelerating at an eye blistering one hundred and fifty gravities. They created paths through the CIWS fire, originally used by the Hellbores.

The fleet pushed the advance, the thrill of exit coming down.

CIWS and low power hellbores detonated the first of the Adraxi missiles.

“Ayambe, get us in communication with the people on the planet, its time to open up diplomatic channels.”

“Yes Admiral.”

A-bombs passed through, continuing on their path for the debris field, spreading out.

They struck Adraxi debris, Adraxi turned to dust, creating clouds around the ships.

CIWS picked up pace, the inter-linked systems recognizing targets, assigning them to weapon systems and ‘catching’ them with spreads of variable velocity rounds. V-3 rounds bloomed, the Adraxi missiles caught within their radius eating the small blooms.

The fleet continued to move as if megatons of annihilation weren’t being released in their path, aimed directly at them.