Existential Threat: Chapter 12 Part 5 of 8 (Patreon)

Dana checked the actions happening in the carrier’s decks. Troopers ‘jumped’ into bots

“Clear skies,” Leblanc said.

“Leblanc, Sally, use the CIWS rounds to push the debris of the fight into the planet’s atmosphere, clear the orbitals before we get there.”

“Aye admiral.”

“Klinsky, shift the formation for orbital coverage and orientate the carriers for orbital insertion.”

“Aye admiral.”

“Ayambe, get the supply freighters moved up to resupply us. Status on the Sphere World Ruins and other planets?” She asked for the benefit of her crew.

“Diego says that there are no signs of Adraxi incursion on the station, he is inserting ground forces as we speak. Strikes are going out on the ice planets to destroy the Adraxi infection upon them. Supply freighters are already moving to dock and have ammunition on hand for all ships. They’re pulling Hellcats and Turtles from storage.”

“Hmmphf,” Dana let out a note of pleasure. Nice to have someone that can anticipate our needs.

“Prepare for retro burn! Zero-g even, thirty seconds!” Klinsky said ship-wide.

“Fifteen seconds!”

“Five-four-three-two-one.”

The fleet stopped accelerating toward the planet as one, thrusters snapped them around, in a moment of zero-gravity before their massive engines kicked back in. Six hundred ships in tandem.

“Well done nav, you make it look easy,” Dana said.

“We run the freight, sometimes its containers, sometimes its tanks and powered armor, sometimes a fuck off Dreadnought loaded to bring the pain,” Klinsky said.

“Well lets see what pain we can drop on these Adraxi.  some ships turning and burning back the direction they had come, others shifting their trajectories to come into orbit around the planet.

Missiles that had already been fired and CIWS rounds were playing out in a pattern. A nuclear sweeping broom. Dana shook her head at the insanity of it.

“First Freighters are coming through,” Ayambe said.

“Any reply from the planet?”

“Not yet, we’re looking for recievers.”

Silver Fist Wormholes closed as wormholes opened for supply freighters.

Dana read through her different timers. “If we can secure the orbitals of the planet, have fleet commander Gurrian take his fleet minus Carriers and head to the L-one. Ferrera, to do the same with her fleet and move to local the Sphere World to assist Diego.”

“Yes Admiral.”

“Mister Klinsky how long till we’re close enough to orbitally paste the planet?”

“Seven minutes Admiral.”

“Very good, Leblanc you and the other weapons officers have five more minutes to run firing simulations.”

“Yes Admiral.”

Hundreds of firing solutions where being hurled into the simulations, tested, altered and spit back. Sally’s battlenet sucking in all the information and creating homogenous fireplans based off the best of the ones input and sending them back out to be tested again.

“I think we’re as good as we’re going to get,” Leblanc said a few minutes later.

“Leblanc?” Dana picked up on the slight frustration in her voice.

“Based on how the ships at Ilsun and what we saw here, these ships have a much better defensive fire system. Then they’re all bigger, have more guns and seeded over the planet to cover every approach from the air. No matter what we fire at them they’re going to have us locked,” Leblanc threw up a map of the planet. A super-continent split into three by mountain ranges shaped like a Y put on its side and lowered so part of V was cut off the bottom spread across most, with a spray of islands connecting it.

“The Drop Carrier is to the left of the super continent, in the jungles and forests, the sweetest biome, mountains separate it from the harvester in the massive plains in the north east, and the one in the much more mountainous region to the south. The last harvester is on the central island in the island chain.

“They are spread out so that not even the mountains block all of their weapons. We have to fire slower than the cannons are rated for so the rounds don’t come apart and on slight angles, which makes our fire largely predictable.”

“It also gives them time, the slower the rounds are moving, the more time they have to calculate where they’re going to come in from and send an attack out, plus nukes in atmosphere. They have a much larger radius. It’s why I worked in the first wave into the third salvo. The first will let us get information, the second keeps up the pressure, the third we’ll have time to update the fire controls to press any opening that we find and create an opening for the landing forces.”

This was why the operating procedure for finding and Adraxi Omega was to smash the planet to the point it couldn’t sustain life. It just takes so many resources and time to retake and capture a planet from them.

Human convention also said that one needed a minimum of five times the number of attacking troops to defending troops in a planetary defensive.

“Ma’am we found command posts on the planet!” Ayambe said. “I was able to get someone.”

“Connect me.”

A transmission light lit.

“This is Admiral Dana Huang of the Iron Armada, do you need help?”

“Who are you?”

“We are humans heading for your planet, we just took out the ships in orbit. Who am I talking to?”

“Get them into the shelters now! Those Adraxi are coming! I don’t care what they say, force them in at gun point if you have to! I am Gra, what do you want?”

“We want to help you.”

“Help us, you are the one that is raining down stars upon our planet?”

“The Adraxi ships, yes.”

“They could be in league with the Aer, a ruse.”

“The purple fog is killing people that stay in it too long, turning them into something else. Ships  as big as mountains drop from the sky, made the Aer run. You saw it!”

“Trade one master for another.”

“Will you let us live Admiral Dana Huang?”

“We’ll try to save as many as we can.”

“What do we need to do?”

“Do you wish for our help?”

There was a pause, heavy and long, Dana looked to Ayambe and the light opening her mouth to check he was there.

“I do.”

“Very well, move as many people as you can to the command posts, you have, if they aren’t able to make it, tell them to stay indoors and in cover. We will be firing upon the Adraxi momentarily.”

“Damn my soul, but save as many as you can.”

“We will.” Dana ground her teeth together, a part of her knowing that all they helped, would never be enough.

She cut the channel. “Orbital fire plan ready?”

“As it’ll ever be,” Leblanc said.

“Load it up and sync across the Armada.”

Munitions were rotated up from storage, rail cannon chambers closed and locked, micro charges checking the electromagnetic launch systems as pins and securing mechanisms released the weapon systems, mechanical systems lining them along what would become their angle of fire.

Dozens of systems, across hundreds of ships pointed out into the darkness as the minutes dwindled down.

“First insertion group is launching,” Ayambe said.

Hellcats launched from carriers, flaring thrusters and engines as their decelerating mother ships ‘passed’ them while they orientated onto the planet, forming into their four craft wings.

Navigation tracks were a mess once one moved out, the parasite craft intermingling with the warships.

Dropships followed after their escorts in their formation of seven carrying half a platoon of troopers and five tanks cradled underneath.

As the first launch was released the second were loaded and made ready, the third jumping into their bots and preparing to load their drop craft.

“Near relative zero, turning the ship,” Klinsky said.

The ships turned, several fleet’s paths had taken them to the sides of the planet, encompassing one face of it and spreading around to cover it in its entirety.

“Fifteen seconds till orbital bombardment,” Leblanc said.

Hellcats and dropships were still covering the distance to the planet, the fleet holding around it, slowly coming to form an outer sphere.

The railcannons fired in relays, of 1-3-5 and 2-4 along dozens of weapons.

Their payloads tracked across space, passing the friendly fleets of hellcat and dropship and interacted with the planet’s atmosphere, leaving burning trails as they dug deeper along angles to enter instead of burn up in the atmosphere.

“Missile launches from the ships, and several locations across the planet,” Leblanc tapped out commands on her console. “Looks like they have converted drop pods into defensive stations. Lasers are firing.”

Lasers hit the incoming rounds, melting bits off of the payload, enough that changed the weight profile of the round, or pushed it into a different angle. The air did the rest, sending most of the payloads tumbling and throwing them off of their projected routes.

Leblanc had gone for Inter-Atmospheric Cluster Kinetic Rounds.

‘Spinners’ caught the air, rotating and releasing smaller rounds that spread out into clouds, the insertion vehicle turning into a kinetic impactor as its first job finished.

Flares of white, turned burning columns that ballooned into short mushrooms ignited among the streaks of falling weaponry. “Nuclear impactors loaded, firing.”

Shoals disappeared under the counter attacks.

“Nuclear impactors loaded, firing. Targeting remote weapon stations,” Leblanc said.

The hellcats and dropship’s engines shifted their path.

“Second wave entering atmosphere. First wave down to sixty percent and falling. Entering ignition ceiling.”