Existential Threat: Chapter 22 Part 2 of 4 (Patreon)

The CIWS ceased their firing, no targets within their area, questing for anything. Rail cannons hummed with contained energy. Eight seconds had passed.

“Impacts!” Another Communications officer yelled.

“Impacts?” haver said, the missiles weren’t even making it more than a few thousand kilometers from the wormholes.

“On the stations!”

“Admiral, hits on the defensive stations!” Communications yelled.

“What? Don’t they have their CIWS up?” None of the enemy missiles made it through the wormholes.

“They do sir, they weren’t hit with conventional weapons,” Communications said.

“It appears they were hit with laser weaponry sir,” Sensors supplied.

“Its going to take a lot more than a bunch of laser pointers to take out our defense stations,” Haver growled.

“Its hitting with the force of two hundred and fifty directed kilotons,” A sensor operator cried out, not believing their own words.

“Impacts on the heavy Crassius defense station, they’ve got penetrations. They’re cutting their wormhole and changing to a new one,” Communications called out.

An image went up on the main screen before Haver could dress them down.

The station rocked with impacts that smashed into its asteroid exterior, rock was thrown away or burned through, turning molten and ejecting.

A line of light burned through the debris.

“Wormholes are opening around the defensive stations!” Sensors said. “Missiles, rail rounds and laser weaponry inbound!”

“Show me the defensive stations,” Haver rose from his chair.

A list of stations populated down the side of the main screens, hundreds of stations, several blues went amber, then red. One snapped black.

“We just lost station One thirty seven, eighty nine! Two twelve!”

Station colors drained down, holes eating through the list.

“Find out where they are attacking us from.”

“Sir, the wormholes, they’re inside something, we can’t read any of the stars, we don’t know where they are,” Sensor’s frustration threading his words.

Haver started at the screens.

“Maintain fire upon the Sphere Worlds, rapid rate! As fast as the stations can launch. Move up the fleets to wormhole in three minutes!”

Timers changed from just under twenty minutes to three.

With his mobile fleets he would harry the enemy, drawing fire from the defense stations so that they could overwhelm the Sphere World’s.

“They’re using laser weaponry,” Sensors said.

“The power needs for that are too high,” Haver growled.

“It is the only thing that makes sense, the wormholes are snapping open and the stations are getting hit at the speed of light.”

Haver ‘grabbed’ a station’s sensor feed and threw it up.

Wormholes ballooned around the station, missiles poured out of the station into several. Others fired missiles into the station’s teeth, CIWS lashing out along their path.

Some didn’t show anything passing through as impacts registered on the station. Gouges were torn into the hardened position, the asteroid the station was built in exploded as metals and ice veins were liquified in moments.

The damage kept mounting but there was no sign of what was striking the station.

It had no time to react as impact after impact hammered through the station’s natural armor, through its interior armor.

Hatches blew out as something important was struck, the station was gaining a spin, pushed out of its original position.

A missile was struck coming out of its firing port, taking away a section of the station, explosions rippled through the station, coming apart in a spray of metal and dust. CIWS died across the station, Sphere World missiles crossed the space from wormhole to station.

“Where did they get laser weaponry like that?” Haver shook his head. It takes so much power they shouldn’t have many of them.” He assured himself that having his fleets and his stations attacking, the Sphere World weapons would have too many targets to hit everyone.

He grit his teeth as stations went dark.

“Find out where those damn weapons are, they must be hidden in Orion or Aziriths lagrange’s.”

He pulled up the sensor readings on Azirith system.

The station was wreathed in CIWS fire. Missile swarms raced to meet his attacks. Wormholes around the station added defensive fire.

Rail cannon rounds hit the station, denting and scuffing its armor.

Missiles detonated well beyond the point where they’d inflict damage. Haver’s heart rode up into his neck at the sheer firepower being dumped out of the station.

They have firepower superiority. He toyed with the idea to have the fleet fire on the stations. It would only reveal their position and he wouldn’t gain from it.

“Several stations have ceased firing and surrendered,” Communications said.

“Surrendered?” Haver whirled on the officer. She grimaced as she read from her screen.

“Ejected their reactors and shut down their weapons.”

“Cowards. This battle is for the future of the Federation. Have their names sent to the internal review police, traitors breed traitors, their families will be audited.”

“Yes Admiral,” The communications officer gave a terse nod as she paled.

That’ll make any others think twice about surrendering.

Station after station fell, the sphere worlds registered hits, but no missile impacts, untouched and unmarred by nuclear fire.

“Where are the Orkarans?”

“They are holding to the old timeline,” Communications said.

“Great,” Haver bit off.

“Fleet is advancing.”

Several dozen wormholes opened a light minute away from the Sphere World, Federation ships poured through, firing every weapon they had.

Haver grinned at their might.

The ships accelerated at Sphere World speeds, their engines had been able to do so before, but capped as it would have made the crew useless or possibly killed them.

“Several ships are reporting damage due to the acceleration, they’re dropping out of formation and re-forming as they affect repairs,” Communications said.

It was to be expected, some of these ships had been in service for several decades, some of them just coming back into service.

“We’ve got wormholes opening around the fleets,” Sensors said.

CIWS activated, countering the missiles trying to stem the tide of weapon fire dumped on the ships so close there were bare seconds to respond.

The Federation fleet had anticipated the changes that would come with higher acceleration, but they had never experienced it, except for the few that had been players of the original Sphere World and then drafted into the military forcefully.

Few had told the instructors how wrong they were in their assumptions. Those that did speak up were ridiculed, overexaggerating the effects.

To simulate using the Sphere World ships, they would need to build out an entire game for it, use the Sphere World Simulation, or go through them. None of which were options.

Rail cannons fired, not calibrated for how their craft now jinked and shifted with higher acceleration, pulling their shots, the missiles took precious seconds to re-orientate, expecting to come out at one location and coming out at another.

CIWS scrambled to try and make up for the movements, much like the rail canons, having their arm jostled with the changes.

Armor was holed, missiles impacted hulls breaking the ship’s structure, spewing its innards across the system.

Aeronautical pilots from the days before space flight could tell you that for every one degree off course if you travelled sixty kilometers you would be one kilometer off of your target. That was on a world measuring over twelve and a half thousand kilometers. In space there was no curvature, each degree off, meant that a round would be two kilometers off of target every one hundred kilometer it passed. They had wormholed in a light-minute away from the Azirith Sphere World. Just under eighteen million kilometers.

Gunnery officers fought to get their guns re-aligned, trying to patch the issues on the fly as rounds only hit incoming missiles my accident, rail cannon rounds missed ships and station by hundreds of thousands of kilometers.

Every second gave the Legion time to pile attacks into the fleet.

“What the hell are they doing? Our hit rate is abysmall, the station isn’t even moving!” Haver roared.

“The guns are having to work with the new speeds, they’re not adjusted.

“Have the ships drop down to their normal speeds while they work on the patch, hit something dammit!”

Corvettes disappeared from fleet status, blotted out by missiles, or those damnable laser weapons. Haver couldn’t read through the chaos that the lagrange points had devolved into.

Ships of the line, the finest warships of the Federation were cracked and broken, turning into listless wrecks.

The Legion weapons kept firing on them even as their engines went cold, leaving them in broken sections, wrecks that were nearly impossible to repair.

We only had enough bots for skeleton crews, not enough for repair crews.

“Azirith Sphere World batteries are firing,” a sensor officer called out.

***