Adistia System, Northeast Gamma Quadrant
I.M.S. Devourer, Harbinger-Class Battleship
Operation Shieldwall: Phase One
The Huerdaen formation hung quietly in orbit, the last of the destroyers trailing just a tiny amount of green energy across the upper atmosphere, filtering it down like some strange rain to dissipate well before touching the surface of the planet below. It was serene, beautiful even, but it was passing.
Captain O’Sionny let his eyes linger on the screen, watching as every last particle slowly faded into nothing against the gray and brown. The job was supposed to be easy, but in their path was the possibility of ships more numerous than his own, as well as up to ten defensive orbitals. Even if their estimate was low, it could be a deadly fight, and they had to follow up in securing, and then holding, the landing corridor for the followup strikes.
None of that would occur if the battle group didn’t begin their assault, though. In nearby systems, each separate from each other to avoid drawing attention, were their ‘allied’ forces for this engagement. It wasn’t the first operation he was in command of, but it was his first operation in command of a Huerdaen blitz, which would be supported by three separate allied nations who would be judging his actions, and who had supposed overall authority over the conflict zone.
Still, it had been his idea at the start. The most powerful nation in this system, the Adistia Greater Hegemony, had decided it was not going to listen to nations which had left them to struggle until now. The three lesser nations, forming the Coalition of Unified Prosperity, had listened intently to the threat of the Welded, but their lack of naval power, or even orbital control, left them helpless. Only the AGH had the ability to prevent a landing of the welded, and their isolationist nature and outright hostility didn’t allow them to even consider the warnings that were brought to them.
The only reason they hadn’t conquered the CUP was a mere matter of convenience. It was easier to send their unwanted types to these small nations than to conquer them and solve the problem themselves.
There wasn’t time for a diplomatic option. It was estimated that Welded influence may start appearing in as little as two months, meaning that the Huerdaen needed to be off world within a month. And if Adistia fell, it would allow the Welded to bypass half of the defensive lines of local states, threatening the survival of the GRA’s puppet alliance, the NEGL. Not to mention a threat to the western border of the HSE.
This led to the only viable conclusion - eliminate the AGH. If any one of the nations in CUP survived in any condition to restore order after the fall of the AGH. It made their requirements twofold - bring about the complete downfall of the AGH before the Welded arrive, and before the Shield had to withdraw, and capture as many defenses intact as possible.
This came with a rather significant caveat. The AGH didn’t allow outsiders to land on the planet, and maintained a rather durable system of theater shields that were capable of covering the surface to cease an attack. Ever since the founding of the world by the prior refugees, they had violently protected their interests, taking shelter and preparing. They maintained a flotilla of Exodus ships, vessels with modern technology, weapons, and defenses, that they used to strike enemy forces from behind to great effect. These were the very ships that brought them to this world, and they served as the elite orbital defense of the world, beyond the artillery starbases that helped protect the system from smallcraft that may be able to bypass the shield layers.
His thoughts were interrupted by the gentle reminder in his head that it was five minutes to operation start, and with a sigh, he tapped out the command on console at his right hand. In an instant, the ship shook with the sudden drums of war, pounding out the instructions for the crew of his ship to prepare for battle. The call to stations was quickly repeated across the small battle group, and his pad lit up to display all ships showing ready for combat.
They had run simulations. Tests. Even hired a desperate pirate runner to try to attack the planet, land troops, and withdraw, as a proof of concept. What they found was that as long as the shield rose fully, they would be unable to land troops in less than two weeks. Attrition by the stations as they tried to bypass the shield would be significant, and it would take approximately ten million Shield to break the AGH’s grip on the world within the one month timeframe and a painful slog of fighting across multiple stations hiding under each shield sector, and then assaulting well-prepared defensive positions around the generators themselves before they could even land significant numbers of troops or provide fire support or deploy air assets. He had just over a hundred thousand soldiers.
Grinding his teeth together, Captain O’Sionny forced his finger onto the pad, signaling the fleet to activate their HGDs and begin the assault, simultaneously informing the other three fleets and their ground forces that the operation was beginning. The twenty-two ships of the Huerdaen fleet blinked out of sight from above the barren landscape like flying insects disappearing into the night sky.
The sudden appearance of the Huerdaen fleet was a shock to the defenders, as relatively small warships opened fire on the enemy defensive stations. With well-drilled discipline, the defensive barriers around the planet began to rise, even as one of the stations broke apart, succumbing to the heavy barrage of fire from the well-aligned Apocalypse Engine before the defenses could come into play. ‘Below’ the battle group, energy barriers flickered to life, crackling with energy as the enemy deployed their defenses, right on schedule.
The barriers created an almost organic-looking shell over the planet, with arcing lightning capable of taking out a corvette cutting across the surface where the shields neared each other, even as the ghostly-white appearance of the shield obscured details on the planet below. Gravekeeper, undeterred, moved into position near one of the bubble shields, only to have the arc slam against the ship’s shields, scorching a line across the hull. For a moment, it looked like the vessel may have lost its orbital stability as the nose dipped slightly, but it righted itself.
In an instant, the Apocalypse Engine came into position, its projectors reinforcing the Gravekeeper’s shields until they, too, suddenly arced lighting back into the bubble below. As soon as it did, the shield below it paled and faded into wisps of shield reaching toward the ship like the desperate clutches of a sea creature suffocating in open air. The entire shield, once solid and firm below the cruiser, lay open like a bleeding sore before the Huerdaen fleet.
The stations, once protected by the shield, turned their weapons awkwardly upward to try to engage the beast of war hanging over them, their missiles and projectiles slamming into the reinforced shielding in a desperate attempt to dislodge the heavily-garrisoned ship. The return fire was devastating.
Promise of Pain, a relatively small cruiser, angled its nose toward a station and cut it cleanly in half with a spinal round that continued through the target, even as flak rounds and defensive weapons filled orbit between Gravekeeper and the defensive stations. A second volley from the heavy guns of Apocalypse Engine brought low a third station, as Unrestrained Fury and Devourer hammered apart a trio of stations, their secondary armaments giving no quarter as the heavy barrage tore through bulkheads, bodies, and defenses with unequalled determination. The remaining station, alone and embattled against the Huerdaen in a losing fight, began shedding escape pods into the hellfire of detonations against shielding, or in the still-arcing shield barriers nearby. Explosive shells as large as armored vehicles slammed against the shields, shattering the poorly protected pods and scattering the frantic occupants across orbit haphazardly.
As the station fought valiantly, and ground-based anti-orbital missile silos began to open up, the cruisers fell into a loose square over the gap in the shield, opening their bays as dropships and gunships slipped out of them, diving toward the surface of the planet on wings of fire. Talon gunships, little more than sliver-like darts, flitted into the remains of the stations as they fell, while the Rocs of the Imperial Shield lumbered into protective formations, leaving lanes of fire as the Gravekeeper’s defensive weapons cut into the rising missiles.
The first response, expected, was a small squadron of warships. About equal to the size of the Devourer, they outnumbered the Huerdaen by almost half, and beat them out in tonnage by an even greater margin. Their ships, however, found themselves beset by the Huerdaen in a way they didn’t expect. Trying to keep themselves away from the Huerdaen and engage at range, they found themselves suffering under the Unrestrained Fury and her attention. Unable to draw a good lock, they struggled to engage the heavily kinetic Huerdaen warships, with most of their missiles coming nowhere near the target as their systems were overwhelmed by the EWAR cruiser. In trading fire with the cruisers, they were unaware of the approach of the destroyer groups under cover of localized ECM systems on the Terror-Class destroyers.
The first to strike came from directly above their formation, away from the heavy guns and slow-moving turrets of the AGH-built heavy cruisers. Demonrage came in at a breakneck pace, the massive rotary spinal slamming rounds into the ventral section of a carrier built from a freighter, the heavy rounds tearing straight through the hull as if it was nothing more than paper. Less than half a squadron left the vessel before internal detonations rocked the ship, and the added-on armor plating across its entire starboard side was blown free by an explosion. Not yet having made appropriate orbital velocity, the ship began to descend into the shield layer, where arcing blasts tore at the hull, cutting it up in vicious patterns.
The Anger-Class were not far behind. Homing in on the heaviest-armored craft, they focused on a heavy cruiser, each launching a series of massive torpedoes that tore apart shielding in the blue-white impossible light of antimatter detonations. By the time the second destroyer was inbound, the ship had already taken a direct hit. The torpedoes that struck the exposed armor, unprotected by shielding, caused the ship to slide sideways, across the formation of its allies and into the firing lane of a nearby cruiser. There, the final torpedo slammed into the core of the ship, and the vessel went dead, drifting in space without control as the reactor was reduced to a gaping hole in the ship.
All around, the scene played out over and over again, as the struggling cruisers and heavy cruisers of the AGH fought to hammer the armored Devourer while their ships were being taken apart piecemeal by the destroyer groups. Despite this, a shipyard began to show power spikes as the dozens, possibly hundreds of reserve vessels in the Hegemony docks began to power up for combat, threatening to overwhelm the Huerdaen battle group if left uncontested.
However, an FTL signature entered at long range, and the enemy Exodus Flotilla arrived. Armored and armed with weapons far beyond those of the locally-produced variants, they immediately began operations to open fire on the Huerdaen battle group, even as the defensive batteries of the Huerdaen turned to hold back the tide of munitions. Flak rounds burst, throwing bomblets into swerving missiles to destroy them, as small shield generators flared and burned out in moments, only long enough to soak the impact of a kinetic round or energy blast. What had been empty space between the fleets became a wall of detonations, defensive fire, and shield flares as the Huerdaen took on a defensive position, keeping the fire away from the descending dropships and attack craft.
They were pinned, holding the corridor open, but it was exactly what they had planned. The extra ship attached to the battle group, the twenty-second that set them apart from a standard battle group, had lingered safely behind the shadow of Devourer, out of the way. Suddenly, power spikes all across the tiny vessel brought it into sharp contrast with the other warships.
Behind the protective blasts provided by the Huerdaen, an energy vortex began to swirl, distorting optical sensors and disrupting energy blasts that passed through it into streaking through at strange and insane angles.
The Cyno vortex shifted and distorted everything around it, visible from the surface even as the AGH forces began desperate preparations to invade their much smaller neighbors. Reactionary forces mounted up in armored vehicles and aircraft, as a massive fleet of interceptors streaked toward the Huerdaen landing group, as the fluctuations of the vortex stabilized. Panicked, one of the Colonels of a Heavy Infantry group in the landing parties sent a distress call, identifying the horde of hundreds of atmospheric fighters coming their way. Grimly, Captain O’Sionny only nodded, sending back a quick response.
“Mutts are inbound. Hold your course and formation. Prepare defensive fire. CUP forces are holding the shield generator below, but won’t last long. If you falter this window closes. There are no second chances. MAKE the drop zone.”
Opening a channel to the allied fleets, he reported the current situation in the gruff way expected of all Huerdaen soldiers across the galaxy.
“ARS Invincible, it’s time. Get your asses in the fight. Carrier and assault craft arrival coordinates listed. Enemy flight inbound with weapons hot, require immediate intercept. Admiral York, the enemy shipyards and Exodus Fleets are already in play.”
