Over the next twenty minutes, her ships destroyed the rest of the Sowir fleet, without receiving any damage themselves. It wasn’t even a battle as far as she was concerned. Her c-board chimed and she read the new orders from Fleet Commander Hakim. She relayed the order to the taskforce and then turned to her navigation officer and ordered a change of course.
Force Leader Nenad Krylov acknowledged the orders from the Fleet Commander and relayed them to his taskforce, changing course toward the Sowir shipyards. They had taken some fire during the initial attack, but they remained largely undamaged. They were massive, placed in orbit around the sun between the third and fourth planets in the system.
He could see on the holo as a few of the ships from the docks moved out and started running away. Nenad let them go; his job was to destroy the shipyards. As his ships entered range, he ordered them to fire with all weapons.
The shipyards had no defensive capability themselves, but they had eight defense platforms, which proved not enough as tungsten shells shredded them in second. Then the 900mm shells slammed into the shipyards, followed by a wave of five hundred missiles that opened them up to space, venting atmosphere. Then particle beams and lasers hit, cutting the shipyards to pieces.
Nair walked onto the CC and retook his spot on the command chair. As the battle was over, there was no longer a need for him to be inside Watchtower. Nair watched on the holo as his ship entered the orbit of the second world in the system above the factories on the planet. His ships were positioned around the planet above all the Sowir military installations, which surprisingly there weren’t too many of. The Sowir were a very strange race. They had a small population, and their agents outnumbered them greatly, which meant that they didn’t really need planets to settle—they just used them for resources.
Nair ordered his ships to take out the targets on the ground. Kinetic strikes rained down on the planet from the sky, blowing away the installations and their surroundings, raising dust and debris into the air.
Once they were finished, Nair ordered his ship to the other planets in system that had a Sowir presence on ground, while they completely ignored their non-military ships that were running away. It would take them several hours to erase all presence of the Sowir from the system.
Second Fleet – Guxaxac
A fleet of 650 warships and 120 Army transports dropped out of trans-space at the Guxaxac system’s incoming trans-station, firing up their drives and speeding directly towards the Sowir fleet in orbit of the Guxcacul homeworld. Bethany watched on her command board as her ship’s sensors painted a picture of the system. There were two hundred and eighty Sowir ships in the orbit, with no orbital stations or defenses. Only one hundred warships accompanying one hundred and eighty troop ships. According to the Sowir prisoners, each of those ships carried thousands of the Sowir agents in stasis, there to be used when the commander on the ground needed them.
They didn’t even have a lot of bases on the planet, only one outpost on the surface, and maybe half a dozen underground. But then, they didn’t need to have more. They had already killed enough Guxcacul that they owned the planet. And the Sowir didn’t need many bases; they rarely even left them, choosing instead to control their troops from afar, where there was no danger to them.
The troop ships in orbit were actually a sign of how much trouble the Guxcacul were giving them. The Sowir rarely needed to have reinforcements close and ready. But then again, they were not very good at war, especially at war underground; their soldiers were not designed for it. What they were designed for was to overwhelm their opponents with sheer numbers, which had been going extremely well for them, but not anymore. The races of the Consortium had been ill-prepared for the war when the Sowir had attacked, and they hadn’t had any mastery of war, at least not on the same level as humanity had. They were peaceful races that had evolved at the top of the food chains of their planets, united into a single entity almost from the beginning. Humanity, on the other hand, had mastered war a long time ago.
For a moment, Bethany wondered if she should have to use the Watchtower interface, but then immediately dismissed the thought. The Watchtower was an amazing tool, but she did not plan to be in a prolonged engagement with the Sowir. Her target was probably the most valuable of the systems that the Empire was attacking, but it was in actuality the one with the weakest Sowir presence. There were no stations or defense platforms, only debris floating where once Guxcacul stations had stood, and the Sowir had the smallest number of warships here. She could destroy them easily from afar. There were only two problems. One, the Sowir troop ships; the moment they detected her fleet’s attack, they would try to land. She would probably be able to destroy most of them, but some would land and make things harder for the people on the ground. And two, there was a chance that the Sowir had a weapon capable of destroying the planet.
It was a small chance, but Bethany needed to consider it. After all, the Ra’a’zani had done exactly that to Earth. That was why she would pull no punches, and would attack with everything she had. She manipulated the c-board, sending orders they’d programmed in advance to her ships. Using her imp, she made adjustments where she thought it was required, and then leaned back and watched her ships execute her orders.
As the Empire’s ships closed the range, they fired their missiles, sending three waves of 15,000 missiles each towards the unsuspecting Sowir. When the missiles passed the halfway point, the Sowir detected them. Immediately, they changed formations, putting their warships in front of their troop ships and getting ready to fire with their point defense. In addition, they fired their own missiles to intercept the Empire’s. The first wave of the Empire’s missiles was met with an amazing amount of defensive fire, but it was too little to take down the first wave; what did manage it were their missiles. Sending thousands of missiles towards the Empire’s attack allowed them to take down the majority of the first wave.
But it was not enough. Five thousand missiles reached Sowir positions and destroyed every one of their warships. Their troop ships had positioned themselves in a way that sacrificed the majority of them in order to allow a few to land. The remaining missiles from the first wave destroyed one hundred and seventy-two Sowir troop ships, with the remaining eight managing to enter the atmosphere on their way down to the planet. Bethany grimaced. There wasn’t anything she could do now. The eight ships, if their intel was correct, carried about 6,000 troops each, making 48,000 in total. She shook her head and sent the shutdown order to their missiles, as there wasn’t any need for them in the end. They would be picked up later after the battle was over.
Turning towards her Communications Handler, she started giving orders. “Contact the Army, let them know that they can approach the planet and start landing the troops.” Then, from her c-board, she ordered her fleet into the orbit of the planet, making sure that her ships stayed away from the range of the Sowir base on the ground. They knew that it had orbital defenses, but they had no idea of what kind or how much damage they could inflict.