Seeing the danger, Adrian was about to order all his ships into defensive formation when errors popped in front of him.
“Iris!” Adrian called.
“Adrian, we have lost our FTL comms capability!” Iris said frantically.
“What? That isn’t possible,” Adrian argued.
“The Sowir Construct is emitting some kind of jamming field directly into hyperspace; we can’t get anything through.”
“Oh no.” Adrian realized what no FTL comms would mean. Immediately, he sent the orders to the Harbinger’s command center, as it was still connected to the Watchtower, and then he disengaged from the interface. It relied on FTL comms to get sensory info from other ships and to send out orders to them, but that connection was also what allowed Adrian to control the 40 drones he had brought with him.
Adrian opened his eyes and jumped out of the chair, running outside of the room and towards the command center. The two wolions that had watched over him were now running close behind him, and all the while he was using his imp to order the backup crews on the Harbinger to take control of the drones via light speed comms. As he entered the command chair, Paul, his Ship Master, had already moved out of the command chair and was issuing orders to the crew. Adrian sat and studied the c-board, which had now switched to communicating with the fleet via light speed comms. It wasn’t as much of a disaster as it could have been. His ships were still relatively close to one another; even with the Second Fleet, the lag was not even a full second. But so much of their missile tech relied on the FTL comms.
The Sowir missiles had already passed the halfway point. Adrian’s ships slowly moved into formation, and their point defense started taking down the Sowir missiles, but at much slower rate than was optimal, as their systems and AIs couldn’t coordinate in real time. The lag was extremely short, but it was enough to hamper their defense when every moment counted.
“Fire the seeker countermeasures,” Adrian ordered.
In space, hundreds of Sowir missiles exploded as the Empire’s point defense fired, but it wasn’t enough. The majority of them passed through. Then, the Empire’s ships started firing more missiles, smaller ones, whose only job was to seek out the enemy missiles and kill them. The number of Sowir missiles started to drop significantly over the long minutes, even as the fire from the Construct’s energy weapons bathed the Empire’s ships. But eventually the Sowir missiles started to get through the walls of fire put out by the Empire’s defenses.
Audacious
Bethany watched as the enemy Construct fired an impossible number of missiles in response to her own attack, but she trusted that her ships could take the onslaught. Then, suddenly, she lost contact with the flagship, and a moment later realized that they had lost their FTL comms. Reports started coming to her c-board through light speed comms that the entire force had lost FTL capability.
Cut off from the Watchtower interface, she assumed direct control of her fleet and started giving orders through her c-board and relaying the orders from the flagship to the rest of her fleet, as her ship now acted as a hub. Her ships opened with their point defense, and she sent out orders for her ships to start firing their new missile countermeasure.
She watched as the incoming Sowir missiles numbers dwindled, but there were still too many coming; she knew that some would get through.
“Incoming missiles from the Sowir taskforce!” her Sensor Handler yelled out, just as Beth’s holo updated with tracks on new missiles as their visual sensors detected them. Immediately, she started sending out orders to other ships, splitting them so that some could meet the incoming missile waves from her fleet’s side. But she knew that it would be too little too late; with missile attacks from both the Construct and the Sowir cruisers, there was little chance that her ships could take them all out.
Thanatos – Fleet Headquarters
“What just happened?” Fleets Master Laura Reiss demanded in the Fleet combat center.
“We’ve lost contact with the fleet!” one of the aides yelled out.
They had been monitoring the battle in the Sowir homeworld system, analyzing data for any insight that might help the fleet.
“What? How?” asked Oswald Mein, Commander of Fleets.
“We don’t know, sir. They just stopped transmitting.”
“Figure out what happened!” Laura yelled out, and watched as her subordinates frantically moved around her.
Chapter Sixteen
From both sides of the battle, Empire shells struck the massive Sowir Construct and the defensive platforms, denting and in some cases blowing holes into the Construct, and destroying the platforms outright. Laser fire scorched and melted the hull, doing only superficial damage, while the Empire’s particle weapons blew holes that apparently had no effect on the overall capability of the Construct. All that was minor damage to the Construct; its armor was too thick and anchored deep inside the massive moon beneath its hull. Behind the Empire’s kinetic assault followed their missiles. Thousands of the Empire’s missiles blew up in moments as the Sowir’s sophisticated point defense systems ravaged the crippled Empire missiles.
The Empire’s missiles evading protocols relied on their FTL comms capability, with a few relay missiles mixed in the waves receiving the evading patterns from the AIs of the ships that fired them. Now without their FTL capabilities, they were picked apart and destroyed before even one could reach the Construct.
On the other hand, a great number of Sowir missiles punched through the Empire defensive nets from both the Construct and the Sowir cruisers and struck their targets. Missiles hit the massive Second Fleet ships, their field generators in most cases managing to deflect a lot of the explosive force, even while the ships themselves suffered damage. As the number of missiles that breached the Empire’s defenses increased, so did amount of damage that the ships received. Soon, one of the Second Fleet’s missile ships exploded as its field failed and several particle beams struck it, followed quickly by another.
On the other side of battle, the combined Vanguard and Third Fleets had an easier job. Their greater numbers gave them stronger defensive capability, but even they faltered and missiles passed through, hitting their targets, weakening the ships’ fields enough to allow the Construct’s lasers and particle beams to destroy ships.
Harbinger
Adrian watched as he lost twenty-nine ships to the Construct’s weapons, with another thirty-two that had sustained various amounts of damage. The Second Fleet had lost forty-six, and their reports showed another eighteen damaged. It could have been worse, especially if the full Sowir fleet had been around. But they needed to take care of the Construct before the rest of the Sowir’s forces arrived. As he watched the holo, he saw that another Sowir force would soon enter the battle on his side, at least one thousand ships strong, and this force wasn’t just cruisers. He had no time to spare; he couldn’t allow his ships to be caught in the middle. He sent orders to the Second Fleet for it to renew its assault on the Construct and close the range, focusing most of their ships on it. A few dreadnoughts could hold off the Sowir cruisers.
Then he sent orders to Tiamat and Titan to close the distance to the Construct, enter the range of their molecular disruption cannons, and weaken the Construct’s hull. Then he sent orders for the Harbinger to get in position to fire its main weapon, the massive rail-gun that stretched half the length of his ship, capable of cracking small moons. He planned on showing the Sowir just how outmatched they truly were.