Danielle looked and Tag and thought, This is one remarkable vessel.
Thank you, Danielle, Atlas replied.
Admiral Dorg watched his fleet go through their maneuvers and was pleased with their performance. He had taken additional time to work the Glod ships into the fleet network. He kept the Glod ships together in a separate unit because they just didnt play well with others. Enough of this, Dorg thought. We are as ready as we will ever be. Lets get this done. Then he said over his com channel, Form up. Prepare to jump to the human system in sixty sems. Subfleet leaders, set your jump coordinates for a simultaneous jump. Make sure you keep your spacing after emergence from star drive. The ships assigned to record this battle will jump in right behind the fleet and maintain separation from the fleet action. They will open the feed to Cainth, Glod, and Alliance headquarters upon arrival in system. Admiral Dorg sat and waited for the countdown to finish.
Finally, Admiral Dorg ordered, On my command, execute jump into the human home system. Execute!
The Alliance fleet broke out of star drive and immediately had the Earth fleet on their sensors. The huge fleet turned and moved forward. Meanwhile, just inside the orbit of Neptune, five Alliance ships broke out of star drive and moved into the system, recording the approaching battle. On Cainth, Glod, and state leaders Stens office, the interested leaders watched on their different worlds the movement of their fleet toward the small fleet of Earth ships. Is that all they have? Terl thought, but then he settled in with the rest of the clan leaders to see what was going to happen.
The Earth ships went to full power, moved toward the incoming fleet, and split up and scattered as they approached the Alliance formations. Forty of the Earth ships were blown up before they reached the first Alliance ship. Then the Alliance fleet fell on the Earth ships like an avalanche. The Earth ships were being blown out of existence faster than anyone thought possible.
Two Cainth cruisers bore down on an Earth battleship and saw the missiles that the ship launched coming at them. The energy weapons of the Earth ship were having no effect, and the missiles were exploding harmlessly on their screens. They split and passed the Earth ship on opposite sides and fired their energy beams into the flanks of the big ship. It tore in half and then exploded, scattering debris out from the center of destruction. The two ships turned, and each selected an Earth destroyer and changed course to chase them down. Ship Leader Kerlt ordered, Hit the screen with primary lasers just as our missiles arrive. He watched his screen and saw the small ship explode and whirl away. I thought these humans were supposed to have up-to-date technology. These ships are as bad as the Grendap. We could have done this with less than half our ships. This should be over quickly, and then we can finish the planet.
Have you got them, Bobby? Kosiev asked Captain Bobby Johnson.
Yes sir. There are five of them, and Ive assigned two ships to each. Were jumping in ten seconds.
On Cainth and Glod the leaders were watching the live feed and had begun cheering their fleets success. The Earth ships were almost totally destroyed, and it didnt appear that the Alliance had lost any ships in the conflict. But suddenly, the screen went blank. The cheering stopped and the leaders looked at each other. Get a communication channel to the fleet and find out what happened to our feed, Terl ordered.
We cant get through, Clan Leader, the communication leader said.
Terl yelled, Get another ship ready to jump to that system and find out whats going on. Do it now!
Ten of Earths empire battleships powered up their systems and jumped to the five Alliance ships recording the action. As soon as they entered normal space, both Earth ships fired their primary beams into the cruisers and vaporized them instantly, giving them no chance to send a warning. Captain Bobby Johnson commed Admiral Kosiev and said, The slate has been cleaned. Beginning communication disruption. Good luck and good hunting, sir. Captain Johnson then ordered his ten ships to spread out along the coordinates where the cruisers had entered the system and to prepare for any new ships that might be sent to investigate. Power down and be ready to jump if any Alliance ship jumps in, he ordered.
Admiral Dorg sat in his command chair on board the Alliance flagship War Weapon and watched as his fleet was totally destroying the humans ships. He heard his bridge crew cheering, but he couldnt help thinking, This is too easy. This fleet couldnt have defeated our ships at the Human Colony World. Then he said, Communications, put a picture of one of those human ships that was just destroyed on my display. A picture of a small ship suddenly appeared on his console. He looked at it for a minute and then pulled up a picture of the small human ship that had killed two heavy cruisers. He put it next to the ship that had just been destroyed; they looked nothing alike. His internal alarms went off at full blast; he stood and yelled, Order the fleet back into formation! His crew stopped cheering and looked at him like he was crazy. Do it now. Were being set up for a trap! His crew hesitated for just a moment while looking at each other and then started issuing orders, but that small hesitation proved fatal; the human fleet ripped into the Alliance ships like a tsunami.
Kosiev received Captain Johnsons report of the destruction of the recording cruisers and then opened his main fleet channel. On my command, power up your screens, charge your weapons, and attack your assigned coordinates. Remember you are to hold your section of the front and destroy anything in it or anything that tries to move through it. Ready, execute!
The seven squadrons were evenly spaced when they hit the Alliance fleet. Within five seconds of hitting the Alliance fleets front, 350 Alliance ships were destroyed. Five seconds later, 350 more had died. The Earth fleet then turned and began moving up and down the Alliance line, destroying any ship they encountered.
Captain Elizabeth Franklin on the Earth destroyer Yellow Stone had targeted a Cainth cruiser that she had seen attack and destroy one of the old destroyers. She accelerated straight at the cruiser and began taking fire from its primary beams and missiles. Weapons, prepare two needles and fire when eight hundred yards out, she commanded.
On board the Cainth cruiser ship, Leader Kerlt saw the Earth ship bearing down on him at an incredible speed. None of his weapons were having any effect, and he wasnt fast enough to outrun it. He watched and thought, Maybe we wont get to the planet quite as fast as I thought. The small human ship hit his ship with two small beams, and then he watched as his ship blew up around him.
The two needles went through the cruisers screen and shot four hundred hornets inside the screen. The four hundred hornets were each programmed to hit a section of the ship, starting at the front. Explosions walked the entire length of the cruiser, and the last one hit a fusion reactor and blew the remains of the ship into subatomic dust. By the time the explosion was over, the Yellow Stone had killed his partner cruiser and was moving in on a Cainth destroyer. Yellow Stone blew it up with its beams and didnt waste a needle. Then two dreadnoughts hit the Yellow Stone with 1,200 primary beams and exploded the small ship, but not before it had shot four needles into the closer dreadnought. Sixteen hundred hornets walked explosions the length of the dreadnought, exploding the entire surface into rubble. Six hornets made it through the surface into the missile magazines and everything was blown away from the center of the explosion.
Admiral Dorg sat in his command chair and watched his worst nightmare become a reality. He lost half his fleet within ten minutes of contact with the Earth fleet. Now the battle had broken down into ship-to-ship fighting. Those small Earth ships had some kind of beam weapon that was devastating. He saw one of the Earth battleships explode when ten dreadnoughts surrounded it and attacked it together. Before it blew up, the Earth ship killed four of the dreadnoughts with those strange thin beams and those terrible seven-hundred-foot-wide primary beams. The power of those small ships was unbelievable. Ten to one and we lose four, Dorg thought. Have the dreadnoughts target the larger human ships, he ordered. Hunt them with packs of fifteen dreadnoughts for each of their ships. Then he thought, Maybe we can recover and win this thing.