Anessa ordered her Legion into the point. Putting debris into a point was a very effective strategy, if you knew that the force coming against you was large enough to fill the point, and you had the time to put enough debris into it. The point was a large spherical area in space, and the larger the force coming through it, the closer the ships had to be to one another in order to fit. Their three Legions were not the upper limit, but if there was enough debris, it could’ve been bad. They wouldn’t have lost the larger ships, but the smaller ones would’ve either been destroyed from impacts or severely damaged. It was lucky for the scouting force that standard procedure for going through the trans-point was to spread the forces across it.
They would now be using their energy weapons to clear the debris, and since they had reported that they could clear it before the Legions passed, it meant that there wasn’t a lot of the debris, but even a small amount could’ve been a blow to the Legions.
The Legions took formation inside the trans-point. Narrasak’s Legion took the center, with Anessa’s and Garaam’s taking the sides, waiting only on the order from the Ravager. Then the order came, and the Legions disappeared in a flash of violet light.
Chapter Fifteen
Sol
The holo showed the Shara Daim advance taskforce clearing the debris from the trans-station using their energy weapons. The scanners recognized the weapons as a type of high-intensity lasers, about ten percent more powerful than the Empire’s of the same class.
Adrian studied the enemy from his chair in the Olympus Mons command hub. There was no point in him being on a ship when he was more defended on the planet. There were two types of enemy ships. A smaller class, 850 meters long and 200 wide and tall, and another that was a larger class, 1100 meters long and 400 wide and tall. Both classes were shaped like long pillars with weapons mounted around the hull, with a wider base where their drives were and with a narrow tip.
From the data they’d received from the Erasi, he knew that the smaller ones were destroyer class, and the other a cruiser. Veritas had encountered two more classes of Legion ships in Tarabat. A heavy-cruiser class, at 1400 meters long and 600 wide and tall, and what the Shara Daim called super battleships. 3500 meters long and about 800 meters wide and tall, its back and front looked like rectangular pillars, but its middle was wider, making them look like a hammer that had the hammer’s head lowered to the middle of the handle. Their Legions also had a battleship class, which was a smaller version of their super battleships, at 2400 meters long and 600 wide and tall, with the central part being about 1400 meters wide and 800 tall.
They had powerful ships, and Adrian knew that what he wanted to accomplish wouldn’t be easy. The Shara Daim ships finished clearing the points and moved aside, preparing for the arrival of the rest of the force. There was still debris outside of the trans-station, as the drones hadn’t had the chance to push all of it inside the trans-station, and some of that was there by design.
Twenty minutes later, a violet flash of light announced the arrival of the Shara Daim force. Six thousand and three hundred warships had just entered his system.
“Alright, people, this is it. Follow orders, remember the plan.”
He leaned into the chair, closed his eyes, and accessed the Watchtower interface. Suddenly he was floating in space between the planets of the solar system. The Legions still held position at the trans-station, and Adrian looked over the force. He had already known the composition of the force, of course; the Empire had sent their stealth ships into both the Erasi and Shara Daim territories as soon as they’d discovered them. Three Legions, and from the data Aileen had recovered, he knew that they were the First, the Third, and the Fourteenth Legions. He didn’t know who led the Third and the Fourteenth, but the First was led by Anessa. And since no ships other than the Legions had left the system she had arrived in once he had released her, he knew that she was with her Legion.
A group of ships was speeding away from Mars in the opposite direction of the incoming Shara Daim force and towards one of the outgoing trans-stations. The Erasi diplomatic ship and its escorts. It didn’t really surprise him they were ready to leave even before the Shara Daim arrived, and must’ve known about the attack.
The tachyon probes around the system were constantly scanning, giving him a real-time picture and scans of everything in-system. With a thought, he zoomed in on one of the Legion ships. According to Aileen, the ship was called Bloodbringer, and was Anessa’s flagship. With a thought, he marked the ship and sent the orders regarding it to the drone control. Then he saw the Legions start to move. Adrian waited for a moment and then sighed. It was time for the battle to start. He focused and sent the orders.
Two signals flew through space from Mars towards the invading fleet, its target hidden in the debris field that surrounded the incoming trans-station. The Shara Daim Legions ignored the debris, as it was no danger to their ships. The pieces of scrap floating around were inconsequential to them; their scout force had already informed them that they had caught the Empire ships that were pushing the debris in and destroyed them.
A ship at stealth received the first signal, one of 150 Specter-class stealth ships, surrounding the trans-station. The commander relayed the order, and all 150 ships released the missile pods they were carrying. Each ship carried 10 pods, attached to their hulls. A moment later, the 1500 pods got locks on their targets and fired one third of their loads towards the Shara Daim in the center, 100 missiles each. Six seconds later, they fired the second. One hundred and fifty thousand missiles sped towards the Shara Daim ships.
The second signal found its target as well, and a simple command turned it on. All over the debris field, large missile-like devices powered up and received targeting solutions from Olympus Mons and the stealth ships. A moment later, their drives sent them on their way towards the unsuspecting ships, following only two seconds behind the first wave of missiles.
Anessa watched as the Legions slowly advanced. The trans-point was located between the orbits of the third and the fourth planets, and it was fairly close to the fourth planet in its current orbit. There wasn’t much in the system, at least not on the scale of an older colonized system. Most of the traffic in system was between the fourth and fifth planets and the asteroid belt in between them. A few faint returns came from the orbit of the sun and from the ring of the gas giant, but they were obscured and too far away to be seen clearly, so she focused on their target. There were several stations in the orbit of the fourth planet. And around twenty objects that her ship’s sensors recognized as Erasi defense platforms.
Anessa frowned at that. The Empire couldn’t have purchased the plans for those platforms because the Erasi didn’t sell their military-grade technology, even if it was outdated. Which could only mean that they had given it to the Empire, and since the Empire used it, that meant that they didn’t have anything better. And that didn’t make sense. She hadn’t seen any of their technology in action, but she was positive that they had taken at least one Ra’a’zani world, although she didn’t know the particulars of that action. The Empire could’ve lost a lot of ships, or the Ra’a’zani force could’ve been small, and easily outnumbered by the Empire.