Unfortunately, all the Legions had moved out of the range of the station’s gravity weapon, and were on the edge of the range of its proton beams. However, the station had already exacted a terrible price to those ships that had been in its range; hundreds of burned or crushed hulls floated in front of it. The enemy ships were still in the missile range, so he ordered the station commander to send his missiles towards the single Legion and allow the two that were trying to push through the platforms to get away.
He focused all the firepower he had available at the single Legion. Its commander was putting its smaller ships in front and sacrificing them to the kinetics of his drones, but Adrian’s platforms and missiles from the station were wreaking havoc on them from all sides.
Adrian focused the platforms on the Legion’s super battleships, even as he moved the drones to prevent their passage. The Legion commander must’ve realized what Adrian was doing, but it was too late, his ships were already on intercept courses.
The first drone sped up and smashed into one of the Shara Daim ships, a cruiser, the resulting explosion blowing pieces of it into the other ships. The Shara Daim ships died from the fire of the station and the platforms, the debris field in front of it damaged any ship that tried to pass, and the platforms around the planet finished them. Whoever was in command of that Legion hadn’t realized that his ships were drones and that he could use their hulls as weapons too, that they were expendable—or else the commander was willing to sacrifice his ships just for a chance to get to the planet.
But even through all that fire, six ships—two super battleships and four battleships—limped close enough to the planet and fired their missiles at the stations and platforms in orbit. Shuttles left their ships on the way to the planet.
Olympus Mons’s defenses activated. All around the mountain, turrets lifted out of the ground and started taking down missiles and shuttles. Nevertheless, out of hundreds of shuttles, one managed to pass through the fire and crash land on Olympus Mons, just as the last super battleship died in orbit. Adrian commed Aileen to take care of the intruders—if any had survived the crash—as he focused on the remaining two Legions that had just escaped his trap.
Aileen ran through the corridors of Olympus Mons as her armor closed around her. She had spent the battle in the command hub watching as Adrian commanded. Now they had Shara Daim troops on the ground and inside the complex. They had managed to crash their shuttle through the ‘front door,’ so to speak. Atlas had reported nine hostiles, and Aileen knew that if they had even half the strength of their former prisoner, they could make a lot of trouble. Behind her ran a ten-man team of Warpath warrior adepts dressed in combat armor and carrying plasma rifles.
“Atlas, where are they?” Aileen asked the Olympus Mons AI over the comms.
“Second level, they are just passing the elevators.”
Aileen nodded and took a turn left, entering the stairs that led down. “What about our people?” Aileen asked.
“Our people are following your advice and are engaging from afar, and retreating before the enemy can close the distance. Their weapons don’t appear to do any damage to their armor,” Atlas said as her HUD split and a small window appeared with a direct link from the cameras on level two.
The Shara Daim wore the same kind of armor as Anessa, which seemed resistant to the weapons that the adepts engaging them used. But thankfully Aileen carried weapons that she knew could get through their armor.
Aileen and her team arrived just as the Shara Daim closed on the nine soldiers. One of the Warpath adepts was lifted off the ground and a bolt of white hit him right in the chest, throwing him against a wall.
Aileen raised her weapon and opened fire across the room; a moment later, people behind her did the same. They caught the Shara Daim in the open, plasma bolts hitting them on their armor. The Shara Daim were obviously aware of the danger, as they tried to evade and fire from their forearm-mounted weapons.
Aileen felt a buildup of Sha from one of the Shara Daim, and immediately ordered everyone to focus fire on him, using her own Sha to disrupt whatever the enemy attempted. She grabbed his legs telekinetically and held him for barely a moment, but in that time more than fifteen plasma bolts hit his armor and burned through, killing him. Suddenly she felt three others build up the Sha, and she yelled for everyone to get clear. Her team jumped towards the adepts, where they were hiding behind a short wall.
The enemy kept firing at them, holding them pinned behind the wall. Aileen felt one of them try and grab one of her people from behind the wall with the Sha, and she peeked over and threw the strongest kinetic strike she could at them, disrupting whatever they were trying to do. It also dropped her to half of her reserves. She had nowhere near the level of skill and power that Adrian had, and was probably even inferior to her enemy.
From her HUD, she noticed that reinforcements were coming as she detected their imps, but it would take them at least two minutes. Olympus Mons was a large facility, and they had moved many people to Jupiter or to the fleets prior to them leaving for Ra’a’zani space.
Then she felt a wave of something through the Sha, and heard thumps from the positions of the Shara Daim. She stood up and looked over, seeing the Shara Daim writhing on the floor. Behind them stood ten Sowir, walking slowly towards them.
“You need to stun them; we can’t hold them for much longer,” a voice said in her head, and Aileen immediately jumped over the wall and started giving out orders.
“Thank you,” she sent to the Sowir. Her people moved towards the Shara Daim, beating them unconscious with their weapons and binding them. Aileen sent a request for the devices to drain their power. She sent an all-clear to Adrian and assembled a team to go and secure the crashed shuttle, and formed a few others to check the surroundings in case any other shuttles managed to drop down.
Chapter Eighteen
Olympus Mons
The two remaining Shara Daim forces punched through the wall of defense platforms. They were severely crippled; both of the Legions were down to perhaps half of their strength, with a combined number of 2389 ships. Most of their larger classes showed signs of damage, although few of the two Legions’ battleships and super battleships had actually been destroyed. But there were only a few ships of their smaller classes remaining. The Third Legion had been in the center of the attack, and had taken on the brunt of Sol’s defenses.
Adrian saw that Anessa’s ship was having trouble keeping its shields up, and there were a few scorch marks on its hull from the fire it took to shield the smaller ships. The force was speeding towards the hyperspace barrier in the opposite direction of Mars. Adrian sighed. He had sacrificed a lot of drones and new defense platforms to make a point, and now it was time for him to ram it through in such a way that even a Shara Daim could understand it.
Adrian disengaged the Watchtower interface and opened his eyes, seeing the holo in front of him showing the Shara Daim ships, and people working around him. He keyed his comms and opened a channel to a ship hiding behind Jupiter.
A hologram of Johanna Stern, Fleet Commander of the Second Fleet, appeared in front of him.
“It’s time,” Adrian said.
Johanna only nodded, and closed the comm. For several minutes, nothing happened, and then new signatures started appearing around the Shara Daim ships. Five of the Empire’s fleets exited their skims from their positions at the edges of the Sol system where they had been hiding behind planets or the Sun. Ten thousand warships kept pace with the running Shara Daim ships, outside the range of their energy weapons. No shield was raised, no weapon was powered; there were no threatening moves. Three fleets took positions around the Shara Daim’s sides, and the other two at the front and the back.