The Erasi assault began with kinetic attacks against the fixed defenses. Anessa watched as the Empire’s stealth drones transmitted the locations of the rocks, and the defense stations and defense platforms—both Shara Daim and Empire—fired beams of energy to take them down. Several Erasi formations closed to missile range, sending thousands of missiles towards her defenses, and her Legions responded with their own.
The Legions and the defenses seemed to be getting the better of the exchanges, except that each time an Erasi ship lost shields, they retreated behind the lines and new ones took their place, while the damaged ships moved to the back of the formation so that Erasi repair ships could repair them. So while her forces were inflicting more damage, they were taking more losses. She didn’t have enough forces to rotate them around; all were required to hold the Erasi.
With no other choice, she gave orders for several of her formations to leave the protection of the defenses and enter energy range. Legion ships fought and died as they prevented the Erasi ships from retreating, adding their firepower to the defense platforms and stations to destroy them utterly. Quickly, the Erasi shifted formation again, forcing her ships back behind the defenses. The Legions were battered, but they had succeeded; the Erasi had been momentarily pushed back. Anessa saw one of the Erasi formations push too far towards her defenses, leaving their support ships and the small taskforce defending them too far from any other Erasi formation. She opened a channel to Adrian’s ship.
Half of Adrian’s remaining fleets dropped out of the skim as close to the Erasi support ships and the forces protecting them. Immediately, they opened fire. Short-range ion beams burned through the Erasi ships’ shields, taking them down and allowing for plasma torpedoes to burn through their hulls. The Erasi force protecting the support ships attempted to shield them, but they were caught off guard, and were outnumbered.
Adrian’s warships quickly dispatched them, and started a retreat while firing several volleys towards the Erasi back lines, hopefully disrupting them enough to give more breathing room to Anessa. A few Erasi fleets moved to intercept his fleets, but he knew that his skim drives would recharge before they would catch up.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Kaleras
Garash studied the battle map. His fleets were making progress taking down fixed defenses, but the Shara Daim had also destroyed many of his ships—too many. Attacking a heavily defended point was always extremely hard, but the Shara Daim were too effective. And Garash couldn’t let this battle continue while his forces suffered this rate of losses. He formed a new formation with his most advanced ships, four of the ten fleets that had been equipped with weapons capable of passing through shields, and he put the End of Hope at the formation’s point.
Slowly, they moved out of the protective coverage of the rest of the fleets on a course for the Shara Daim defenses. Once the Shara Daim figured out what he was doing, the fire shifted towards his devastator, which shrugged off all of their attacks. The devastator’s shields were near impossible to take down, and even if they somehow managed such a task, Garash doubted that the Shara Daim or the Empire had something capable of punching through his ship’s hull.
His ships started firing their beams, completely ignoring the Shara Daim shields. Defense stations and platforms exploded, and the Shara Daim were forced to pull more ships from the other sides of their perimeter to attempt to stop him. It wouldn’t matter in the end, Garash ordered his ships forward, increasing the pressure, with his devastator leading the push.
Adrian watched as the Erasi flagship started pummeling Anessa’s defenses. She was trying to stop it by pouring more fire into it, even going as far as to pull ships from other sides to help. Yet the flagship didn’t even slow, its shields illuminated from the constant attacks but showing no sign of going down.
Adrian saw another chance to take a shot at the large warship. By pulling in front without the cover of the superior numbers, it had made itself vulnerable to his attack. Adrian accessed his c-board and started giving out orders, forming a taskforce to attack the flagship, as well as sending coordinates to the missile pods he had placed outside of the system. The Erasi forces were divided into several formations that surrounded Anessa’s position, but there was actually room between them, direct lines of sight where his pods could skim through.
As soon as he finished crafting the orders, he sent the instructions to the pods to go to skim. Adrian sent a message to Anessa, telling her what to expect, and then he waited for his pods to arrive.
One hundred of the Empire’s missile pods exited their skim between the Erasi flagship and the rest of its formation. The sudden appearance and launches from the pods disrupted the Erasi ships’ fire and formation as they maneuvered to get into better positions to take down the incredible number of missiles. Their maneuvering isolated the Erasi flagship, and once another fifty pods came out of their skims, it had only its own point defense to protect it.
The Erasi warship’s response was immediate and devastating; nearly a fifth of the missile pods were destroyed before they could launch even a single missile, and the missiles that were launched started dying at an incredible rate. But despite that, there were just too many for it to stop them all alone. Ion missiles delivered their powerful shield draining charges at the bottom side of the ship, the Shara Daim taking the opportunity to increase their rate of fire as well and pound its front.
The shields were wavering, but still held, until five skim missiles appeared and slammed into the shields at the exact same. A hole appeared as the Erasi ship’s shields collapsed in that section, just as several new arrivals exited the skim. Five hundred of the Empire’s drones, followed by five battleships and three dreadnoughts, left the skim close enough to the Erasi flagship that they could fire all of their weapons.
Proton beams and plasma torpedoes left the Empire’s battleships and dreadnoughts before the Erasi flagship could even react. Weapons fire bathed the flagship’s hull—and did nothing. The Erasi warship retaliated, its energy weapons swathing drones as fast as it could retarget, as the drones fired their kinetic shells and lasers at the flagship’s hull.
Powerful shield-piercing beams of energy exited the Erasi warship, targeting two of the Empire’s dreadnoughts, and instead of bypassing their shields, the beams were dissipated across the surface of the Empire’s warships, doing almost no damage. All of the Empire’s warships in the taskforce had their shimmering fields active to counter the Erasi shield-bypassing beams.
The dreadnoughts targeted their k-turrets, firing their kinetic ship killers at the Erasi warship’s hull. Nine kinetic shells slammed into the Erasi ship’s hull at nearly forty percent the speed of light, transferring all of that kinetic energy into it. The hull held. But indentations appeared at impact points and small cracks splintered across the hull. Emboldened, the Empire’s ships kept firing, but the Erasi warship rolled, forcing them to move with it. Its weapons pummeled the Empire’s ships, and two battleships exploded as their shimmering fields failed and the Erasi energy weapons cut their hulls open.
The rest of the Erasi formation finally fought through the pods’ missiles and the Shara Daim fire, and came to aid their flagship, forcing the Empire’s ships to retreat towards the Shara Daim defense line. A single dreadnought kept with the Erasi roll, keeping up with the barrage of plasma torpedoes and proton beams, firing their k-turrets as soon as they could be recharged. The damage seemed to be increasing, but it was only by a miniscule amount. Then the shields of the Erasi warship flared and the area was covered by the shields again. The dreadnought kept pouring fire into the Erasi warship, but with its shields back up, it was doing nothing. The Erasi warships overwhelmed the dreadnought’s defenses and destroyed it.