Chapter 30

Columex Approach, Columex System
Vorzyd Sector

“Oh kriffing shit,” Counter Admiral Diedrich Greyshade of the Commonality Joint Defense Fleet said to himself very, very quietly as the claxons howled around his ship. The sandwich in his hand had disintegrated inside his fist, plates left half-eaten on the mess tables as his crew stared up at the wailing sirens blankly, as if this was the first time they had ever heard them ring.

That wasn’t true. This wasn’t going to be Kronprinz’s first scuffle, nor her last. But this was the first time hostile warships kept multiplying on the scanner displays with every stuttering update, endlessly and endlessly like a self-replicating virus. Diedrich kept his breathing slow and calm, reminding himself of all the times he had waited for this exact moment. The exact moment when Columex’s planetary batteries were facing the wrong way; the exact moment the Republic would bite.

If it didn’t feel real before, it felt real now. Excitement bubbled up his throat.

“Well?” his voice struck a sharp chord, and just like that his crew were leaping off the benches, tripping over themselves as they raced to battlestations.

He carefully extricated himself from the mess table, reaching the panel on the wall and smashing in the big red button, “This is Admiral Diedrich Greyshade. I am declaring a system-wide Red Alert on my own authority. Clear the hyper-junction of all traffic immediately. If you aren’t already on final, you are required to divert to your pre-designated mooring points.”

Diedrich released the button, cleared his throat, toggled the comms to internal, and leaned on it again, “Kronprinz, this is your captain and admiral. We’ve all been waiting for this moment–get ready for the ride of your lives.”

The Counter Admiral filled his lungs with air, immersing himself in the blaring sirens and cacophonous footsteps. The rampant orders thrown over the bulkheads, the stuttering pulse-burns of sublight drives coming to life, the groaning of casemates brought to bear. Diedrich felt himself in the belly of an ancient knight risen from the grave to fight for their king once more. This was the first time war had come to Columex in millennia, and Columex was eager to respond.

He wiped his hand on a napkin, and proceeded to the flag bridge.

Much like the Xolochi Dreadnoughts of antiquity, Kronprinz was chrome-plated smooth in her entirety, hull was shaped like that of an ocean-going polyreme, with mirror-finished spaced armour attached by sliding-girders covering the whole twelve-hundred metre length. Echoes from a forgotten age when combat-standard deflector technology was still in its infancy.

Fully extended and angled out, Kronprinz turned into a bird of prey gliding upon solar winds. For as long as she was within direct line of sight with a star, there was no warship her equal in speed and manoeuvrability. When retracted and flush against the hull, her shields hid a lethal array of torpedo tubes, missile launchers, and brutal pulse cannons for an unrivalled broadside.

Unlike contemporary warships, Kronprinz’s ancient Tionese design meant there were no transparisteel viewports anywhere on the ship, and the pilothouse was no exception. Holos and plotting boards, external camera and FTL sensor displays arrayed the expanse deep in the citadel of the ship, all buzzing and blinking with a buffet of information slowly being absorbed and transliterated onto Diedrich’s imagination.

He frowned, mind locked onto the main enemy force. They were jumping in increments of a few hundred, likely divided by battle groups. It was the practical option; while doing so forced them to give up the element of surprise, it also meant they could more reliably organise into their orders of battle as well as effectively obscure their true numbers. As more warships extracted from hyperspace, they created a ‘curtain’ of interference that hindered Separatist scanners from accurately reading the number of subsequent extractions.

It was a common tactic, Diedrich decided. They themselves were doing the same thing. The Coalition Armada–JDF included–had been arranged into a sorry excuse of a battle lattice. Two-thousand warships, tightly knit and five ranks deep, arranged into a poor imitation of water’s molecular structure–or lack thereof–rather than the rigid covalent network of graphite a proper battle lattice should mimic.

To Diedrich’s great shame, it was glaringly clear that the JDF posed the weakest link in the chain. In order to make up for the deficit in skill, Commander Trilm proposed a two-fold solution by dispersing JDF vessels among the veteran Coalition Battle Squadrons. First, it would eliminate the possibility of Loyalist forces pinpointing and targeting a specific ‘weakpoint,’ and second, that the inferior formation quality would ironically improve the purpose of this particular lattice formation in the first place.

Which was, staggeringly, to conceal the largest artillery pieces known to the galaxy.

Three behemothic Field Secured Containment Vessels travelled the distance between the edges of the lattice, each releasing one of their thirty containment bubbles at regular intervals. Carefully guided by a small army of tugs, each half a kilometre bubble contained anywhere from a hundred to a thousand asteroids captured from all over the star system.

Then there was the Victoria Louise. A forty-seven million cubic metre, hundred-forty million ton asteroid that had to be painstakingly sculpted into a rough sphere in order to fit into one of the bubbles.

To speak nothing of the man’s character, this was the sort of genius–or mind-numbing insanity–only an Onderonian could devise. The legendarily troubled history of the jungle world aside, the very fact that their archnemesis was their own moon spoke spades of their mastery in irregular warfare. Only someone who had spent his professional career warring against the ‘Demon Moon’ could conceive the idea of using asteroids as grapeshot. That’s what Diedrich believed.

The Republic took their time. He had fully immersed himself in the battle logs from Centares, and recognised the wildly different behaviour. Both fleets now had their cards all on the table–or so it seemed–and caution was the order of the day.

“Intercept in half an hour and falling,” someone called out, “Their accel-squared with rising steeply.”

Diedrich leaned on a dashboard, exercising great care so as to not disturb the myriad instruments his fingers gingerly skirted. Staring down through the acrylic-shielded scanner display, he ground his teeth at the sight of Columexi battleship Hexenkoenig testing the patience of a tiny Coalition corvette. The mighty warship was like an ill-trained hunting dog snapping at the leash, biting to dress herself and her pack in the laurels of combat, while the more seasoned corvette boldly crossed her in order to force her down.

Almost foolishly brave, he thought. The Corellian corvette must be no longer than two-hundred metres in length, while Hexenkoenig was well over a kilometre stern to bow. Diedrich browsed his registry for the ship–Habatok II–and made a mental note to thank them after the battle.

On the other side of the plot, the enemy stratagem was gradually taking shape. The boiling mass extended outwards, splitting into three customary box formations. There were five-hundred ships of Cerulean Spear Fleet in the centre, with the Steel Blade and White Cuirass Fleets taking the flanks–each boasting around a thousand vessels–confirming Captain Harsol’s battle analysis exercise.

“What’s the effective range of our… artillery?” Diedrich asked out loud.

His XO shrugged, “We have ninety shells? Eighty-nine, excluding Victoria Louise. The ranging shot will be at ten-mil klicks, but effective is likely half that.”

The Counter Admiral nodded slowly. Eighty-eight shells meant every single one had to count, not to mention the ragtag propulsion system of commandeered freighters, bulkers, dreadnoughts and battleships meant each bubble was going to have different stats and parameters.

He eyed the integrated chrono, mentally calculating the time it will take to relay orders and manoeuvre into combat stations. Ten minutes, maybe less, with the enemy’s accel-squared. Diedrich spent the time reviewing the Confederate First and Fourth Fleets’ transmissions again, hoping to the Lord Above they would keep their word, hypocritical as it may be. If not… the plan was to stall for half a local day, until Columex’s planetary batteries could be brought to bear.

And if not that… then for Columex to fight. The world was only marginally less wealthy than the likes of Raxus Secundus. At the centre of trade on the Perlemian, towns and cities covered the surface, supporting billions of lives. At this very moment, the landing grounds were being fortified, civilians drafted, and armies marshalled. They would not surrender without a vicious fight.

But he hoped it would never come to that.

“i–Order received!” the comms officer slammed down his headset and sprung to his feet, raking his eyes across the bridge until it met Diedrich’s, “Crying Sun orders Hydra formation, sir!”

Diedrich swung around to the navigator, “Ventral thrust platforms– execute manoeuvring orders package immediately!”

Kronprinz whistled, her reflective armour plates ruffling like feathers and she fluently translated upwards, carefully adapting her thrust so as to not collide with the ship above, or block the ship below. He counted down the seconds on his chrono, a bead of sweat sliding down his forehead.

Every second they took translating formations was a second the enemy got to figure out the existence of the asteroid bubbles. Each bubble was propulsion-less, and when covered by the Armada’s radar profiles, were effectively invisible to the Republic. But that didn’t mean they could take their time clearing the line of sight.

As the battle lattice moved into two affronting lines abreast above and below, the phalanges of tugs started pushing the bubbles forward before the screen fully cleared. Diedrich recalled the question of whether the shells should be stationed behind or before the main battle lines. If they were fired from behind, it would save valuable time. If they were fired from in front, it would eliminate the risk of friendly fire.

Friendly fire by ten-thousand asteroids. There wasn’t much of a debate.

Four-hundred merchant and a hundred-forty battleships followed them, and as the tugs dragged the bubbles to a total halt, the massive vessels arranged themselves into ninety three-point Cylinders that sheathed over the bubbles not dissimilar to how a shell would slide down a cannon bore.

“Range?” Diedrich stared at the holocam monitor with an intensity he didn’t expect from himself.

It was a morbid fascination. Would the cannons work to utterly devastate the enemy, or would they backfire… morbid fascination transformed into a nervousness when he realised what backfiring would entail. There was a reason there were only skeleton crews aboard those merchantmen.

“Ten–nine million klicks.”

The first pulses of energy were already pouring out in waves from the ranging shot–six two-kilometre long vessels charging up every tractor beam projector they had. And when Kronprinz sensors were almost totally blind from the radiation, the bubble’s containment fields dropped–

⁂

Seven-hundred and twenty-nine asteroids and many, many more meteoroids blasted out like buckshot from a sawed-off shotgun–only that the shotgun had a barrel five kilometres long and was capable of tearing a rent through the fabric of space-time. Minutes later, the Republic formations scattered on the battle plot. The distance was too great for me to actually see anything visually, but Repulse certainly did.

The empty ‘casing’ left behind was then dragged back to the rear by the tugs, accompanied by hamstrung, lightly smoking hulls. Thankfully, there was no significant damage, but manually disabling the tractor beam safeties had evidently done a number on their power cycling systems.

Drive cones exploded onto the scanner displays, intensifying violently as the Republic fleets slammed onto the brakes and burned velocity against what must be dangerous levels of g-forces.

We didn’t know how fast the asteroids were going exactly. Yes, we completed some feasibility tests with computerised simulations, but they weren’t rigorous. We weren’t physicists, and this wasn’t an experiment. We figured that as long as each asteroid, meteoroid, and micrometeoroid contained enough kinetic energy to pierce double-forward particle shields, it was good enough.

There was no finesse involved, only a turbulent mix of gravitational forces acting in roughly the same direction. With the enemy speeding towards us at–I checked the repeater–50,000KPS, while the asteroids were reaching upwards of, I don’t know, 190,000KPS at intercept? That meant the relative impact velocity was eighty-percent the speed of light.

The Republic was clever enough to realise that they had to slow the fuck down, first to reduce the impact velocity–though I didn’t know how much that would do–and second to regain some of their maneuvreability. Attitude thrusters don’t really work to any meaningful capacity at those kinds of speeds.

Too little, too late. Three minutes later, they were at a range where we couldn’t miss.

One by one, the shells deactivated their containment fields, and a torrent of destruction was blasted out into the abyss. According to the readouts, they had under fifty-five seconds to get a fix on an incoming projectile and intercept or evade–and that number was dropping rapidly. It was as if the galaxy was sucking in a breath each time a cylinder charged up their projectors–each ripple of gravitational energy able to level entire cities–washing out and prickling the skin. I shivered, involuntarily tensing as Cylinder 12 shone like a newborn star on Repulse’s readouts.

Then, when the fabric of space-time had been pulled to its breaking point, like a rubber band ready to snap, the shields dropped, and boom– The numbers in front me sprung into the dozens of digits, consoles screaming in white noise as if they had been flashbanged. And half a minute later, a swathe of the Blazing Claw was scythed into oblivion, sparkling like glitter thrown across the sky.

A hundred flames were lit for a brief moment, like angels lifting candles in mourning of lives lost, followed by black and quiet. There was an empty gash on the battle plot–small, but distinct enough that once noticed, it was hard to miss the absence of drive cones, replaced by lingering ghosts of faint steam.

The Republic fleets were decelerating, bless their souls, but not fast enough. Honestly, at this point I would expect them to initiate a mass flip-and-burn considering the dire straits they were in, but they were stubbornly refusing to do so. I could only think of two reasons; to avoid exposing their unshielded engine blocks, which was reasonable enough, or because the very idea hadn't occurred to them.

Who knows? It seemed obvious enough to me, having learned about retrograde burns–granted, they were necessary for us technologically-primitive Earthlings who had yet to break into the open sea. It’s not out of left field to suppose that this galaxy had largely lost the concept of retrograde thrust and subsequently flip-and-burns, considering the efficiency of their starships.

Or maybe ass-heavy Star Destroyers simply didn’t have bow thrusters or TVCs powerful enough to initiate a complete one-eighty with any semblance of promptitude.

Cylinder 28 boomed out into the darkness, followed by Cylinders 29, 30, and 31. It was nothing more than a turkey shoot. Accuracy was questionable, as were our methods, but after running some numbers, Stelle produced a figure of five to ten ships downed with every shell. A terrible number at face value, but considering the lack of real firing solutions, unpredictable dispersion, and the sheer distance involved… in the end we were still ripping apart six to seven-hundred capital ships without a single casualty.

A niggling sensation in the back of my mind disturbed me. The idea that we had just broken an unstated rule of war. That with a new precedent set, the very paradigm of naval warfare had just been flipped on its head. Engagement distances were going to magnify exponentially, capital ships a decade from now will look and operate in wholly alien manners.

I rubbed my eyes at the painfully bright screens assaulting my senses, attempting the focus on the big picture as my droid crew called out reports. Despite my attempt, I still pondered the idea of buying some spectacles. In any case, the Republic had taken a limited reaction, but not out of a lack of effort. The three fleets were gradually splitting apart into three distinct blocks, with smaller subdivisions spacing out as well.

“Stelle…” I dragged my voice, increasing in volume at the end.

“I know, sir!” the droid’s response was sharp and frustrated.

We had to calculate the Mandator’s extraction vector for the next phase of our stratagem to carry out. The star dreadnoughts were large and terrifying–capable of routing entire fleets from mere presence alone–but they were slow. Despite the size of some SSDs in the far future, subluminal drive technology had not quite kept up with the size of star dreadnoughts just yet, and Mandators were just as slow as some ponderous freighters. That didn’t mean jumping in a Mandator to its desired battle station was safe by any means, but I suspected a Jedi was involved, considering the precision displayed at Centares.

Stelle must’ve gotten close, but with the Republic’s formation shift, he likely had to return to square one.

Repulse’s proximity sensors suddenly screamed in alarm, and that was the only warning I got before the cruiser next to us was completely annihilated, inadvertently shielding us from the worst of the fragments.

My face reddened in fear and panic, “What the hell happened!?”

“Cylinder Seventy-Four backfired, sir!” the comms droid shouted up at me, “But the bulker Hart Am Wind was able to reverse their projection in time and nullify a significant amount, limiting the damage. All six ships of the Cylinder were destroyed, and the tentative casualty count is six-hundred and sixty-one. Damage reports from other ships are still coming in!”

Well, that was to be expected! Was the first thought that came to mind. It was why six-hundred were killed and not six-thousand. The next thought that came to mind was the immediate morale repercussions. I cursed mentally–we had a plan for this as well–and it was to bite the bullet.

“Withdraw the remaining Cylinders!” I commanded, “Dispatch order to the White Hand Fleet, all forward at flank speed! We’re leading by example!”

“Dispatch order–” Stelle recited my words, pausing at the last phrase, “–Should I include the last part?”

“Yes, you will,” I replied, before grumbling quietly, “As much as I hate doing so.”

Repulse surged forwards, igniting her engines with the desire to do battle once more. I’ve missed this, the star frigate seemed to howl as she shivered in delight beneath my feet, it’ll be just like old times! Or maybe I was just high on my fight-or-flight response and actively hallucinating. It made me braver than I felt, nonetheless, and that worked for me.

Not to be outdone, Counter Admiral Greyshade’s battlecruiser Kronprinz surged as well, followed by the might of Battle Squadron Nardolin. If there was ever an alien ship, Kronprinz fully encapsulated the idea, with armour flaps undulating almost hypnotically, like facsimiles of maritime oars crashing against invisible waves. If you looked closely, you could almost make out the bores of menacing pulse cannons hiding beneath, which were more comparable to disruptors than contemporary turbolasers.

The Battle Hydra roared, all two-thousand warships launching themselves forward in a gleaming wavefront of dull steel and brutal firepower, enraptured by the promise of glory in death. I gripped the armrests tightly, inconspicuously allowing the Task Force Repulse to overtake the namesake ship in my effort to bring Repulse to the centre of the pack, rather than the front.

“–Fix!” Stelle cried out, “Transmitting prediction model!”

I snapped by attention to the battle plot, where two blinking red arcs forecasted the effective extraction location of the incoming dreadnought. The problem was the fact that there were two arcs–each located the widening gaps between the three enemy formations. In hindsight, it was rather obvious. They likely wanted us to drive hard into the gaps before having the Mandators jump straight on top of us, recreating the destruction of Battle Squadron Salvara.

So the question was; which gap were they intending on jumping?

I fiddled with the console, analysing the Republic subformations; the Cerulean Spear in the middle, Steel Blade on their right flank, and White Cuirass opposite that. Most of the Spear’s strength was gone after Centares and the opening phase, and they were only left with 300 combat-capable warships, judging from the drive signatures. The Steel Blade had 900, and the White Cuirass had 600.

Looks like the Steel Blade was mostly untouched by the Cylinders.

I figured it out.

“All units,” I said, and Stelle immediately began recording my voice, “We are less than thirteen minutes from contact with the enemy. Execute manoeuvring package seventeen, effective immediately. I want to see a picture-perfect modified Battle Order Three with Task Force Repulse making angular point–just as we practised!”

Like a sluggish giant, the Coalition Armada began to move, with the rear ranks shifting over to our left flank, out of the Republic’s view. Within ten minutes, our Battle Hydra had evolved into a classic oblique order with the explicit intention of ramming straight through the opening and separating the Steel Blade Fleet from the rest of the enemy formation.

On our right flank, opposite the White Cuirass, the JDF’s Battle Squadron Nardolin prepared for the fight of their lives.

I blinked, and in that split-second, automated targeting systems were already aiming and firing as warships tore past each other at a combined speed of almost sixty-thousand kilometres per second. Repulse shuddered as she registered wayward hits on her shields, even despite being deep in the mass.

Republic turbolasers boomed out in panic, with the vast majority of those shots passing behind our formation as we surged hard into the wedge between their subformations. They were still reorganising when we charged–a charge that surprised ourselves, much less the Republic–and their targeting computers were struggling to recalibrate. By contrast, we couldn’t miss. There were enemy ships all around us, and our missile volleys slammed into already weakened shields, dense barrages of particle beams and ion charges annihilating light cruisers and corvettes.

The enemy, instead of slowing down, accelerated again, ostensibly in an attempt to crash through our line and hook around for a flank. But we were in an oblique order, and our original five-rank deep formation had ballooned to twice that number. It didn’t take very long for them to realise they were signing their own death certificates by driving deeper into our formation, and as blossoming starbursts marked the destruction of foolhardy Star Destroyers, we began to push back the Republic with sheer mass alone.

The White Hand Fleet and Task Force Repulse punched into the gap between the Steel Blade and Cerulean Spear, roaring out double-sided broadsides as firing solutions were getting churned out on an industrial scale. At the same time, Task Force Sol and Task Force Clysm finally crashed into the bulk of the Cerulean Spear, swinging around in a last-minute fake and lashing out with two torpedo fusillades in quick succession. Far behind, the imposingly dark shadow of replenished droid LAC formations rose like an insatiable demon.

On the far side, barely registering on the battle plot, the JDF and Task Force Nardolin played cat-and-mouse with the White Cuirass Fleet. With thinned out numbers, their Tionese warships were much more manoeuvrable, rushing and unleashing opportunistic cannonades before swinging around and luring the embittered enemy formation further out of formation and into range of Cylinder 90 and the looming gaze of Victoria Louise.

“We have an incoming transmission for Commodore Bonteri,” the comms droid relayed, “It’s from Messenger in Flames.”

“They’ve arrived!” I exclaimed, “A bit early, but it’ll do. Do they have the minelayers I asked for?”

“Yes sir,” the droid confirmed, “Sixteen minelayers.”

“Great, great,” I nodded in out-of-body calmness as the battle raged around me, “Have them stay out of it until my order. Contact Admiral Trench; where the hell is he?”

“The cruiser Morgenlicht reports that he is enroute from Arcan,” Stelle paused, “And Admiral Tonith has just arrived in Belderone.”

Oh yeah, I thought in gleeful anticipation, it’s all coming together. Come on Republic, make your move so we can make ours.

Task Force Repulse finally broke through the Republic line, and was greeted by a brilliant swathe of stars in the distance, which I believed to be the Nyarikan Nebula. Drifting among them were fleets of still-warm wreckage drifting lifelessly in the void, tumbling in ignoble demise. I felt a great sadness, then, but swiftly brushed it off. There was a time and place for all emotions.

I simultaneously checked the Coalition Armada’s status and the movements of the Steel Blade Fleet, checking for any untoward reactions as I timed my next order with every cell of commanding experience I had in my body.

“Manoeuvre package fifteen, now!” I commanded harshly, and the White Hand Fleet pivoted again.

Some seven-hundred warships swept to portside in tandem, formation dissolving before coalescing again into a great palm that began to isolate the Steel Blade from the rest of their allies. Munificents and Recusants, and many more destroyers angled down from above as their forward-focused batteries constituted the piercing thrust that knocked the enemy off their fleet, while the battleships and heavy cruisers closed up on each other into a great block of pure mass and momentum, mopping up any incapacitated Star Destroyers before pushing the enemy outwards.

The Steel Blade was now sliding backwards into the spreading debris field, suddenly becoming the encircled element as they were shoved further and further away. The incapability of Star Destroyers to spin around or reverse to any meaningful facility was immediately apparent, and surrounded on three sides, they were sitting ducks to the slaughter.

Realising the predicament, the right flank of the Cerulean Spear peeled off and charged Task Force Repulse’s rearguard in an attempt to save their allies, but Calli Trilm’s Clysm Fleet deftly slid into the wedge in a beautiful line ahead, crossing the Spear’s ‘T’ and lighting up the space with a point-blank torpedo barrage. This wouldn’t be the first time she had my back, and considering our admittedly complicated relationship, I doubted it would be the last.

I forced myself out of the tunnel vision I found myself in, checking in with the rest of the Armada. But I didn’t have to–the Republic was crumbling on every front except the White Cuirass’, which had slowed down upon realising it was on the edge of the Cylinders’ killzone. And just when I had about decided the Mandators were a no-show, the Republic finally deployed their trump card.

Once again, the volume of the universe was toned down, and I could almost feel the shockwave of Cronau radiation washing over my skin as dimensional barriers were violently torn open. There was a silent explosion, and in a display of magnificent power, Legacy of the Founders appeared exactly where I had predicted–in between the Cerulean Spear and White Cuirass–first dorsal-mounted batteries already thundering away.

Task Force Nardolin was already responding, and Kronprinz looked like some sort of martial artist as she angled her reflective armour plates in quick succession to deflect turbolaser bolts.

A shadow crossed over Repulse’s bridge. I frowned, looking around. Wasn’t the sun behind us? I glanced at the battle plot, and to my numb surprise, I couldn’t see Repulse’s drive cone. Or any of Repulse Squadron’s drive cones, actually.

A second registry designation popped up on a readout; Pride of the Core.

“Uh, sir?” Stelle looked up at me with uncertainty, “It looks like there's a star dreadnought right on top of us.”

My pleasant emotions were shanked with a vibroknife and thrown into the sewers as my brain caught up with the situation. God damn it Harsol, now I owe you one.

Fuck. Fucking shit!

“Evasive action!” I screamed.