SOTS: The Hammer Falls (New chapter!!!)

[Sarevok]

It is a good chapter. I like it.

[Shroom Man 777]

Thanks

[LT.Hit-Man]

Oh my, my fic has caught the El Tee's attention! Woohoo!

You've given me a huge boost in confidence and your advice has been invaluable, thanks LT.

No problem keep up the good work

[Shroom Man 777]

I hope you won't be disappointed in the incoming space war chapter. I'm investing a lot of time in it and it's becoming quite a large chapter.

[Sarevok]

When is the new chapter coming ?

[Shroom Man 777]

When is the new chapter coming ?

By the end of this week.

[Sarevok]

Well I believe SOTS could use more vivid descriptions. When reading good sci-fi short stories the reader visualizes the universe and feels what is it like even though the stories is very short.For example take the shortstories writtern by Arthur C Clarke. The reader is immersed in those stories. This does not happen SOTS even though it is much more larger.

[Ace Pace]

The new chapter has tons of immersion if thats what you mean, if you mean universe background... I dont think so.

[Shroom Man 777]

THREE

May 11, 2567
Location: UFPP controlled star system
Situation: Five minutes from combat

The system was composed of five planets, one was a barren and hellishly desolate rock near enough to the sun to sterilize the entire surface, another was a habitable frostbitten planet which housed the UFPP base of operations, two were gas giants with scores of moons and a belt of space rocks which separated them from the first two planets and the last planet was an insignificant little rock barely than a planetoid. The tiny planet had an unmanned monitoring station which housed extremely advanced sensors, the best money could buy. Similar sensors were placed all over the system, in moons, asteroids, planets and in artificial satellites. Individually, the sensors could only sweep through a limited amount of space, but together they formed a complex grid which scanned the entire system continuously, keeping a vigilant eye for incoming starship which might arrive at any location. Of course, the system grid was by no means perfect. There were blind spots and anyone with a high enough clearance and with access to the right places could determine where these blind spots were and figure out a safe path which would lead deep into the star system. Someone did.


There was a UFPP ship in the asteroid field; it was a scout that marked which asteroids were ripe for mining. It was a thin cone shaped ship of modest length; the hull was dented but was generally smooth and painted white, the angles were curved and gentle, it looked barely livable and crammed, and it was. Ensign Yoshi was in the ship’s dimly lit bridge, sitting in front of a battered console which displayed boring sensor readings. Officially, he was in duty, but actually he was looking at a datasheet filled to the brim with picture files of naked women. Yoshi was right-handed so he held the magazine with his left hand while his right hand gripped his joy stick. Yoshi gasped, arching his back and tightening his muscles as he felt the ecstasy course through his body as he did it over and over again. He finally rested his right hand on the dirty console. His body was exhausted and his breaths came in the form of short ragged gasps. Licking a stick of OrGazmo might be easy, but the powerful sensations that followed it were exhilarating and tiring. Yoshi wiped the beads of sweat off his forehead and checked his pants. They were dry. Good. He heard footsteps; they were growing louder by the second. Yoshi covered the slimy candy stick in its tinfoil wrapper and hid it in his breast pocket, knowing all too well the consequences of being caught of using OrGazmo during duty.

“Yoshi, is there nothing on the radar?” the captain asked, entering the ship’s bridge. The captain was a Hagrdan, extremely tall and bulky humanoids, though they barely registered as such. A Hagrdan had a proboscis or trunk on his/her face, his/her skin was gray and rough, he/she also had 4 arms. The captain was quite hairy, which wasn’t odd as their current home, the planet G-179A or Gwansevenineay to the people who lived in it, was quite cold.

“Nothing unusual Captain Toruf,” Yoshi replied nonchalantly, masking his emotions and slowing his breathing. His hand held the datasheet and he was trying to place it in his pockets when Toruf suddenly grabbed the sheet with his trunk.

“Ah! What is this you’re trying to hide, hmm?” Toruf looked at the pictures in Yoshi’s sheet. It took a short while before he realized that they were naked human females whose bodies and positions were attractive to humans. “You’ve been doing prrutubft, haven’t you?”

“Excuse me?” Yoshi was fluent with five human languages, spoke a little Zigonian and he knew a little Hagrdan, but ‘prrutubft’ was totally alien to him.

“Jacking off,” Toruf answered bluntly, tossing the datasheet into a nearby garbage bin.

“Oh, no I wasn’t!” Yoshi was instantly defensive. “And why would you care? You are an atheist!”

“I’m your captain, and you were supposed to be doing your job,” the Hagrdian lunged at him and began sniffing him everywhere with his trunk. Yoshi tried to fend off the powerful sniffing organ, but it was like Toruf’s fifth limb, it was extremely powerful and extremely agile. Toruf started with Yoshi’s groin, but didn’t find any odd smell, but he pressed on, the pants might’ve been dry, but he still looked like he was doing something. Toruf suspected that Yoshi was taking some illegal substances, now he was going to find out. The trunk went through Yoshi’s pockets, then to his belly, then he sniffed Yoshi’s breast pocket and stopped. He had a distinctly upset look.

“Uh…what did you find?” Yoshi asked feebly, bracing himself for the worst.

Toruf glared at him. “After your shift, when we get back to Gwansevenineay, you must take a bath. Now get back to your job.”

Yoshi was relieved and instantly went back to his work as the captain exited the room. He decided to lay off the OrGazmo, realizing how near he was to receiving a severe penalty. He checked the dull hologram of the area around the ship and noted that a lot of ships have arrived in their vicinity. The ships were huge; Yoshi gawked at their size and number until he realized that these ships weren’t Bragulan ships, nor were they UFPP ships. Terror struck him, he would call the captain. “Hey, Cap, take a look at this!”

Toruf re-entered the room, wondering what all the fuzz was about. He looked at the hologram and gaped.

“What’s the matter, Cap?”

“Those are Sovereign ships! Patch me to Gwansevenineay, we need to warn the-“

“Torpedo!” Yoshi shouted, pointing at a tiny blip which was approaching their ship at frightening speed.


The torpedo screamed through space. It nimbly avoided the space rocks which surrounded the ship; the torpedo’s autonomous computer was looking for a clearing which would give it a straight shot. It passed by a mile long space rock and found the clearance it was looking for. The torpedo rapidly accelerated and streaked straight towards the ship. The target did not move, it did not engage its engines nor activate defensive measures, so the torpedo went to full speed and covered the distance between it and the vessel in a second. It found the weakest area of the ship and detonated in a brilliant thermonuclear explosion, a hundred megatons utterly tearing the craft into small chunks of superheated debris.


“Admiral Goldberg, the target ship has been destroyed but has sent a distress signal to the UFPP planet. Our sensors show that the combined UFPP and Gamma-Sigma fleet is moving towards us at top speed,” an ensign in the Majestic’s bridge urgently reported.

A man sitting in a large swivel chair in the elevated middle of the bridge stood up, it was the admiral of the battle group and the master of the ship. He looked at the young ensign and reflected on what was reported. “Ensign, are the incoming enemy ships the same as what our source has told us?”

“Yes admiral. The UFPP and Gamma-Sigma are dispatching their entire fleet. The UFPP forces are composed of seven Safeguard class destroyers, four Protectorate class cruisers, and fifty corvettes. The GS forces have two Vulkaton carriers and also two Borev cruisers.”

“Excellent, now send a message to Captain Armstrong and all the others, initiate what we have planned. Once we gain the initiative, this battle will be going at our pace and the Federation won’t be able to do squat about it.”

“Aye admiral.”


The ships immediately began moving into formation. The thirty eight corvettes moved to form a picket screen in front of the cruisers while the carriers moved to flanks and the destroyers began moving away from the main group. The fighters and bombers also played an integral part of the plan, as did everything else. All the Peregrines were already deployed from the docking bays along with their bigger brothers, the White Sharks. Aside from the fighters, a handful of SB-32 Cyclone bombers and SF-50 Rapier stealth fighter/bombers were also dispatched. The bombers were three times larger than the White Sharks, the fuselage of a bomber consisted of a thick disk and a sleek nose, the wings were large and spanned from the nose of the craft to its rear, making the vessel look like a double delta and making enough room for its massive array of weapons, both defensive and offensive. The Rapiers were sleek and resembled conventional fighter crafts, though a Rapier’s nose was very long as it carried two pilots. The wings were triple delta shaped, and its canard wings were connected to the main wings and were double-delta shaped. The craft had a jet black paint job and was half the size of the Cyclone and it carried within it extremely advanced avionics, weapons and stealth systems which included a cloaking field.

The Rapiers shrieked through space with their high powered ion engines. They activated their cloaking systems, the light around the stealth fighter was bended and began to ripple, then the ship began to fade away and after a few seconds, it was completely invisible. The unseen Rapiers flew towards the Assailant class destroyers while the Cyclones, Sharks and Peregrines stayed behind the corvette picket screen. They formed a large formation which placed the bomber wings in the middle, Peregrine squads on the flanks and Shark squads on the front and inside. The formation granted them the ability to go at any opening at any time while being able to turn any would-be attacker into cosmic dust. And, like always, the Sharks lead the way. They would carve the path for any assault and protect the Cyclones and Peregrines from any threat. And at the tip of this spear of Sharks, was Alpha Squad.


“So if I die today, Jean, I want you to know that I love you,” Alpha One said over the comm. link in a serious deadpan, causing hoots and whistles to burst all over the link.

“Oh, Gem,” the pretty pilot with long straight black hair was blushing, extremely embarrassed at her boyfriend’s public declaration.

“Jeremy, you are a crazy goon,” Ace mocked while all the while thinking about home, about his family and about his girlfriend. He remembered when they moved from Israel to Alpha Centauri B and when he graduated from the Academy. He thought about Tanya and wondered if he would ever see her again and if she knew how he truly felt about her. In a way, he felt Jealous of Jeremy. He decided to talk to Bob. “Say, Bob, do you have a girlfriend?”

“Yup, back in New Missouri I had one. She died. Then I joined the Navy,” the redneck replied, this time without his Mid-West vigor.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it, boy. Don’t get all emotional, the party hasn’t even begun yet! We can cry when we’re done killing them Federation trash!” Bob was now alive and kicking. Ace wondered how the man did that. “Look at that, kiddo; them UFPP ships are moving in on us!”

“What?!” Ace was suddenly jolted from his worries and went back to his job, which was to worry about his squad, his wing, his formation. He looked at a screen which was linked to the Iron Fist’s sensors and saw that the enemy ships were in fact closing on them. The party was indeed about to begin. Ace checked another screen and noted with satisfaction that the Assailants and Rapiers had moved to their position above the asteroid field.

“Everyone lets stop the chatter and wait for the signal. When the Assailants engage the baddies, we’ll go into the bottom of the UFPP-GS formation. We will lead the formation and kill everything that gets in our face. We’ll tango with the bears and the droids and raise all sorts of hell. Remember, the corvettes will be helping us, the cruisers and carriers will lay down long range fire, so stick to your job. No hot shot shit, defend the formations. Everyone’s depending on us because we’re the best! We are top gun!” Jeremy motivated them; he was like a basketball coach, and he did play some basketball in his high school days. Every pilot felt at ease knowing that if anything went wrong, he/she had the best squad in the fleet to help him/her out. Ace looked at the sensors and saw that the destroyers and stealth fighters were moving in to engage the UFPP-GS fleet. It was almost time.


Eleven Federation ships and four of their Gamma-Sigma compatriots were in a three dimensional formation. A Federation’s ship was composed of two main segments, the forward segment was a smooth disk, it contained the bridge and the main weapon batteries were located in it. The rear half was rectangular and a little flat but was also smooth, in contrast to the USE and Gamma-Sigma’s ships. The rear held the engines and the docking bays. From above, the UFPP warships looked like spoons; they were designed to fight and to look good while doing it. A Gamma-Sigma ship, however, looked like it came from the opposite mindset. The Bragulan Star Empire shipyards did not care for aesthetics as the Bragulan ships were extremely boxy and angular, resembling sledge hammers whose handles were covered with irregularly shaped bricks with turrets and weaponry plastered all over. While the Bragulans were lousy artists, their art faring terribly in interstellar galleries, they were excellent engineers; anything made in a state owned Bragulan factory is guaranteed to be able to withstand extreme brutalization.

The formation slowed down, hesitating to intercept the main body of USE starships as the Assailant destroyers flanked them from above. The Assailants moved towards the enemy, they were outnumbered, but they had an edge, they had the initiative and they had an ace up their sleeve, a sleek, invisible, undetectable and untouchable ace. All of the USE ships opened fire, suddenly illuminating the void with torrents of bluish-white energy bolts, relativistic projectiles and nuclear and anti-matter warheads towards the Federation and Gamma-Sigma ships, hammering them as their shields flared up in a brilliant thermonuclear light show.

The UFPP ships fired back with their own gamma and x-ray laser arrays, the brightly colored beams lancing into space and shearing into the Assailant’s shields in a pyrotechnic display which was followed by salvos of missiles and torpedoes. The Gamma-Sigma ships were slow in their reaction but nonetheless, they were still formidable as they too fired lasers and giant K-bolts. The Sovereign ships were jolted but returned fire, but this time corvettes, fighters and bombers were heading straight towards the enemy formation. The Gamma-Sigma ships launched their own fighters and bombers towards the Assailants. The Federation ships followed suit, sending their droid fighters and manned bombers and rocket shaped corvettes to support the Gamma-Sigma’s fighter and bomber wings.

The Gamma-Sigma’s fighters and bombers went full throttle towards the Assailants as the warships continued hammering each other. Their objective was simple; they were to soften up the Assailants’ shields. Concentrating fire onto the Assailants would mean that the Assailants would be downed quickly, freeing the Federation and Gamma-Sigma ships to engage the Vindicators and Triumphants. The fighters and bombers crossed half the distance between their mother ships and their targets when several missiles unexpectedly appeared from nowhere and reduced an entire squad of bombers into slag. The vessels nearly stopped in their tracks, wondering what had just happened. Then another wing of bombers was reduced to slag. The fighter and bomber squads immediately scattered as a Federation corvette was suddenly engulfed in an anti-matter explosion.


“Alright, let’s waste them!” yelled Jeremy through the comm. link. Alpha Squad lead the way, the Sharks screamed through the vacuum at extremely high velocities while the Federation ships launched their remaining fighter wings to engage the incoming mish-mash of Sharks, Peregrines and Cyclones. “They’re deploying their fighters. Everyone, stop watching the pretty lightshow, it’s time to make our own fireworks!”

“Yes sir!” Ace replied with enthusiasm, this time he wasn’t at the rear of the formation, this time he could draw blood. His heads-up-display indicated that six of the crescent shaped Federation droid interceptors were in range. The HUD locked onto the six interceptors and Ace smiled. The Sharks had one of the most powerful sensors mounted on any fighter; they could lock onto their prey while being well beyond the range of the enemy’s sensors. He pressed the button on his joystick, knowing all too well that the enemy couldn’t do a thing, and the Shark launched six consecutive missiles from its missile accelerators. The missiles went straight towards the enemy ships, disappearing from visual range in an instant. Ace saw flashes, they were probably stars or the explosions of other warheads, but his HUD confirmed that the six missiles found their marks. “As Alpha Three would say, YA-HOO!!!”


The Sovereign’s Hurricane class corvettes went straight into the fray, as opposed to the capital ships which were keeping their distance and maneuvering around each other. The Hurricanes were rugged, deadly and designed to withstand enormous damage. They were designed like submarines but had a large particle cannon turret instead of a periscope. On the front of the vessel were numerous torpedo tubes, on all sides of the vessel were point defense turrets and beside the dorsal particle cannon were two missile launching turrets. The Hurricanes were engaging the Fed and Gamma ships in a fur ball. They fought in a fashion comparable to that of submarine combat mixed with naval warfare and aerial dog fighting. One of the Hurricanes, the Griffin, executed a roll as it tried to avoid being locked on by its enemy’s laser arrays; its plasma cannons intercepted an incoming missile while its main particle cannon turret fired shots at the Protectorate class cruiser. The Griffin wasn’t alone as several Cyclone bombers were launching anti-ship torpedoes on that particular Protectorate. A massive particle bolt coming from the Iron Fist passed right by the Griffin and struck the Protectorate. There was a brilliant flash as the destroyer’s shields struggled to cope with the enormous amount of energy being dumped at it. There was another brilliant explosion as the Cyclones concentrated all their torpedoes into one single point on the Protectorate’s shields which was now at the breaking point.

A pair of sleek rocket shaped Federation Ronin class corvettes interdicted and attempted to shake the Griffin and the Cyclones off of the Protectorate cruiser. But the Ronins bit off more than they could chew as a squad of White Sharks quickly came in and pumped one of them full of nuclear missiles, instantly wrecking it. The Sharks moved on, leaving the Griffin to deal with the remaining Ronin. The Ronin fired its x-ray lasers, several crisscrossing beams striking the Griffin’s shields. The Ronin continued its offensive and fired several missiles, most of which were shot down by the Griffin’s plasma cannons. The Griffin swiftly maneuvered around the incoming Ronin, the Ronin saw this and countered by trying to outmaneuver the Griffin. The Griffin rolled so that its dorsal side, and its particle cannon, would face the Ronin.

Space was lit by showers of energy bolts, lasers and missiles as the two ships dueled. A pair of nuclear warheads erupted against the Griffin. The corvette tried to compensate by altering its course, but then the Ronin capitalized by firing several laser potshots. The Griffin was reeling from the barrage but suddenly it peeled away towards an odd and unpredicted angle and fired every weapon on its hull. The Ronin was caught unaware and while its lasers gunned down a fraction of the torpedoes, it was bombarded with a stream of energy bolts and nuclear warheads. The shields flickered and died, unable to cope with the combination of energy bolts and torpedoes.


“Alright squad, switch formation. Stick to two man elements,” Jeremy commanded as the squad of Sharks turned around and made a high speed pass at the Hurricane they helped out a while ago. Obviously, the Hurricane had dealt with the remaining Ronin as the enemy corvette was now broken into two pieces. “Ace, come with me. I’ll lead.”

“Roger,” Ace replied as Alpha Squad divided itself into two formations, each going its separate way. The two man formation was a loose formation, one fighter led the way, doing all the attacking, the other would be at the rear, watching their six, every once in a while, they would switch places to confuse anything tailing them. “Gem, look at your sensors, one o’ clock, there’s a bunch of bogeys. If they keep on going straight, they’ll engage that wing of Cyclones. Let’s get them.”

Both Sharks rapidly accelerated; the afterburners mounted on their wings were glowing bright blue. The Sharks passed by a Federation Safeguard class destroyer. There were massive gashes on its saucer, tell tale signs of explosions viciously tearing through the armor and killing everybody unfortunate enough to be in the decks right under the gashes. Ace did a double take, swearing that he had seen two torpedoes appear from nowhere. The torpedoes streaked towards the Safeguard and entered one of the large wound. For a short moment, nothing happened and then there was a brilliant explosion as the gash was replaced by a gigantic hole.


The USE starship Majestic fired a broadside of particle and plasma bolts, missiles, torpedoes and giant railgun rounds towards another Protectorate class cruiser. The Federation cruiser shuddered and tried to returned fire but was abruptly battered between a two broadsides, coming from the Iron Fist and an Assailant class destroyer. Then the Majestic aimed its massive cannons towards a Borev. Its mass driver fired a huge kinetic penetrator. The round connected and the Borev shook violently as the kinetic energy strained its shield, threatening to rip the shield’s generators from their moorings.


“Admiral, three of the enemy’s Safeguards have been either destroyed or crippled, one of their Protectorates is in critical condition. Their corvettes are being decimated. Their fighters and bombers are being chewed up by our forces. The Gamma-Sigma ships are still holding though,” the ensign was continuously updating the Admiral with the latest happenings. Though the battle was premature and ahead of schedule, the situation was quickly becoming better and better.

“I get it that the Gamma-Sigma ships are doing pretty well when compared to their Federation partners?” the Admiral asked without much concern.

“Yes, the Gamma-Sigma ships are proving to be quite hardy.”

“Then send orders to the Price of Freedom, tell the captain to fire a broadside towards the nearest Borev class cruiser on my mark.”

“Yes Admiral,” the commands were relayed and after a brief moment, the ensign confirmed that the Admiral’s order had been sent.

“The Majestic will also fire a broadside on my mark.”

“Affirmative Admiral, the gunners are being informed,” seconds passed, the gunners had been informed, the commands being displayed in bright red letters in their HUDs. “They have been in-“

“Fire!”

The Majestic and the Price of Freedom opened fire with almost every gun mounted on their hulls. Countless energy bolts sizzled through space, filling it with a brilliant spectacle of light and power, the cataclysmic orgy concentrated on the nearest Borev cruiser. Its shield stood against the onslaught for only a microsecond, the shield generators instantly overwhelmed by the energy. The super hot bolts battered the armor and disfigured the warship. It was like a mountain being hammered by an angry titan. The starship was mutilated, pounded to submission by the display of raw devastating power. Then the aftershock came, bullets, traveling at a significant fraction of light speed, impaled the ship and punctured holes through its destroyed surface. The finishing blow came in the form of missiles and torpedoes. They tore the hull with explosions yielding in the hundreds of megatons. The thermonuclear barrage was enough to scar a planet. When the slaughter ended, all that was left was a superheated hulk of deformed metal floating in space like whale’s carcass.


“Jesus Christ in latex!” Ace yelled through the comm. link as his fighter streaked by the ruined Gamma-Sigma cruiser. “Alpha One, that was fantastic. The other side of the cruiser was just covered with all sorts of explosions and-“

“Yeah, I know, I know, now go back to your job. Look at your sensors, a bunch of bogeys are coming at us. Let’s get moving, establish some distance between us and them so we can use our medium range missiles. You’re also out of short range misses, rite?” the wing commander said, not allowing himself to be distracted by the recent fireworks show.

“Yeah,” Ace replied, pushing the throttle of his star fighter and trying to establish some distance between the Gamma-Sigma fighter craft which were just some fifty miles behind him. The standard mass produced Bragulan fighter was the SNT and the SNT-B was the slightly larger bomber version. Unlike the warships, the fighters didn’t look too shabby, the fuselage was shaped like a narrow teardrop and the wings were forward swept. The cockpit was in the middle of the fuselage and the ship had internal missile bays and external hard points, they carried lots of missiles but their range wasn’t really outstanding. The SNTs had smaller engines so the Sharks had a higher potential top speed, but the SNTs had been accelerating for quite some time. Ace looked at one of his cockpit’s holoscreen and quickly adjusted his course to dodge several incoming laser beams. He glanced at his sensors again and increase his craft’s speed. “Gem, they’re moving fast. They’re coming in on us. They’ve fired missiles! Watch out!”

“I know! Move now!” The two ship formation immediately began moving, attempting to establish some distance while their electronic countermeasures did their work. Most of the missiles had their sensors fooled by the electronic ‘ghost’ images of their targets and detonated far from their targets, a few however continued their original course.

Ace broke formation and stomped on the accelerator and the large fighter craft whizzed like a bullet, gracefully dodging lasers and plasma which slashed through the void like knife through hot butter. The large engines whirred as they pushed the craft faster and faster, accelerating the craft to obscene speeds. Ace twisted the Shark and went straight towards the remains of the Borev cruiser, trying to loose the missile and trying to have some protection against rampant laser beams, plasma bolts and autonomous missiles. The Shark almost went straight into a bulkhead but Ace managed to save his Shark by avoiding most of the bulkhead, though the wing tips’ shield did scrape the floating chunk of steel, causing sparks to erupt. The missile gained on him so he decided to fly right above the ruined starship. The missile did not relent as Ace went from one end of the ship to another in a heart beat, tiny debris peppering the Shark’s shield all the way, causing the shields to spark unendingly while giving the ship extreme turbulence. The Shark’s radar indicated several droid fighters making a pass near his area, Ace pulled away from the Borev, deciding to bring his chase elsewhere. Then his radio sprang to life. He looked at the radio and looked straight ahead of him, seeing another incoming bulkhead, he screamed and unintentionally performed a combination of a barrel roll and a corck screw while avoiding the object.

“Ace, how many missiles do you have left?” it was Jeremy.

“Six.” Ace did a sudden roll and made a sharp turn. He was now a considerable distance away from the Borev, his Shark had accelerated to amazing speeds, enabling it to cover a lot of ground in an extremely short amount of time but the missile was right on his tail, the missile was also accelerating at a similar pace. His craft’s sensors locked onto an SNT-B, a bomber which was just within range. He fired a missile, catching the bomber with its pants down and causing an explosion shred its engines. Ace went straight towards the mauled bomber and made another sharp turn while watching a droid fighter crash straight into a Hurricane corvette and while keeping a wary eye on his pursuer. The exploding droid fighter gave him an idea. “Alright, I have a plan. We go near enough to each other but not too near so I can lock on to your missile with my medium ranged missiles while you can-“

“Yes, I see what you’re trying to say. Now shut up and move you fucking monkey molester!”

Ace did exactly what his commander told him and swerved. His Shark made a complete about face and zipped by a Cyclone bomber while causing the pursuing missile to overshoot it. The fighter going as fast as it can, pushing the ion drives near their breaking point. The craft nimbly dodged several incoming K-bolts and neared its partner craft.

“Alpha Four, I’ve locked on to your missile.”

“Same. I’m firing!” Ace said, firing his missile into the direction of his wing commander. He saw Alpha One’s missile head straight towards him; he quickly pulled his craft up and looked back just in time to see his pursuer explode in a short lived ball of flame. He looked at one of his cockpit’s instruments, a tiny holoscreen, and noted with satisfaction that Alpha One’s pursuer was also eliminated. Ace rested his head on his seat and tried to catch some breath.

“Good job Alpha Four, you saved our asses. Now let’s find those bastards and fuck them up their fuzzy Bragulan asses.”

“Damn straight.”


The Cyclone bomber named Enola Straight launched one of its last torpedoes to a wounded Safeguard destroyer. It quickly disengaged as a wing of droid fighters tried to intercept it. One interceptor fired two missiles. The first one was destroyed by the Enola’s dorsal plasma turret while the second one exploded harmlessly against the shields. The Enola returned fire with both its turret, dorsal and ventral, clipping an interceptor with an explosive volley of plasma. The three remaining interceptors quickly loosened their tight formation to prevent the Enola from concentrating all its fire into one area. The droids returned fire with their x-ray lasers while the Enola maneuvered around the lancing beams, the Enola dodged almost a half of the lasers, being notably graceful in the airless environment. Nonetheless, the lasers which found their mark did do damage and the Enola’s shields were withering. Then Peregrine fighters came down from above and reduced the droid fighters into scrap metal with their plasma cannons and railguns, freeing the Enola to do its duty, which was to bomb the living hell out of enemy starships. It found the nearest target, a Gamma-Sigma Vulkaton carrier, and fired all of its remaining torpedoes and missiles. All of them made it as the starship was busy intercepting waves of missiles and torpedoes being unleashed upon it by one of the Assailants. The Enola withdrew as its bomb bays and torpedo tubes were empty. It was heading back to its mother ship to re-arm itself when several SNTs came to extract revenge. They caught the Enola by surprise, three of their missiles exploded directly above its engines. The shields shorted out and the engines were rendered unusable. The SNTs overshot the Enola and quickly turned back, preparing to end the Enola’s last bombing run.


“I got the bitches in range! They’re readying to blow a Cyclone away. I’ve locked some of them! Finish the rest of them, fire now!!” Jeremy fired his last missile.

Ace followed suit, locking onto the fighters which had not been targeted yet. He pressed the trigger and the missiles rocketed straight through space with their ion thrusters. All the pilots could do now was hope that they were just in time to save the Cyclone. The missiles closed the gap in a heartbeat; they streaked past the Cyclone, almost close enough to scrape the bomber’s paint. They neared the SNTs. The Bragulan pilots saw the incoming missiles and tried to peel away in the last possible moment. Their efforts were in vain. The first SNT had a missile hit its left wing, tearing most of it away with the impact. Then the missile exploded and the fuselage of the Bragulan fighter was shredded. All the other bogeys blinked out of existence from the Ace’s sensors.

“Alright! We did it!” Ace hollered through the comm. link. He could not actually see the destroyed enemy ships but his sensors told him enough. He looked at it again to check if all the enemy fighters were destroyed. All of them were. And aside from that, Ace also noticed something else. “Hey…where did the Cyclone go?”

“Fuck…” Jeremy remarked. Ace could hear a fist slam against the cockpit’s canopy over the headset. “Ace, a squad of Peregrines is having trouble with SNTs and droid interceptors. Let’s go.”


“Captain, we’ve lost the Peregrine squads Charlie and Gamma,” an ensign nervously reported to Captain Armstrong.

The captain stood up, his intimidating form dwarfing the large swivel chair which he was previously sitting on. “Charlie AND Gamma? What happened?”

“Both sir. They ran into heavy opposition.”

“Then send Shark squads to defend their back. After this, check for what went wrong,” the captain had a scowl. Peregrines were valuable assets, loosing them would not be taken lightly. Loosing men, irreplaceable assets, was something even worst. Captain Armstrong looked at one holographic display near his swivel chair and thought for a second. “Ensign, how are the capital ships doing?”

“The Braveheart has taken on considerable damage as did the Brawler.”

“Fine, as long as they are kept away from the enemy bombers. Advise them to move away from the heat of the battle now.”

“Yes Captain. Admiral Goldberg now wants us, the Vigilant and the Ominous to concentrate all our fire at this particular Protectorate class cruiser,” the giant holoscreen on the front end of the bridge displayed a lone cruiser, highlighted by a red crosshair.

“Good. Order the Vigilant and Ominous to slave their guns to ours. Prepare to fire a broadside.”

A second later, “Fire.”

And with that command, the Iron Fist and the other carriers saturated the singled out Protectorate with an unending barrage. The Federation cruiser was already softened up, its shields were overwhelmed in under a minute and its armor was instantly cleaved open by nuclear warheads and particle bolts. Before it could muster any feeble resistance, a wave of anti-matter missiles impacted the midsection of the Protectorate without impediment, destroying the smooth hull with brilliant explosions and replacing it with several ugly scars which divided the ship’s disk from the rest of its body. The Protectorate was abruptly torn into two by particle bolts coming from all three of the carriers, and then the ship’s carcass was scavenged upon by the surrounding Hurricane class corvettes.


A Rapier stealth fighter encircled one of the Federation fleet’s few remaining Ronin corvettes with impunity. The corvettes were being cut to pieces by the stealth fighters, the crews of the Ronins knew that they were being chased and they were doing everything they can to keep alive. They sprayed and prayed. The Ronin swept its surroundings with a burst of potent laser beams. A missile appeared from nowhere but was eliminated by laser fire. The Ronin pulled straight up and fired a wall of missiles and laser beams at the general direction of the missile’s origin, they all missed.


Peregrine squad Delta streaked by a carcass of a Ronin frigate, they scattered as a laser nearly clipped one of the sleek fighters. Each fighter nimbly dodged the sweeping laser beams as they neared a Safeguard class destroyer which was several hundred miles away. The destroyer fired another burst of lasers as well as a few missiles, the lasers missed while an incoming Hurricane class corvette intercepted most of the missiles. The missiles switched their attention to the Hurricane class and the Peregrines were free to do their thing. Their thing involved launching all their torpedoes towards the destroyer. The Safeguard was caught off guard, its laser batteries either recharging or preoccupied by other targets. The torpedoes struck the ship and detonated in a string of brilliant explosions. The Safeguard’s weakened shield finally died and the explosions tore massive gashes all over the ship’s side. A burst of particle bolts struck the rear side of the ship, utterly destroying its engines. Then two more squads of Peregrines depleted their torpedoes at the dying starship, carving the gashes into massive holes. If optical sensors were focused to the holes, one could see dying crewmen floating and decompressing in the cold vacuum. But all that was irrelevant as the Safeguard was quickly finished off by a Hurricane bomber’s salvo anti-matter torpedoes which detonated the destroyer’s own cache of torpedoes, shearing a large portion off of the destroyer’s disk.

Near the mangled Safeguard was a Borev class cruiser, the last Borev in the UFPP-GS fleet. It was using the destroyed Safeguard as cover while firing scores of missiles and K-bolts towards an Assailant class cruiser. The Assailant shuddered as another rapid broadside slammed onto its shields. With its shields weakened, the destroyer withdrew and hid behind the other Assailants in its formation while the Gamma-Sigma cruiser brought its guns to bear on another USE starship. Then suddenly, its hull was covered with thermonuclear explosions as the trio of Vindicator class carriers focused their combined firepower on the offending Gamma-Sigma cruiser. The cruiser held on for a while, using the nearby Federation destroyer as a shield but then the Majestic joined the fray, hammering the Borev with particle and plasma bolts, missiles and railgun rounds. A Protectorate class cruiser joined the scene. The captain of the Borev would have been extremely disappointed and filled with the infamous Bragulan rage as the Protectorate did not attempt to bring relief to the Borev, but was actually using the Borev as cover against the incoming torrent of particle bolts coming from the Assailants! The Borev was swiftly decimated, the Assailants having no compunction with switching their sights from the Protectorate to the Borev.


“Captain Armstrong, the Federation cruiser is using the Borev and Safeguard as shields. What do we do?”

“Well, the only choice would be to order the Rapiers to concentrate their fire on the Protectorate. But that would take too long,” Captain Nathaniel Armstrong paused for a while, trying to think while an angry red gamma laser beam glanced the hull of the Iron Fist. “The Rapiers which are re-arming in our docking bays, load them with those new Longinus torpedoes. Let’s see if those Lockheed-Schrom Corp boys actually did their computer simulations right.”

“The Longinus? Are you-“

“Yes I’m perfectly sure. Now give the order!” the ensign jumped and quickly typed in the commands. “And patch me to Admiral Goldberg, I want to talk to him.”

“Yes sir. I’m patching you to him…okay!” the sharp holographic image of the Admiral materialized right above a circular holographic projector a dozen feet in front of Captain Armstrong’s swivel chair.

“This is Admiral Goldberg. What is it, Nath?”

”After my Rapiers take down that Protectorate, I want to begin the engulfment.”

“Hmm…are the enemy ships weakened enough?”

“Hell yeah.”

“Very well then, shortly after your Rapiers have eliminated the Protectorate, the engulfment shall proceed. Admiral Goldberg out.”


The Rapiers zipped through space with amazing speed. In their bomb bays were the Lockheed-Schrom Corp Longinus torpedoes. They closed the distance between them and the Protectorate cruiser with speed and stealth. The Protectorate never knew what hit it as several torpedoes suddenly emerged from nowhere and went straight towards the cruiser. The cruiser’s automated defense systems were surprised but quickly initiated countermeasures, firing point defense lasers at the incoming torpedoes. The torpedoes initiated their own countermeasures in the form of evasive maneuvers, ECM and their own mini-stealth system. Almost all of the lasers missed, the torpedoes’ AIs never broke a sweat. One laser struck a torpedo but the beam was impotent as the torpedo possessed its own shielding system with a unique feature that would prove fatal to the Protectorate.

Nearly unhindered, the torpedoes’ special shields made contact with the Federation ship and bypassed is shield with complete impunity. And in a blink of an eye, anti-matter warheads exploded all over the starship’s hull. Due to the Protectorate’s still-active shield, the explosive force was redirected towards the hull of the starship, allowing for maximum damage. The Protectorate was hideously scarred and disfigured. Its captain probably had no idea what had just hit them when the second wave of shield penetrating torpedoes struck. Then the Protectorate’s impotent shields faded from existence, as the crippling explosions took their toll. Then a stream of particle bolts obliterated the starship, melting its armor and fracturing its reactor’s anti-matter containment units.


“That thing’s gonna blow!” Jeremy screamed through the comm. link. Alpha Squad had regrouped and was back to its standard diamond formation. The squad was just passing by the Protectorate when the starship was reduced to a volatile wreck.

“We don’t have much time, let’s get the hell out of here now!” Ace yelled as he pushed the Shark’s engines to the limit. The fighters screamed away from the starship at full speed as fast as they could. The ship’s containment units were breached, the nanosecond when the anti-matter came into contact with matter, the ship would explode. Their time just ran out. The rear of the starship exploded in a brilliant explosion. Plasma and all sorts of debris were scattered all over the area at insane speeds. Ace’s afterburners and thrusters were cranked to full power; sending the ship zipping by stale debris like a starship in hyperspace. A glob of superheated titanium caught up to him and splashed harmlessly onto his shields. Alpha Two was just right in front of Ace and she barely got a scratch. Alpha One caught a cloud of superheated gas. Beside Ace’s fighter was Alpha Three. Bob didn’t even had a chance to scream as a red-hot mass of metal smashed onto the rear of the fighter and demolished the craft in a blink of an eye. The rear was crumpled and the wing was sheared off and the rest of the rear half was utterly destroyed. The impact caused the cockpit to painfully snap off from the rest of the body. The slab of metal was unhindered and proceeded to flatten the cockpit. Ace would’ve screamed but the hind wings of Alpha Three’s fighter suddenly but collided with his cockpit’s shields. Ace looked at his instrument panel and noted that Bob had blinked away from the sensor screen. “Jesus.”


“Admiral, the Protectorate has been destroyed,” an ensign aboard the Majestic reported.

“Were the Longinus torpedoes that effective? Very well then. Commence the engulfment,” Admiral Goldberg replied with confidence. The outcome wasn’t surprising; the battle had already been won before the first shot was fired. Now it was time to let the Federation and Gamma-Sigma realize the inevitable.

[Sarevok]

The Raven gunships seem like HKs from the Terminator movies.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Raven gunships seem like HKs from the Terminator movies.

Sorry but there were no Ravens in this chapter

So, what do you think?

[Crazedwraith]

cool, did we really need a description of a guy jerking off though?

[Shroom Man 777]

cool, did we really need a description of a guy jerking off though?

It's the standard bi-daily dose of humorous sexual innuendo

And he wasn't jerking off, technically he was just licking a stick of OrGazmo

God, I get goosebumps everytime I say that word.

[Shroom Man 777]

In contrast to the enormously long chapter THREE, I'm giving you a relatively short bit of FOUR.

FOUR

May 11, 2567
Location: High orbit above habitable UFPP controlled planet
Situation: Elimination of UFPP-GS fleet remnants

John was in surrounded by the cold empty void as he stood on the Iron Fist’s conning tower. From his vantage point, he could see the last Federation ship, a Safeguard destroyer, fire angry red laser beams towards the carrier. The lasers struck the base of the conning tower’s shields, just narrowly missing John’s boots. In retaliation, the Iron Fist bombarded the Safeguard with particle bolts and railgun slugs, cracking the shields and severely mutilating the starship with explosions and kinetic penetration.

With the Safeguard eliminated, there was only one ship left, a Gamma-Sigma Vulkaton class carrier which was firing its massive K-bolts towards the Iron Fist. One of the semi-plasmatic slugs zipped through John’s head, its bright green glow nearly blinding him before crashing onto the Iron Fist’s shields. The impact splashed acidic residue all over the shields and sent kinetic energy straight to the shield generators. Another K-bolt passed through John’s stomach and exploded right behind him, nearly deafening him with an unexpected and surprisingly loud blast. John plugged his ears and yelped in surprise before screaming out a string of curses. “Defective piece of shit! Can’t those pricks set the fucking sound system right? Computer, shut down the simulation before this thing fucking kills me! Geez!”

“Holographic simulation deactivated,” informed the Observatory’s AI with its standard female voice. The not-so-empty void, the Iron Fist, the Vulkaton, the plasma bolts and everything else were frozen in place. Then they faded away and were replaced by the tangible components of the Observatory, the immaculate white walls, the white floor and ceiling which were dotted with large hologram emitters. The room was designed to emerge the observers with its holograms. And while it did not give the users a god’s eye view of everything, unlike a starship’s bridge, it was extremely proficient in filling its users with awe and immersing them in the Iron Fist’s surroundings.

“Hmm…I’m late,” John muttered as he stepped off a large elevated area in the middle of the room. He looked at the black colored gizmo on his wrist. It was called a watch and it was a chronometer, among many other things. John pressed a button on the watch and activated a comm. link and the hologram projector which was now emitting a tiny hologram of Joshua’s face.

“Josh here. What is it, John?”

“Is the squad there in the docking bays?”

“Yes. But most of them didn’t arrive on time.”

“Right. I’m coming down there now. I’ve got a few things to say to the men.”

“Sure.”

“Are the fighters and bombers in the bay?”

“Yup, you gonna look at them?”

“Uh-huh. Anyway, that’s all. Baylor out,” John pressed a button, shutting off the comm. link and causing Joshua’s holographic image to fade out of existence. John paused and surveyed the Observatory before he quickly exited the room and entered one of the Iron Fist’s innumerable corridors. He went to his right, swiftly passing by the same robot that bumped him a little more than an hour ago. He turned at a corner and snatched a disposable cup of water from a waist-high waiter droid before stopping in front of a turbolift and pressing a button. The turbolift emitted a dinging sound before opening. John walked in and the doors closed shut. “Computer, docking bays.”

The lift’s AI replied with a beep, confirming that his request had been granted. The turbolift began its speedy descent, highlighted by a long yet narrow screen above the lift’s doors. Of course, the lift wasn’t heading straight towards the docking bays, but to the floor/s which contained it.

John turned, facing the rear side of the lift which had a holoscreen. With a vocal command, the screen activated and with his watch, he surfed through the screen’s uncountable channels. John stopped at a channel which was showing a documentary about some shelled reptilian creature from the swamps of the planet Zigon. The creature lunged out of the water and with its massive teeth filled jaws, grasped the neck of a feathery four legged beaked animal which was drinking the river’s water. The turtle-crocodile monster, with a name John couldn’t quite pronounce, struggled violently with its feathery prey while dragging it deep into the river. The show’s narrator was speaking in Zigonian, but thanks to the English subtitles, John found out that the turtle monster had 70 cone shaped, finger-sized teeth in its jaws and that its bite was aimed to sever the prey’s windpipe. The documentary had perked John’s interest but he had to stop reading the subtitles as the lift had stopped moving. There was the dinging, signaling that they had arrived. Then the doors opened and John went straight towards the docking bays.

The current floor had much larger corridors than the previous ones. John could see flat robotic trolleys hauling bombs, missiles, spare parts and all sorts of things towards the bays. Right behind the trolley were two wheeled multi-limbed repair droids. John spotted a robotic trolley coming towards him. He waved at it, causing the machine to halt. John hopped onto the machine and stared at its cargo, an anti-matter torpedo about three meters long. John decided to keep as far away from the torpedo as possible. “Robot, take me to the docking bays. Go.”

The robot beeped, acknowledging the command. After sliding along for nearly a minute, the trolley finally entered the docking bay. John got off the machine and made his way to where his squad was supposed to be. The docking bay was filled with spacecraft. As John made his way, he took his time to admire a massive Cyclone Bomber. The triangular bomber were large, a wingspan of 52 meters and a length of 35 meters. It was an advanced craft with a mild stealth system. John continued his little journey and saw that the hangar was filled with Peregrines and Sharks. His destination was on the other side, but that was perfectly fine, he enjoyed taking the scenic route.

He passed by some Peregrines. They were dwarfed by the large Cyclones and had a relatively meager wingspan of 14 meters and a length of 20 meters, though they looked even smaller now as their wings were folded vertically. There was a small group of maintenance droids repairing some Peregrines with superficial damage. Another group was tending to a lone Peregrine which had its right wing violently torn off.

John saw four Sharks enter the docking bay. They were moving silently at a snail’s pace, hovering several meters off the ground thanks to the electromagnetic repulsors on their bellies. John noticed three pilots walked towards him, all were humans, two males, and one female. John decided to be friendly with the fly boys. “Hey guys.”

The fly boys didn’t answer. They had a grim look. John realized that they were one man short.

“I’m sorry…” John decided to say nothing more and continued walking. Now he was just a stone’s throw away from the hovering newcomer Sharks. The Sharks were extremely reliable and quite large compared to other fighters. They were 26 meters long and had a 22 meter wing span and carried proportionately more ordnance than most fighters and even fighter/bombers. John went by a lone Rapier and he looked at it with awe. It was large, jet black and sleek, it looked formidable and extremely dangerous. It was made out of cutting edge technology and gave the impression of incredible speed and stealth. The Rapier had a wingspan of 24 meters and was 35 meters long, its nose (which carried two pilots) significantly contributing to its length. After the Rapier, came the HG-59 Raven gunships and the D-92 dropships. The dropships were more than 120 meters long and 50 meters wide and shaped like rectangles, broad and not too high. The D-92s were quite moderately sized, small compared some larger dropships the USE sported and insignificant to the monstrosities the Bragulan Star Empire fielded. John spotted his troops behind one of the dropships. “Good afternoon, troops.”

“Good afternoon, sir,” Joshua casually replied and gave a salute as did the rest of the squad. Unlike John, all of them wearing their armor and were totally covered except for their helmets which they were cradling under their arms. They were obviously preparing for launch.

“I came here as soon as I could to inform you that the ground invasion has been postponed. Our battle group’s position was revealed and so our ships could not launch a surprise attack, having to battle prematurely. So now, instead of dropping into the planet, we’re still bombarding the UFPP base. Basically, our schedule has been fucked up and we don’t know when the bombardment will be finished,” This disappointed most of the marines while relieving those with lesser intestinal fortitude. John lied about the first part; he didn’t actually come to the docking bays as soon as he could. He knew that the schedule was fucked ever since the space battle began prematurely, hence he didn’t suit up yet. “Now that you’re all ready, just stay sharp and don’t wander off too far since we might be deployed at any minute. That’s all, men.”

John left the men to do whatever they wanted. Most of them went into the dropship to use the on-board holoscreens (that or the toilets). John decided on getting a drink, but didn’t know where to find one in the docking bays. So he walked around until he found two pilots beside a Cyclone bomber. They were drinking beverages from disposable cups and John was about to walk up to them and ask where they got their drinks when he saw a robot holding an empty platter. John decided to ask the robot for directions. “So robot, where do I find some drinks?”

The bot was one of the cheaper ones, though it was more complicated than the robotic trolleys. It had rubbery synthetic skin over its endoskeleton which gave it an artificial human look. The skin also allowed some superficial features, like blinking eyes and moving lips. It pointed towards a room and politely replied with a generic robotic voice, “The vending machine is over there.”

“Thanks,” John replied and went straight towards the vending machine. He got a disposable cup and placed it over one of the machine’s dispensers, an Iced Tea dispenser to be specific. “Make it extra-sweet.”

The machine beeped in acknowledgement and poured tea into the cup, stopping when it detected that the cup was sufficiently filled, exactly not too full to spill while not too empty. John took a sip of the cold sugar-filled liquid and smacked his lips in satisfaction.

“Ah…that’s the stuff. Almost as good as OrGazmo,” John said to himself before chuckling. He took another sip and headed towards the turbo-lift when he heard some sounds coming from a nearby room. John neared the room and said to himself, “Must be the pilots having their de-briefing.”

John was now inches away from the doorway and the sounds were clearly audible. He could hear the Combat Air Group Commander mouthing off. The man had a reputation of being a perfectionist and everybody seemed to hate him, except Brent, who was an ass-licker. The CAG sounded furious and from what John picked up, he was screaming at the Shark pilots. John decided to take a peek.

“-how could you let that happen? Look at what’s in the docking bays! We have a bunch of torn up Peregrines and one of them even lost a fucking wing! And it’s entirely your damn fault! We lost Gamma and Charlie squads’ Peregrines. But you bunch of incompetents should thank your stars that Gamma and Charlie’s pilots managed to eject from their craft, saving the Sovereignty millions in training, no thanks to you! You all make me ashamed, you’re all lucky that you haven’t been court marshaled!” most of the pilots in the room looked extremely irritated. But the CAG’s rant didn’t end there. “Thank goodness the Ominous’s Sharks are the ones bombing the Federation base. I’d bet you people couldn’t do you jobs half as good as them, I’d bet that the Fed’s droids would kill every single one of you incompetents. Now get out of my sight, all of you disgust me.”

The men got off their seats while the CAG turned to retrieve some stuff from his desk. He didn’t notice the large amount of pilots giving him the finger. John couldn’t help but smile.

[Crazedwraith]

:d Nice chapter. OrGazmo: the reference of every chapter.

So was the entire battle of chapter three a sim?

Also I'm not going to post here without shamelessly plugging untitled. (link in sig) although exams mean work is not going on, on chapter 2 i will have plenty off time, my exams finish a week on thursday so I'll be writing more after then.

[Ace Pace]

:d Nice chapter. OrGazmo: the reference of every chapter.

So was the entire battle of chapter three a sim?

Also I'm not going to post here without shamelessly plugging untitled. (link in sig) although exams mean work is not going on, on chapter 2 i will have plenty off time, my exams finish a week on thursday so I'll be writing more after then.

No, Baylor was watching it from a simulation IIRC, the battle was real.

[Shroom Man 777]

Baylor was watching the battle from the observatory, which used holograms to simulate the surroundings of the starships.

[Black Admiral]

I like, I like.

Especially the pilots. Typical airboys, but no less amusing for that.

[Ace Pace]

I like, I like.

Especially the pilots. Typical airboys, but no less amusing for that.

So i'm an air boy huh?

I like that

[Shroom Man 777]

I've hooked another reader! Quick, spread the gospel!

[Sarevok]

I like it. Keep up the good work.

[Shroom Man 777]

The skies were clear over G-179A’s main city. The daily forecasts predicted mild weather for the main city, or The City as it was called by its denizens (the same people who gave the planet its long winded nickname). This meant that the skies would have good visibility, that the clouds wouldn’t be thick and that snowfall would be virtually non-existent, mild weather meant excellent flying conditions and usually signaled the daily rush hour. The great visibility would’ve been a good thing on an ordinary day, but today was everything but ordinary. The air raid sirens would tell you that.

From a bird’s eye view one could see that he city’s main body was composed primarily of small square shaped buildings; most were two-five stories tall, all dully colored. Crisscrossing streets divided the cityscape into numerous sections, separating groups of buildings from one another. Scattered in these streets were droid soldiers, battle tanks, mobile suits and other military units, some of which were gathering around bunkers and other fortified structures as well as anti-aircraft defense emplacements. More units were entering the city from the western side, coming in convoys from a military installation a few miles away from the city.

The installation was essentially a military garrison sporting massive reinforced bunkers which led to underground facilities as well as a command and control center. On the surface were communications arrays, vacated barracks, armories, defense emplacements and an airfield. There was a small contingent of droid infantry on the base as well as a small number of mobile suits. The base and the city’s airspaces were patrolled by interceptor and air/space superiority craft. Gunships were also buzzing in the skies. None of the costlier assets were on the base, even the ground base assets were in the city, which contained residential areas and infrastructure. All with good reason as the installation was a prime target with the USS Braveheart in geosynchronous orbit right above it.

Suddenly the sky lit up as a blue bolt of plasma, as hot as the sun’s core, came down from the heavens like a spear of pure energy. The bolt burned through the planet’s atmosphere at relativistic speeds and struck dead center of the installation, directing a megaton’s worth of raw power into a single point. The installation disappeared in a flash, leaving nothing but the stench of ozone and a massive red-hot hole of molten rock flowing deep into the ground.

The ear-smashing blast led to a massive tremor, causing a convoy of lumbering bipedal mobile suits to stop and look back at their base, which was now a smoking crater of magma and vaporized concrete. Big mistake. A squad of Peregrines made a high altitude strafing run, releasing several thousand pound precision munitions. The mobile suits knew what was coming and they pointed their arm mounted cannons to the air and began saturating it with gun fire. It was futile as the bombs landed right on the mobile suit’s heads, instantly turning them into blackened scrap metal.

The nimble Peregrines made another pass over the ruined mobile suits, reversing their direction and heading towards the city at speeds Mach 10 speeds. Their radar detected several bogeys, crescent shaped droid fighters coming in to intercept them and extract revenge. They immediately began maneuvering around the droid fighters, keeping as far away as they can from the droids’ radars while forming up for a run. The Peregrines suddenly rocketed towards the droids at hypersonic speeds and fired their missiles, catching the droids unaware and turning them into massive fireballs. Their long range radar detected more incoming droids but a squad of Sharks easily made short work of the potential threat. The Peregrines resumed their previous course and entered the city’s airspace, occasionally dropping bombs at convoys.

The icy skies were suddenly lit by anti-aircraft pulse laser fire and tracer fire, the defenses trying their best to intercept the hypersonic aircraft, forcing the Peregrines to break formation. Then a large number of the AA laser batteries were taken out by Cyclone bombers in the stratosphere. With a large portion of the defenses gone, the Peregrines made another high altitude bombing run, this time over a congregation of mobile suits around the city square.

From a distance, near the horizon and far from the city was a rumbling thunderstorm of plasma bolts. Another military installation was vaporized in a flash, in a fraction of a second. Other outposts were being decimated one by one in rapid succession. It was like a re-make of Sodom and Gomorrah this time with indiscriminate justice and surgical precision.

While outposts around the city were ruthlessly eliminated, the city itself remained unscathed by the bolts of plasma while swarming with aircraft activity. An explosion rang off on the northern industrial section of the city as the Cyclone bombers circled the skies like hungry wolves. The bombs reduced military supply depots, warehouses and their defenders to rubble while leaving the industrial complexes unharmed. The bombers released their munitions a kilometer away from the ground, their bombs went down and accelerated with enough force to punch through reinforced concrete like eggshells. One of such bombs crashed through the concrete roof of a depot and continued going down till it reached the last underground floor of the structure. The depot exploded in a blast of fire, concrete and twisted steel, annihilating a nearby AA gun emplacement. Parts of the depot would’ve been found a mile away.

The UFPP’s droid fighters were all over the place. Five wings of interceptors were immediately dispatched to engage the high altitude bombers in a desperate attempt to slow down the Sovereign’s initiative. The effort was just that, desperate. The droid fighters weren’t the only ones doing the engaging as the bombers had Sharks escorting them. The droids were knocked out of the air before they could even pick up the Sharks in their sensors. Now it was the Sharks’ turn to dispense damage, from a far away distance, they targeted a large group of tanks and mobile suits, all of which were sporting anti-aircraft weaponry. The Sharks’ missile bays opened and they launched a wall of air-to-ground missiles. The tanks sported AA lasers on their turrets and were lucky enough to shoot down a small number of the missiles. Some of them survived. The mobile suits didn’t have such luck as their arm mounted cannons proved to be woefully inadequate as all of them were destroyed. The battalion was decimated.

Near the city’s southern border a Peregrine fighter made a low level pass, only several hundred feet away from the ground. It locked onto a UFPP gunship and riddled it with plasma bolts. The gunship exploded and the Peregrine quickly pulled up to avoid crashing onto the ship. A nearby hidden missile battery locked onto the Peregrine. The fighter didn’t even have the chance to maneuver as it was instantly blown into two by the missile. The battery began scanning for another target but its killing spree was short lived as a bomb effortlessly destroyed it.


An avenging wing of droid fighters screamed through the skies above the city’s main body. All over the place, the USE fighters were dropping their bombs at the withering static defense positions of the UFPP forces. But there were still AA batteries left and this caused the Peregrines to break their formation and the droid fighters used this to their advantage. They began picking off lone enemy fighters. A single Peregrine was blown out of the sky after demolishing a bunker. The wing of droids divided themselves to several squads, one of which began making its way to a lone Shark. The Shark’s powerful sensors caught the droid squad and the Shark got the first shot, depleting its cache of AA missiles. The Shark’s missiles rocketed with incredible speed and destroyed the entire squad before they could even react. The Shark immediately began retreating as another squad of droids began tailing it. The droids fired their missiles towards the Shark but the large fighter began evasive maneuvers, going from a cruising speed of Mach 8 to Mach 12 in a split of a second.

The missiles were gaining; but the Shark pulled up and activated the wing-mounted afterburners, going straight up like a rocket at speeds beyond fifteen times the speed of sound. The missiles were relentless and pulled up, desperately trying to cope with the Shark’s sudden burst of speed and as well as trying to compensate for their low maneuverability. The Shark went straight up, its wide wings making it resemble a condor with a pair of rocket thrusters glued to its behind. The Shark went right into the stratosphere, the pursuing missiles detonating far below it.

The Shark did a roll, changing its course and rapidly descending back to the planet. As it shrieked towards the planet at hypersonic speed, a trio of Sharks joined it. The three newcomers fired their remaining ordnance and immediately broke formation, leaving the first Shark by itself. The missiles descended towards the formation of droids, the same ones which fired on the lone Shark, and destroyed all but one of them. The survivor made a sharp turn and zipped away, giving away the fact that it was out of ammo. The lone Shark gave chase, again firing up its afterburners. The Shark’s mighty engines made the craft close the distance with frightening speeds. The droid saw this and made a split second calculation before lowering its altitude and making a run towards the nearest functional AA defense piece it could find. The droid went right, the Shark followed suit and began closing in. The Shark fired its phased plasma cannons. Hundreds of plasma bolts were expelled from the cannons. The droid began evasive maneuvers, unpredictably bobbing left and right and corkscrewing while descending even lower, now about 1000 feet above ground level.

The droid detected an AA laser battery and sent a message to it, a frantic and urgent digitalized message. The battery’s sensors began scanning for the pursuing Shark and it locked on. It charged up its cannon, priming itself up before firing. It was fully charged, the cannon began moving, aiming towards the incoming fighter. In a few quick jerks, the cannon itself was now facing the right direction. The cannon fired one pulse laser beam before erupting in a spectacular explosion of dust and twisted metal. A Cyclone bomber thousands of feet above just happened to be passing by.

If the droid’s AI could speak, it would’ve screamed until its throat was hoarse. It turned left and made a mad dash for another laser battery. Too late. The Shark turned with the droid fighter while filling the air with blue-hot plasma. Dozens out of hundreds managed to clip the droid, but it was enough. The droid’s shields ignited and the craft itself shook. The Shark filled the air with even more bolts of energy and after a couple of short seconds, the droid’s shields gave up and the bolts tore through its armor. The crescent shaped craft was sheared to pieces, its engine exploded and the primary fuselage crashed to the ground as a flaming wreck. The Shark passed by the crash site before pulling up and heading back to its mother ship to re-arm.


As the Shark exited the atmosphere along with most of the craft leading the assault, another batch of craft came to take their place. This time, there were Raven assault gunships, HU-88 Egret utility gunships, D-92 dropships and unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles (UARV).


The D-92 dropships entered the atmosphere behind swarms of fighter craft and bombers. Their general shape might look not too aerodynamic but the front sides of the ships were designed to cut through the air especially during the descent into a planet’s atmosphere. The massive ships plummeted down to G-179A like the fabled primitive shuttles of old earth, their hulls glowing due to the intense friction of re-entry. They cleared the upper atmosphere and adjusted their course, performing a quick but gentle descent right outside The City while the majority of the other craft dispersed, the assault craft raining death down to the UFPP emplacements while the UARVs made rounds over the city, highlighting potential targets for bombers and artillery.

The dropships landed on the snowy flatlands and immediately disgorged their passengers while Ravens and the lightly armed troop transporting Egrets circled overhead, providing a perimeter. Higher in the skies, several Peregrines were also providing cover for the landed dropships while a dozen Egrets dispatched troops to begin preparations for a temporary (very temporary) base.

A massive HT-75K2 Terminator main battle tank came rolling out of one of the many dropships. It was the pride of the Sovereignty’s ground forces, 14 meters in length, 6.5 meters wide and 4 meters tall, it was one of the heaviest MBTs sported by the major military powers. Its obscenely durable armor was angular and slanted; some parts were covered by an add-on layer of reactive armor. Its turret had a long 150mm railgun serving as the primary cannon. On top of the turret was a remote controlled double barreled phased plasma cannon. There were three single barreled phased plasma cannon, all located in strategic portions of the battle tank. Several others came after the first tank, all coming out without any engine noise and rolling on the melting snow. They arranged with other vehicles, most were other Terminators, the others were IFVs and Rangers. They formed a column of steel and waited, while a small group of propelled howitzers assembled behind them.


In the first Terminator tank was Sgt. Chris Matthews, the commander of the vehicle. He was sitting in the crammed interior of the tank’s turret. He gulped down the last of his beer, burped and looked to his side and saw the tank’s gunner, a trigger happy fellow named Neilth Travis. Neilth was staring eagerly at the targeting monitor, his hand stroking the cannon’s rear section, what some people call ‘the ass.’ Sergeant Chris tapped Neil’s shoulder.

“Neil, stop tapping the gun’s ass. Just chill out, man. This isn’t our first time,” Chris said. Neilth, him and the driver, Kenneth Shaldon, had been through quite a lot and it wasn’t like Neilth to be nervous.

“Alright…it’s just my first time in something this huge. This isn’t a half assed militia, this is the UFPP we’re talking about,” Neilth replied.

“Why are you so nervous anyway? Forgot your OrGazmo?” Kenneth wasn’t in the turret; he was in the main body of the tank, so he had to use the comm.-links to communicate with his partners.

“No. For your information, I’ve got my OrGazmo in my pocket,” Neilth snapped back, instinctually pulling out a tin foil wrapped stick of candy from his pants.

“Then why are you so jittery? Lighten up. And you’re not supposed to bring that shit in the tank, jacking off while droids shoot shit at us is illegal, you know,” Chris snatched the OrGazmo stick from Neilth’s hands.

“Christ! We’re going to be facing mobile suits and I don’t have my OrGazmo! This blows! You know I work better stoned!”

“No, you don’t. That’s just what you want us to think. I’m not getting this tank blown up because you want to lick a stick of OrGazmo. And besides, those mobile suits are pussies. They can’t even shoot for shit.”

“You tell him, Chris.”

Suddenly, the three way conversation was interrupted as a mean looking face filled one of the holoscreens, the one for communications. It was Ryan Shepperd, the battalion’s great leader. “Ladies, it’s time to kill some Federation ass. We’re going to go in there and kill everything in sight. Just remember the rules of engagement. Don’t kill civilians. And remember, kicking ass is compulsory. Taking names is optional. Let’s roll!”


The tanks moved forward, leading the with the IFVs and Rangers right behind the wall of steel. They rolled towards the city, Ravens and Egrets overhead. Behind them, the artillery began firing massive 230mm shells at coordinates targeted by the UARVs. The Federation immediately began taking losses without even seeing their enemies.

A Federation RT-110 hover tank exploded. Its thick disc shaped main body crashing to the ground as its circular turret disappeared in a massive blast. A lumbering bipedal mobile suit beside the ruined vehicle collapsed due to the blast wave and fell on its side, slamming on the ground with concrete shattering force. Another incoming artillery round clipped a droid tank-destroyer (DTD), reducing it into an unidentifiable pile of slag and steel. A small building explodes, engulfing a large group of droid infantry with all sorts of shrapnel. More rounds came from the far away howitzers, decimating more and more of the Federation’s ground assets. The Federation tank and mobile suit battalion crawled forward, getting away from the artillery barrage and to intercept the incoming USE battle tanks.


“Neilth get ready. They’re heading out of the city; we’re already two and a half kilometers away. Once they pop out, we start shooting.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Neilth replied. He was again stroking the cannon’s rear.


The UFPP formation emerged from the city and entered a killing zone. The USE’s long range artillery intensified their barrage by several fold the second the Federation tanks emerged from the city’s borders. The entire area was saturated with artillery fire while the formation continued pushing through. Federation artillery returned fire from within the city but was quickly silenced by Cyclones and Peregrines. The USE forces were still behind the horizon when the Terminator tanks began firing their advanced weaponry, launching HEAT shells and railgun-launched missiles. The artillery fire and the tank fire were all coordinated with the UARVs and they delivered lethal damage, leaving only smoking carcasses of the Federation armor.

Up next were the Ravens, elevating just so slightly, enough to grant them sight of the incoming Fed formation. The gunships opened their missile bays and armed their externally mounted weapons. They fired their anti-tank missiles, bigger brothers of the man-portable THOR missiles. The THORs streaked through the air and though were intercepted by the RT-110’s lasers, most disemboweled enormous portions of the Federation battalion, especially the tank destroyers. One mobile suit was left standing with its entire upper torso missing before toppling over and pinning a droid tank-destroyer. The tanks and mobile suits opened fire on the Ravens while using their smoke grenade launchers in an attempt to provide cover. Purple laser beams, missiles and glowing incendiary rounds emerged from a cloud of thick black smoke which enveloped the Federation formation. A laser beam melted the cockpit of a Raven, killing its crew instantly and causing the craft to violently crash to the ground. The other Ravens began moving sideways and encircled the Federation from afar while continuing their barrage. Some emptied their entire compliments and had to resort to their dual phased plasma cannons, picking off the lesser armored mobile suits, tank destroyers and IFVs with an endless stream of blue energy while leaving the well-armored hover tanks.

A large portion of the tanks suddenly ignored the gunships and began firing towards the horizon, the USE armor now within the range of their slightly inferior weaponry. The tanks and tank destroyers fired their shells and increased their speed while the plodding two-three storey high mobile suits launched rockets from shoulder mounted launchers. The USE and Federation armor began trading shell for shell, missile for missile, rocket for rocket, all the while not even seeing each other yet.

Finally, a Terminator tank went flying over a bump, going at a hundred kilometers per hour and dramatically landing on the ground, all 65 tons of neo-steel and hyperalloy, causing snow to fly all over the place. Right behind it emerged its heavily armored brethren. A rocket slammed on the first tank’s frontal turret armor, scorching the pain job and doing zilch to the armor. The tank pressed on and fired its massive gun, reverberating as a super dense dart shaped shell broke the sound barrier and accelerated to Mach 5 before punching through the offending mobile suit’s armor like tissue paper, instantly destroying it. The term was called ‘kinetic kill’. The Terminator fired another kinetic kill round, dealing death to a hover tank while shrugging off a hit from a mobile suit’s ‘buster cannon’, the Terminator retaliated by firing its main gun again, this time sending a HEAT round straight towards the mobile suit, transforming its cockpit into a gaping black hole and reducing its pitiful armor to slag. A salvo of rockets went flying towards the Terminator and its brothers and all of them countered by firing the phased plasma cannons mounted on top of their turrets. The crisscrossing streams of plasma caught a lot of rockets but there were too many and the entire area was blanketed with explosions. None of the tanks suffered any losses.

Then there was another salvo, the tanks attempted to interdict them but this time they overshot the tanks and inflicted damage on the less armored vehicles behind the tanks, particularly an IFV. The IFV was seriously hurt, causing another IFV to stop. The undamaged IFV deployed its compliment of troops who were now checking the wreckage for survivors. While the pair of vehicles stayed behind, the formations advanced. Information was relayed from vehicle to vehicle, sent by specialized non-combat Rangers at the rear of the formation. A message was sent to one of the combat Rangers in the main formation. The Ranger acknowledged the command and fired a THOR missile (the same one on the Ravens) towards a mobile suit. The suit saw the incoming missile but couldn’t do a thing.

As the frontal wave of hover tanks and mobile suits were being decimated, the remaining vehicles at the rear of the Federation formation grouped together, forming a last ditch effort to hold back the advancing USE forces. The droid tank destroyers were spearheading this new formation. The DTDs used the RT-110 chassis, their special turrets mounted either an x-ray laser or a railgun designed to launch kinetic-kill projectiles. And the instant the DTDs had the Sovereign’s Terminators in sight, they immediately began firing, sending angry red lasers and hypersonic darts towards the Sovereign armor.

A kinetic-kill round struck one of the Terminator tanks, connecting with the behemoth’s add-on reactive armor. The add-on armor exploded outwards, the blast destroying the incoming round and rendering the Terminator unscathed as the tank returned fire. The DTD literally exploded, its own ammunition reacting with the HEAT explosive. The rest of the Terminators filled the air with tank fire, hoping to stop the DTDs before they could inflict too much damage. HEAT shells, kinetic-kill rounds and anti-tank lasers were violently bartered as the air was filled with the scent of ozone and the ground shaking as the Federation DTDs started taking losses. A DTD laser sliced through an IFV, killing all its passengers. Another laser sliced through the chilly air, this time hitting a Terminator.


“Fuck!” yelled Chris. The laser was beginning to burn through the armor and that was definitely not a good thing. “Neilth, get a lock on that DTD and blow it to shit before it melts through our armor! Now!”

“Shit! Aiming!” Neilth replied hastily as his hands pressed buttons and moved levers, causing the turret to face the DTD in one smooth motion. At the same time, he pressed a button which activated the tank gun’s loading system. “Chris, what kind of-“

“I don’t care. No time!” Chris was almost jumping off of his seat. The laser had stopped to cool down, the Terminator’s armor already had a horrible gash. The DTD looked like it was going to resume firing at any second.

“HEAT shell, loaded!” the shell was loaded automatically by the tank, refuting the need for a crewman specialized in loading. Neilth looked at the range finder, a holoscreen designed for targeting. The crosshairs were glowing red, the screen was beeping and the tank gun’s magnetic accelerators were whirring. “Loaded and locked. Firing now!”


The DTD never got to fire its laser again, a HEAT round blasting through its armor and killing all of its crew. Elsewhere, a Terminator was crippled by a DTD thanks two kinetic penetration rounds and a HEAT shell. The DTD’s victory was short lived, as an artillery shell landed right on its turret.

One of the few remaining mobile suits fired its last rockets and began blasting away with its buster cannon. An unlucky Ranger was shredded to smoking pieces by one of the cannon’s bullets. The mobile suit pointed to another vehicle, this time an IFV which in turn was aiming towards it. The IFV fired first, its double barreled phased plasma cannon saturating the mobile suit’s right arm with white hot bolts of plasma. The right arm was violently severed, the joints giving way to the plasma barrage. With its rockets depleted and its buster cannon removed, the mobile suit was neutered. It stopped moving and stood still, accepting its fate as a Terminator sent a kinetic penetration round straight through its torso. The suit collapsed backward, crashing into the snowy ground.

Another survivor, this time a RT-110, fell to the ground. Its hovering capability compromised by a HEAT shell to its main body. It crashed on its side, as smoke started billowing from the hole made by the HEAT shell. Its turret opened and a Hagrdian and a human came out, both carrying white flags. All over the field, other units were doing the same, UFPP non-droid forces realizing the relative invincibility of Sovereign armor and preferring to keep their lives.

[Crazedwraith]

kewl.

[Ace Pace]

You know my opinion, this is good fiction.

[Sarevok]

A little long but a good chapter.

The nimble Peregrines made another pass over the ruined mobile suits, reversing their direction and heading towards the city at speeds Mach 10 speeds.

It should be 'speeds of mach 10" not "mach 10 speeds".