Deleted scenes from the Battle of Sol (I chose not to include them for reasons Siege outlined):
I would have wrote:They charged head on and fought to the last man and machine, their Slaughter Devices blazing away with mighty turbolasers until they in turn were slaughtered by coalition dreadnoughts and pounded into oblivion. The MEHN’s greatest ships were, ironically, the first to fall as their jamming systems and still-formidable firepower made them priority targets. After them, the coalition focused its wrath on the lesser ships, but despite the decimation of their flagship and the death of their admiral, the sailors and spacers of the MEHN fought on.
http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss30 ... y_1965.jpg
Such was their desperation that after expending their ammunition, and having their motherships destroyed by coalition fire, the MEHN’s fighters and bombers simply hurled themselves at their enemies in kamikaze runs - using their own fuselages as projectiles. Following their example, megacorvettes and cruisers likewise went in close to the coalition warships, entangling themselves in slugging matches with their opposites at point-blank range, where enemy bombardment ships could not strike at them from afar in fear of hitting their own ally ships.
No quarter was asked, and none was spared. For the MEHN, their last hour was also their finest, and with a ferocity unequaled and unerring alacrity, they wrestled with the much larger coalition fleets and held on until the last moment. In comparison, with so many warships from so many nations at hand, with human-coalition and OMINOUS armadas struggling to inter-operate and cooperate, the alliance fleet made a much more disorganized and poorly-coordinated showing.
Yet the disparity in force and strength could not be overcome with guile and ferocity. The coalition armadas simply hammered the defenders of Sol into submission, into oblivion. Albeit with imprecise strikes, unbalanced fleet movements, much hesitation on part of those who wished to avoid friendly-fire, and
uncertainty of the trustworthiness of their new allies to the point of deploying forces to watch over and even defend against potential treachery from their confederates. Eventually, the last ships of the MEHN burned, but in a final act of spite, these vessels engaged their stellar drives, emergency engines and Heim generators and threw themselves at their killers. The hyperwaves were filled with the last words of captains and crews, praying to their Goddess, before the remaining MEHN ships buried their prows into the nearest coalition vessels and detonated in blinding hypermatter explosions.
Other mitigating circumstances of the battle:
The Centralists promised to the Chamarrans (and the rest of OMINOUS) not to bring anyone else to Sol. They broke their promise, and other humans went to Sol. In light of this, how would the Chamarrans react to the lying Centralists, and the presence of other navies that might threaten the Chamarran's own plan to keep Sol for themselves?
Were the other OMINOUS nations even informed that the Centralists and other humans would be there? Eoghans and Nova-Atlanteans are not exactly on good terms with the Centrality, and how a Centralist fleet appears out of nowhere?
The Tianguonese are xenophobes. The inhumans in OMINOUS won't like that.
The Xylyx may come. Who knows what they'd do in Sol, but yeah. (Also, the Tianguonese hate them)
Even before the war, the OMINOUS already planned to invade Sol after Xena and thus were prepared for that. In comparison, the SHITS' original plan (as per Rouge, and as per the Pellaeon Heart Attack posts) was to occupy Alpha Centauri and Wolf only, which was agreed with the Chamarrans. So while the OMINOUS had planned the Sol attack months ago, the SHITS had only devised their plan to invade Sol
days ago. Previously, they had no idea they were even going to Sol.
As such, after the post-battle logistics in Xena (very close to Chamarran space), the OMINOUS was already hot to go to Sol. Comparatively, the SHITS didn't even know they were going to Sol until the last minute, with lots of haphazard politicking and impromptu back-dealing on part of the various leaders of the various factions.
ADDENDUM
The whole point is that while everyone is bickering on the who and the what and arguing with each other and fighting the Sol Fleet and watching at each other, because now nobody can trust each other (which tends to happen when you go back on your word and bring unexpected battle fleets) and such, Byzantium bypasses the entire space battle and makes a beeline for Earth while dropping minefields and such.
Bragule will try to stall the others, possibly by screaming a lot of outrage at the imperialistic human shits coming to Sol with the intention of wreaking unmentionable destruction at the poor peoples of the MEH who have suffered enough (
) and so on and so forth, while also relying on everyone else's mutual distrust and hate to slow everyone down.
Certain factions, like the Tianguo or the Refuge or Eoghans just fresh from shooting down civilian ships trying to flee to Sol's warpgate to escape (a true act of heroism, my mongoose comrades!) might also be fine with Earth, and Sasha, totally torched.
I'd also imagine that after Earth goes down the drain, a whole lot of people would be confused as hell as to what's happened, while also trying to run for their lives away from the growing abomination within the system and such, and immediately wouldn't exactly know what the hell is going on at that moment. Would anyone have time to scream at Byzantium (or much less chase their fleet down) then when, at that very moment, dimensional beasties are screaming void-chilling blasphemies and threatening to eat everyone there?
ALSO
Byzantium is not part of the OMINOUS nor the SHITS. Like the Ascendants, it may not have hypered out to Sol at the same time as the rest of OMINOUS. There is no reason why they couldn't have just flown out first.