Battle of Histirion Part 6: Long Range Engagement

Histirion System: Carnaith Space

The first thing to be detected were the Carnaithian missiles inbound for the fleet, taking a roundabout flight path that eluded the Capitol screening force, the cloud of particles and the fireballs from the Axiom's exploding nuclear warheads. The nuclear warheads that were sent to intercept them began being vulnerable to enemy fire, causing them to get in turn intercepted.

With that signal the carrier liason officer barked out a couple ferocious, mechanical orders repeated over the intercoms. Waving at the air in front of her, the once-human aide to the chief of operations reorganized the huge holographic timetables that now encroached the roof and walls. The ship acknowledged with a few low-pitched crescentos. Emitting a strong gravitational pulse harmonized with the blinkers', the three Phi-class carriers expelled its entire screen of interceptors outwards and in an intercepting course with the warheads, sending up volleys of multiple smaller nuclear and kinetic missiles while moving to avoid enemy fire. The cloud of particles was initially affected but was reeled back in by one of the blinkers, while the hundreds of light ships continued to thicken it with their launchers.

"It's a good thing a battle has happened the same time as the ascension of our dearest lady Shifting Mirrors." One of the servants said solemnly while he wheeled in more food. It seemed that the cadre of officers slowly began focusing less on the battle and more on the food, eating more and more voraciously.

'Let this be the first of many of her feasts' The chief of damage control said in a series of low buzzes and beeps that Nrx was literate enough to translate. 'The feasts of Axiomhood fill the Syntagma with their wonders. Each one different and as inconceivable as the last one. Verses read of strange mindscapes, planetwide ego deaths! War! Let's give them war!'

The other officers, now caught in an absolute feeding frenzy where their mechanical and human members tore away at the delicately laid cornucopia. Nrx could only look in increasing fear as they began behaving more like animals. The rest of the command room seemed to act like nothing was happening. One of the chief electronic warfare officers simply collapsed on his food.

Nrx began to breathe quicker and quicker, his eyes darting all around, trying to keep the food away from him. He sweated cold.

"Help!" He heard and looked up and saw her, Sofia, glowing and desperately reaching towards him.

A crewmember passed in front of her. She was gone.

Close enough to begin contact, the EPA vessels began firing through gravitically-created tunnels in the thick cloud of graphene. They fired volleys of torpedoes that fanned outwards and aimed bomb-pumped lasers at the CAE vessels. Shortly after them the entire  cloud swirled and briefly turned inside-out as it was pierced by the form of Heavy Blinker Majora, the only ship to peek out of the cloud. The barrage of laser and railgun fire still made it through the thick screen created by the Capitol vessels, though it didn't activate its fuzzy armor, letting some of the impacting projectiles eat away at its large bow. Paralleling the other twelve Blinkers, liquid nitrogen flooded its capacitor banks as enery began to spike inside them. The multiple spherical turrets hidden deep inside the vessels began to take aim, particle accelerators came to life. Only in Majora, however, did the wormhole generator began activating.

"Heavy Blinker Majora is starting combat operations."

"Prepare for quantum normalization. Prepare for possible tau field interference." One of the officers who stood outside of the central plotter hologram table coldly said in a calmed, professional voice.

The silent ones had meanwhile maintained their course, Their commanding entities observing the potential risks attached to focusing ones forces to a centralized unit, even if said unit had notably organized defenses and layout. in the end, only five had been deployed ahead of the slowed drone destroyer group to join up with the main capitol and axiom centralized battle group. firing their secondary propulsion units to bring them closer to the main combat zone , but maintaining several AUs of distance between themselves and the rest of the combat. at a speed faster then normal sublight drives could have given them. Arriving in a tight five sided geometric formation. deploying supporting drones from the small hangers on their sides that sped ahead of the formation, firing small bursts of black discharges from their small turrets, interspaced with lasers of a greenish hue with a deadly micrometrical accuracy at the oncoming CAE fighters and ships on the A group.

The destroyer sized vessels followed rapidly, Engaging the oncoming formations of carnaithian and Tenebrean ships, the black spheres suspended above their hulls shimmering momentarily with a golden hue, Amber inside of shimmering blackness. like eyes. before firing the same black discharges and green hued lasers in a sniper-like fashion. Targeting cruisers and Destroyers targeted among the allied formations.

"In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning!" A transmission would have gone out to the rest of the Capitol fleet from the black ships, the first real transmission they would have gotten from the Converged entitiy groups within the ships. a chorus of quiet whispering voices forming the words.

For the Silent one units engaging group Bs contingents of fighters and corvettes above the anomaly with the shadowblade units. the reaction was largely the same. With the beginning of the engagement with CAE's groupA. The same signal that the commanding nodes within the depths of the anomaly was apparently heeded by those units skimming both above and below Histeron.

their Drone formations reacted first. engaging secondary drives that drove them ahead of the destroyer sized vessels as the larger ships engaged secondary salvos of missiles, these ones of a more simple kinetic-explosive armament base, towards the corvettes and fighters, not yet opening fire with the exotic weapons systems they carried.

The first wave of missiles they had fired, apparently ignored by the Carnaithian and Tenebrean formations, had closed a good portion of the distance towards the maneuvering groups lens shaped formation.

On Stillutes' end, half of his ships had to re-route... he had split his forces in two after they cloaked and sent them at each combat group, and now the orders from the operations' commanders had him attacking B group only... very annoying, so say the least. Nonetheless, his ships that had moved towards group B began to move into the area in front of their targets, arming missiles and deploying them, but not firing their engines yet. Instead, they dropped them in an idle, inwards pointing formation, ready to fire when the B group entered a close enough position as to make reaction difficult. They remained cloaked, and left some of their number in a waiting position as to set off the impromptu 'mines', as well as do some small strikes, while the rest went to the flank of A group.

Meanwhile, the corvettes he had sent out began to close with the Carnaithian Frigates... often referred to as 'corvettes' due to their size, and began to engage. Their gauss weapons beginning to fire, and missiles beginning to arc away from their hulls. Stillute took more interest in these small conflicts at the moment than the trap he was setting up for the B group, but then again he was hoping to have a major action on two fronts instead of trap-laying.

At the tower, military personnel who had been put in to guard the perimeter of the crowd charging it now watched in awe as the energy flowed from those below into the towering spire. Within, Jan was busy spectating the battle in-system on a second screen near to the one displaying the charge.

Glacian watched the battle in Histrion with youthful fascination, like a young boy watching his saturday morning cartoons. Glacian leaned forward, his head rested on his palms, his elbows on his knees, as he watched the holographic battle before him, his tail swayed back and forth at his side and his eyes were wide with excitement and anticipation.

Jan looked at him in a quizzical way, looking him up and down before asking;

"Umm... You're pretty absorbed in that, aren't you?" He then turned to a third monitor and asked vigil to display the scene outside. He began to look amongst the people outside as he waited for Glacians' reply.

"Yes. my people dont get to see conflict like this often. at least not in person or outside our recordings..." Glacian replied without looking away. "This is a wonderful experience. To think that this is happening so early in my lifetime when the great general Vulcan waited over a thousand years for for humans to simply invent the atom bomb, when I, a mere 40 year old, get to see what makes an atom bomb resemble the discovery of fire" He laughed quietly. "Vulcan would be so envious right now."

"Well, you have any more suggestions to speed this up?" Jan said back, watching the battle himself.

"Honestly, this would be going much better for our part if there wasn't some weird anomaly going on." he said again, leaning with his elbow against the wall and his temple resting in his palm as he watched his own monitor.

"Very well.." Glacian replied. "Vigil, accelerate charge by 25%. siphon necessary energy from the nearby lifeforms...."Glacian looked to jan in hesitation before adding to his command. "dont leave the lifeforms without enough to survive...."

"As you command, Lord Glacian." Vigil responded.

Jan blinked a moment.

"Umm... that doesn't make them die sooner, does it? or does it just effect them temporarily?"

Glacian looked to jan. "It should stop just short of making them tired...."

"...Vigil, display acceleration." Jan inquired.

"It's gone up another 25%..." He said, notifying Glacian.

"you wanted an acceleration, I give you acceleration. now sit back and observe. Vigil, are you recording this?" Glacian said.

"Yes, Lord Glacian." Vigil replied.

"Excellent."


Ajas observed some of the Tachyon Arrows hit, but didn’t pay much heed. He knew only few would cause any discernible damage and he watched most of the nuclear barrage be intercepted. He scanned more of the battlefield on his command platform observable from his high position on the bridge. As another volley of missiles and Tachyon Arrows were fired, having closed further with the enemy forces the Capitol interception systems continued to shoot down incoming projectiles assisted by the masses of fighters and drone fighters launched by the friendly ships. Soon both sides would be able to engage without range restraint and Ajas chuckled to himself.

“Have they detected the party crashers yet?” He asked sensors.

“Not that we are aware of. They don’t give off much different readings anyway” Ajas then nodded.

“I see. Tell them not to charge themselves until the last minute”

“Understood Sir” Ajas smiled, he had some tricks up his sleeve. Tricks given to him by the good Empress herself from whatever benefactors were supporting their forces, either way he sat back and observed the Axiom forces.

“Prepare for Quantum Normalisation” Someone called over the bridge.

“Well here we go” He smiled.