chapter 134
Usually, the view from the command chair of the space around us was filled with darkness. To see anything, you really needed to zoom in on something specific. This time, things were different as we were surrounded by literally thousands of ships.
Underneath our current location was the battle barge. It had a transparent dome which apparently could be turned into quite an impenetrable barrier. It was something to do with the captain of that ship.
There were still two days until the fight, but we had all gathered around this battle barge as it was going to be the fleet’s command ship and its main protection against the mother ship.
It was a strange ship, quite long, almost 4 kilometres, and plenty wide. If all of it was built for war, it would have been truly dangerous. But it wasn’t just built for war. Apparently, there were quite a few of these models out there flying between popular adventurer hangouts, hosting tournaments to find the best fighters in any of those locations.
If you win big, you get invited to tournaments in a place called the Battle Moon. That’s where these battle barges were constructed, and were apparently, a Duke, an actual real Duke, lives. This one seemed to enjoy watching fights, so he created an entire ecosystem on a habitable gas giant moon where, if you wanted to be a truly famous fighter, you would flock towards.
While the ships could protect themselves well enough against most other ships, they didn’t need truly destructive power, as there were only a few individuals who would be willing to cross this Duke. That being said, he did design these battle barges to be defensive monsters.
This ship alone should be able to survive against the mother ship for a prolonged fight, the only problem being the small fighters the mother ship had, which could number in the millions. Those would be big trouble even for that ship.
There were also the 14 battleships that showed up, and these were built for war. All of them were adventurer-run, and all of them looked scary as hell. Some of their tertiary weapons seemed powerful enough to pierce through our defences, not to speak of their secondary or main weapons.
Even these wouldn’t make short work of the mothership, as that thing was way too big and had armour that was ridiculously thick. Of course, all of our information was based largely on the few dozen times this type of portal has shown up in the last few thousand years of this galaxy’s history.
In the quantum net, there are thousands upon thousands of instances of this type of portal appearing, with a lot of good information available for free. It was hard to judge if the information you saw on the quantum net was correct or not, but no one, and I mean no one, made false claims about black threats.
Black threats are classified as galaxy destroyers. That doesn’t mean that they would blow up a galaxy, but if they grew big enough, they could consume all living things in it. There are plenty of examples of galaxies falling and even some crusades of cleansing those fallen places.
If this space portal had opened up in a more populated area of the galaxy, every nation surrounding this space portal would have sent every ship they had, but right now, all we had were adventurers, as you could count on one hand the number of actual nations in a red zone.
“Captain, we have the final figure,” Bob announced, and shortly after, I received a couple of reports.
“As you can see, we were able to do 12 back and forth supply runs, the cheapest making us 28 million, while the best was 62. Altogether, we made a billion and 14 million. From that, roughly 10 million was spent to actually do the runs.”
That was some good profit, although the main reason we were doing it was so that our AIs could get the practice they needed for this ship to run optimally.
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“We have already spent an additional 20 million on more materials to make more ammunition, and that includes purchasing some. Currently, we are loaded up with nearly 300 tons of ammunition, with another 212 in long-term storage.”
We have come to call long-term storage FH’s inventory spaces. We haven't actually had the free time to start the growing rooms, but we will get to them eventually. This should be plenty of ammunition, but we weren’t going to stop making any even during the fight.
That mother ship was big, and it was alive. Its most common feature is that it also had inventory skills, which made it possible for it to have a lot more fighters than should be possible.
An alert interrupted me. “Captain, it's the battle barge. The meeting has started.”
“Put it on the screen.”
An image appeared of five individuals, two of whom were of the species I didn’t know, but three of them, one being the captain, were obviously elves.
“FH, get me some information now.”
“Yes, captain, a moment. It does seem that this battle barge is run by elves. It seems to be officially a part of the Elven Dominion.”
That captain started his speech, but it was nothing special, just talking about duty and the glorious battle ahead. Eventually, we should reach the strategy part of this meeting.
The Elven Dominion was basically the same as the Dwarven Council. They were a collection of different nations and powers, all joined by a common goal of not getting destroyed by this cruel universe. Those who were a part of it weren’t pirates or other low lives.
That made me wonder if something similar would be possible with humans. Would it be possible to form something like the United Nations sort of thing, although that collapsed almost a century before Earth did? Still, the idea was good. Concentrating power not in the form of governance but cooperation could be something that kept humans alive in this galaxy.
FH fed me more information about this Elven Dominion, as I only read the basics when I learned about the dwarven council. It seems that they have a problem of everyone basically being related at the top, and even here, all three elves were cousins.
That female elf did look gorgeous, although I could easily see the signs of a mind that was maybe a bit crazy. Hopefully, we won't meet.
“Against this enemy, we have to account for two major offensive capabilities they possess.”
A layout was shared to all of us, showing our formation. It was quite standard where the battle barge was in front, but to our surprise, when it got into range, it would turn its belly towards the mother ship.
“This is to give extra space to the frigate-sized ships. During the battle, we will rotate the ship, and all of you will act like tick removals while also providing point defence fire to stop their swarm of fighters from completely surrounding us.”
The simulations showed the battle barge flipping itself, showing its belly and then its top. It was a slow rotation, about once every 20 minutes. It would tank the shots from the mothership and apparently its sub-ships that were the size of frigates, but which also seemed to be spewing out thousands upon thousands of fighters.
In the simulation, there were easily 10 million fighters coming towards our way. Ships that were good at taking out multiple small targets at a distance would focus on the swarm approaching, while the heavy hitters would focus on the mother ship.
Our job, after we’ve launched every missile we have, was to destroy each fighter that was trying to burrow its way into the battle barge and all the rest of the fighters that would be swarming to surround us completely.
Altogether, there were 2,418 ships registered in the fleet, a large majority of them frigates similar to our ship size. The simulations they were showing seemed to indicate that we would quite easily win this fight.
“FH, do those simulations seem altered?”
“Yes, captain, I was about to bring it up. It seems that they want to keep the morale high. I don’t have the exact data, but I believe at least half of the frigates will perish, if not more, along with some of the bigger ships. Even my most pessimistic simulations, however, show that we should be able to win this fight.”
“That makes sense, otherwise none of the big names would have stuck around for this fight,” Dean said.
“Do not be afraid. We knew that this fight wasn't going to be easy. We have practised for this exact scenario for the past month in real-life combat situations. If anyone is going to make it out of there, it’s us.”
It felt necessary to give this peptalk as I felt worry from absolutely everyone. Sometimes the needs of the many needed to be put above oneself, and I felt it be true in this situation. A black threat was nothing to take lightly; that was one thing I was certain of after browsing the quantum net for a while.
“There will be three types of enemy ships. The mothership with its heavy armour, an electrified outer shell to keep away boarding action, its main rail gun, and a few dozen secondaries.
“The frigate-sized ships that would be emerging from these locations of the mother ship. We do not know the exact number, but there should be between 6 to 12 of these. These basically have no weapons, but once again, a decent amount of armour.
“And then finally we have the fighters. Each one is alive, as it is a ship and a living being at the same time. They have a hardened front that provides excellent protection from incoming fire. They use it to pierce through ships or deep into enemy armour, after which lasers will start cutting out pieces of it.”
Then they showed the model of the fighter. It was about two metres long, although it seemed to vary for each individual quite a bit. They were quite sleek otherwise, but surprisingly, they had a really long range, unnaturally so.
Just behind their front was what looked like a mouth with crushing teeth and added cutting lasers that would in time, cut through anything. They would attach themselves to any ship that they couldn’t pierce through and then would start to cut into it. That's why we need to destroy any that attached themselves to the battle barge.
This was most likely going to be a chaotic fight, where each ship would try to survive the incoming horde, while hopefully the big ships will destroy that mother ship.