chapter 138
“Godspeed,” the Baron said.
Immediately afterwards, even before the wave of enemy fighters reached past the edge of the battle barge, nearly a dozen ships accelerated as fast as they could at an angle towards the mother ship.
The fighters, who were already confused by the line of ships stretching behind the battle barge, were now even more confused. Their mothership’s orders most likely started to conflict with their own instincts.
Most seemed to win that struggle, keeping focused on the main target, but still tens of thousands of fighters, instead of trying to go for the battle barge, started to follow those bait ships.
The wave of fighters didn’t stop; their inertia was too high. They flowed like water around the battle barge, but instead of converging inwards to attack the other side, they found a cone of ships extending quite far away.
It must have been a magnificent sight to an outside observer, as each row of ships opened up as soon as the fighters were in an optimal position to be fired upon. Being part of the cone and watching it from this side was more scary than magnificent.
The AIs on the ships were communicating constantly, and I tried to monitor it as best as I could to understand our enemy. Quickly, it became clear that shooting at the nose of the fighters was a waste of ammo, as quite a lot was needed to break through it.
Fortunately, the way these fighters were currently positioned, their weakest area—their mouth—was exposed. Because of this understanding, every couple of shots disabled one of the fighters, making them lose their power and start to drift aimlessly.
Because they were so tightly packed, the other fighters that came afterwards usually ripped through their own fallen brethren. That caused nearly instant chaos, making the choice of what to do even more difficult for the fighters.
Some tried to angle down to destroy the ships making up the cone, but inertia was quite a bitch, making their attempts at the piercing attack quite shallow, allowing most shields or armour to bounce them off.
Later down the line, those attacks became more common and more deadly, but the cone was shaped this way for a reason. It didn’t allow the fighters to get enough space to start manoeuvring properly, and they couldn’t slow down too much as there was a flood that came afterwards, constantly pushing them forward.
Because of this, the wave of fighters continued to flow down the cone, with constant anti-fighter fire killing tens of thousands. Only about ten seconds had passed from the moment our cone started to fire, yet already we had successfully killed enough to start causing real problems for the fighters that followed, as the space was now so filled with debris.
It was hard to get accurate data on the movements of the swarm of fighters, but it seemed like they were starting to circle around after they reached the end of the cone.
Fortunately, there were still fighters coming past the battle barge, which meant that they now themselves protected our ships, denying the attack of the fighters who were turning around after reaching the end of the cone.
Currently, all the battleships and battlecruisers were also a part of the cone, and obviously, the fighters deemed those the biggest threat, as they seemed to focus mostly on trying to attack those. That was good news for the rest of us.
That, however, didn’t mean that we hadn’t already lost some. A couple of ships were already reporting significant enough damage to be swapped out with the fresh ships that were still inside the cone and completely protected.
Yet I could already see the problem; there were still too many fighters alive. There was going to be a lot of losses, and the worst thing was that all the battleships were still hiding behind the battle barge and not focusing on destroying that mothership, because they couldn’t, as all of them had failed to disable that main railgun of theirs.
“FH, start pulling on us. Get this ship running beyond optimal.”
“Understood, Captain,” and a moment later, I could feel the pull that FH’s innate ability always exerted.
I do not know how it was possible, but soon after, we already saw the hit percentage rise for each shot, which was crazy because it was at 78%, which for point defence was ridiculous.
It was still hard to get accurate data on the movements of the fighters as they surrounded us so much, and there was so much debris around that sensors had a hard time understanding what was going on.
An alert from one of the analyst AIs said that the wave should end any moment now, and that there were 12 seconds until the next railgun shot.
“Everyone, focus up. Let’s try to take out that railgun so we would have a chance at victory.”
Almost at the same time, all our point-defence turrets stopped firing, as there were no longer any targets to fire at. Our ship broke formation, rising above the battle barge just a bit.
The railgun had been powered up, ready to fire. The hundreds of AIs worked together to not just figure out the correct firing solution but to gather as much data as possible about the swarm and send it to the fleet, as we were currently above the debris that was causing so much havoc on the fleet’s ability to get accurate data.
The server room’s temperature spiked a couple of degrees as basically every processing node was overclocked. The ship’s position was changed minutely, the railgun cover opened so the railgun could aim itself as well.
Without the AIs, I could not imagine anyone being able to hit anything in space from such a distance. It would take a bit over a second for our shot to hit the mothership, so we needed to painstakingly wait.
Never had time seemed so long, each second stretching into an eternity. I was focused on the AI that was going to shoot our main railgun.
His mind was so focused on his task that he didn’t even notice I was watching. He seemed to be surrounded by nervous but focused energy, and I could imagine that if he had a body, his leg would be bouncing up and down. Until finally he saw the perfect moment and triggered the firing mechanism.
The special projectile at first barely moved, but with each moment, acceleration caused it to speed up exponentially. The power expended was tremendous, causing a lot of heat, resulting in a decent kickback that the ship’s structure absorbed, and for the projectile to leave the barrel at almost 0.4% of the speed of light.
Immediately afterwards, our ship started to rejoin the cone. The mothership opened up its railgun cover and started to fire. We saw that we hit, but unfortunately, we were off only by a couple of centimetres, causing the shot to bounce off and not do any damage at all.
We managed to get behind the shadow of the battle barge before the mothership’s railgun shot hit them.
“Prepare for another shot!”
Immediately, the special ammunition was loaded again, but that wasn’t our current problem. The swarm was. It now had more than a dozen points that were trying to pierce the cone.
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Their targets were still big ships, but I believed they would learn soon enough to start targeting small ships. We watched as these points of the swarm were broken apart by heavy concentrated fire, which made them turn from their original target, seeking a new one.
Correctly, we were free of any fighters, which was good news, as it meant we still had a few tries to disable that railgun.
Once again, we popped up, which was now a lot scarier because the swarm would obviously notice us. Still, we took aim and fired once again, immediately afterwards rejoining the cone as soon as possible.
Our shot hit this time and hit inside the opening. The projectile seemed to burst open, with small balls bouncing between the two walls, heading toward the railgun.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem that we disabled it, as a railgun shot passed above us. It only missed by a couple of metres, but the mothership obviously took notice of us. That was the least of our problems, as we had been targeted by one of the points of the swarm.
Well before the effective range of our point defence, our larger turrets opened up, trying to kill off enough of the fighters at the front to force them to choose another target.
It was a nerve-wracking ten seconds, but enough of the front fighters were killed off that they stopped coming towards us. This was happening constantly with other ships as well, causing the fighters to swarm in tight lines that were constantly multiplying.
It was like we were surrounded by moving lines of rope that were trying to pierce us, but we had managed to defend ourselves up to this point.
Time was merciless. Faster than I wanted to, we were once again rising above others. We took aim but surprisingly needed to wait longer than expected. It seemed that the mothership wasn’t stupid and knew what we were trying to do, as it waited longer to shoot than it usually did.
Fortunately, our sensor and analyst AIs were good enough to pick that up, so we continued to wait for the perfect time to fire. It was quite scary to realise that the mothership was directly focusing on us.
What was even worse was that we were once again targeted by one of the points of the swarm, but we couldn’t fire any other weapons right now, as that would add another layer of complexity to the already complex shot we were trying to pull off.
This time, we also hit our target, immediately starting to get behind the battle barge to protect us from return fire.
“Damn it,” I said out loud as it seemed like our shot once again had no effect, but the return fire never came. A moment later, we saw secondary explosions down the spine of the mother ship.
“Their main railgun is disabled! All attack groups, peel off and focus fire on the mothership!” The Baron’s commanding voice came through the fleet comms.
This time, we didn’t have to fire a single shot for the fighters to stop focusing on us, as a lot of the other ships and battlecruisers broke off from the cone. The big ships were now in a lot less danger from the mothership and could focus on killing it.
While the destruction of the mothership wouldn’t disable the fighters, it would most certainly make them even worse at decision-making, which would help us a lot.
Many of the points of the swarm started to chase the battleships, giving us enough time for ships inside the cone to reinforce the now-empty spots.
There were still millions of fighters, but now we also had to deal with the battle barge needing to turn over.
It was a nerve-wracking time, as we had to divert multiple points of the swarm targeting us during this time, tightening the cone a lot because the mothership’s secondary railguns would still be incredibly dangerous to us. And of course, whenever one of the swarm ropes was close enough, our point defence constantly fired upon them.
Our reloading drones were doing the best they could, constantly ferrying ammunition from storage into the loading belt. There were times when we came close to running out, as so many turrets needed to fire at the same time, and other times we barely had to fire at all, giving us time to properly reload everything.
As soon as the battle barge was turned enough, the turrets that were on the belly side of our ship finally got to do some work as they started to clear off those fighters that had attached themselves to the barge, trying to cut themselves inside.
They had made quite a lot of progress, but the combined firepower managed to finish them off quickly enough. This also gave us some reprieve as the swarm focused back on the battle barge.
Yet all of these successes did not last.
At the start of the swarm fight, every ship was able to fire at their maximum fire rate, but now that protective layer had holes in it, as many ships had already been disabled enough to take shelter inside the cone, with their replacements taking longer to get to proper positions.
There was also the problem of some ships starting to run out of ammunition. The fighting continued to drag on for minutes and minutes until some ships announced that they were fully out of ammunition and started to retreat.
They accelerated as fast as possible towards the portal, but it seemed that those idiots had not understood what would happen, even if, at the beginning of the swarm fight, they saw what would happen if ships tried to get away from the fighters.
Quickly I went through the report and saw that yes, every ship that had peeled off at the start had been chased down and killed by the swarm. Those fighters were still making their way back to us. They had managed to reduce the number of fighters around us at the beginning by nearly 900,000. Which most definitely helped us survive.
These ships that tried to retreat weren’t as fast as them, but still tens of thousands chased them, giving us some reprieve. It didn’t help the morale of our fleet as panicked voices crowded the fleet communications, which were soon silenced by the fighters.
The retreat unfortunately, also gave a lot of the fighters enough space to head back towards the cone with speed. Their cowardly choice would cause the deaths of thousands.
Those points of the swarm that returned were flying a lot faster, which caused a lot more fire to bounce off their hardened fronts. There were also no longer larger ships that they could target inside the cone.
One by one, eight points of the swarm pierced the cone, getting inside it. The damaged ships inside were easy targets.
What followed was chaos as panic erupted. We continued to fire, killing as many fighters as possible, but the point of the cone started to break apart as some tried to escape while others tried to get away from ships that were experiencing secondary explosions.
In a couple of minutes, the entirety of the cone was gone, and nearly 200 ships destroyed. The swarm got smaller as many started to chase the escaping ships, but still there were almost a million around the battle barge, and now almost every ship was on its own.
The next moment, things got even worse, as a lot of the frigates weren’t behind the battle barge’s shadow. While the mothership had taken a lot of damage, it still had most of its secondary railguns operational, and they now opened fire on the frigates themselves, trying to free up more of its swarm to attack the battleships.
A couple of the battlecruisers had been destroyed thanks to the swarm, and a few of the battleships were in bad shape, so that decision made a lot of sense.
“Keep our position,” I ordered, as we still had a job to do to keep the battle barge from being breached.
It didn’t take too long for some of the fighters to finally get past our defensive fire. That didn’t mean that they reached our armour to start cutting through it. Two layers of shields were good enough to protect against the ramming of fighters, as their overall speed was now quite low.
For the next nearly eight minutes, we had no contact with the outside world as we were surrounded by fighters. They were like a school of fish surrounding us fully. Each one of our turrets fired constantly, even the bigger ones, trying to keep the swarm off us.
The constant fire was quite damaging to our equipment. Thanks to Lola’s affinity, our damage mitigation was barely keeping up, but they were able to keep our turrets firing.
Every so often, we needed to expel heated gas to handle the overheating problem we were currently experiencing. Soon, it became quite commonplace for a turret to aim at our own ship, as some of the fighters landed on the shield itself, trying to cut through it.
Then finally the swarm started to have holes in it, so we could start getting data on what was going on. The mothership was still alive, although quite damaged, with secondary explosions happening inside it.
One of the battleships had fallen as a lot of the fighters converged on it that had chased the bait ships at the start. The battle barge had once again turned around, having tens of thousands of fighters stuck to it like ticks once again.
“Start clearing the battle barge when you have clear shots.”
The ship’s AIs followed orders, but we still had a lot of fighters to deal with that were trying to kill us. It seemed that the other frigates had formed defensive formations, trying to survive in small, tight groups. This helped reduce the destruction that had happened.
Nearly half of the frigates in the fleet were disabled or destroyed. On the flip side, only about 200,000 to 300,000 fighters were still active. Our distance from the mothership was now about 1000 kilometres, so we had quite a long trail of debris behind us, but most of the debris floated with us as it had relatively the same velocity.
We had used up 94% of our entire ammunition supply, and with every minute passing, that percentage grew constantly. It didn’t take too long for us to only have our laser turrets firing, and for me to report that we were out of ammunition.
We had been one of the last ships to actually have projectile ammunition left, but now only laser fire remained for all but our biggest cannons. Fortunately, the swarm was now depleted enough, with the swarm points easily disrupted by our larger cannons.
The surviving frigates closed in on each other so that the laser weaponry could effectively destroy any fighters that managed to attach themselves to our ships.
It was weird to feel good about another ship firing at us, but it was necessary; otherwise, those fighters would cut through our armour in a few minutes.
It was a brutal battle, and many frigates still fell. The heaviest fighting was now near the battleships, which still had decently sized swarms around them.
Then we got a message that the battle barge was turning, but this time it was not presenting its top or belly to the mothership, but its front. Its railguns had plenty of time to cool down and now properly offloading on the mothership.
The fighting was coming to an end. I was glad for it because I was completely exhausted. Some of the fighters that we killed were close enough to trigger my innate ability, which I couldn’t mitigate much because everything was constantly recorded. Being out of mana didn’t feel pleasant at all.
Most of the mothership’s offensive capabilities were done for, and a couple of the battlecruisers that were exceedingly good at point defence hunted down the remaining fighters.
We were licking our wounds, as we had taken quite a bit of damage, mostly not from the fighters, but from the overuse of our own equipment.
A lot of the killed fighters had now disappeared because of how portals worked, so the debris field that used to be incredibly thick was now barely there. Still, quite a lot of parts were left behind as drops.
“FH, when it’s time for a clean-up, get me enough of the forbidden parts to make a whole fighter.”
“Captain?”
“I want to know what powers these things. Don’t worry, we will be destroying every speck of it afterwards and only keeping the allowed loot.”
That seemed to relax FH’s worries. I could understand why she would be worried, as no one knew exactly how these ships made new ones of themselves, and possibly releasing a black threat upon this galaxy would be quite disastrous.
Then it finally happened. More and more explosions happened inside the mother ship, finally breaking it apart and killing it.
“We have captured a couple of dozen fighters, so we have all the time we need to loot this portal. Remember that everything will be inspected before you leave this portal, and anyone found with contraband loot will be dealt with harshly.”
That was the message the Baron sent, and soon we started to receive orders and questions about the cleanup capabilities of each ship.
The end result of the battle was that we won, but lost two battleships, which was a heavy blow no one expected. Nearly forty battlecruisers, which was once again a bit of a surprise. But as I expected, over half of the frigates had been destroyed.
While this battle was a victory, and an important one for the galaxy, the losses suffered here were quite great. But we had survived, and it was time to start looting.
“Remember everyone, we have our special rooms, so let’s be quite diligent in our looting.”
My words brought smiles to everyone’s faces. I had yet to meet someone who wouldn’t be excited about loot.