Warpath (Rise of the Empire Book 4) (23 page)

“Adrian look!”
Iris exclaimed in his head, and he immediately focused on the holo.

“What the hell are they doing?!”
Adrian asked angrily. On the holo he could see that Nelus ships were moving back behind towards their defense stations, and the Sowir were letting them. The Sowir force now no longer tied up was moving on task force two.

Immediately Adrian realized what was going to happen. No matter how advanced his ships were they wouldn’t stand a chance against a force that was ten times greater. Frantically Adrian started issuing orders to his ships. Task force zero and one had already moved away from the task force two as it stayed behind to screen his ships movement, it would take time for his ships to turn back and aid task force two. His ships will arrive after the two Sowir forces meet up and attack the task force.

Chapter Twenty One

Vanguard ship Titan

Five hundred and eighty Sowir ships met up with one thousand and sixteen warships of their main force. Together they focused on the one hundred and forty two ships of the task force two. The amount of missiles flying towards the task force increased as thousands of missiles from the main force were added to those of the smaller force. Now the Sowir fleet focused its particle and laser weapons on the Empire’s battleships, inflicting significant damage.

Upon receiving orders from Warmaster Farkas, Commander Riss started passing them on to his task force. The Guxcacul used his six limbs to manipulate the Titan’s c-board – which was specifically designed for him. Seeing the onslaught headed to the ships under his command Riss moved the Titan in front of the formation, hoping to attract most of the fire if he presented a tempting target, while also unleashing the full extent of his ship’s abilities. Now that the enemy was no longer in between his ships and friendlies they were able to use the Empire’s most primitive and the most effective weapon. All of the battleships opened fire with their rail guns, just like the Titan used its own rail guns to fill the space in front of his task force with a screen of shells, reducing the massive amount of enemy missiles.

But Riss saw that it wasn’t going to be enough. There was simply too many of them, and soon missiles started to pass through, hitting his ships. The Titan shrugged off any hit, both from missiles and other weapons. Its field bathing the ship in a shimmering field, dispersing laser fire, deflecting any particle and missile hits. But his other ships weren’t doing so well. The battleships were taking too much damage. But so were the Sowir, the fire from his ships rail guns reached the enemy, inflicting heavy damage as the ships had little room to maneuver in their current formation. Both the Ras’tar and the Retribution moved out of the formation to support the Titan, each firing their own powerful weapons. Ras’tar flooded the space as it started firing its Enforcer missiles, targeting the Sowir battleships.

The exchange rate was in the Empire’s favor, but the Sowir had enough ships that it didn’t matter. Now that they were holding nothing back, Riss’s task force had destroyed more than two hundred ships, but they had already lost sixty seven battleships, leaving him with only seventy five ships. The rest of the Empire’s fleet was almost here, but Riss feared that even with another two hundred ships they couldn’t win. They needed the Nelus force to keep some of the Sowir force occupied, with their withdrawal the Sowir were free to focus all of their numbers on the Warpath Fleet.

***

Harbinger

Adrian made two mistakes. The first one was the moment that he trusted the Nel from Nelus. He knew what they were like, how their arrogance and stupidity guided their every move. And now they had betrayed him. If he had approached this battle without them from the beginning, his tactics would have been different. He would have stayed on the outskirts of the Sowir maximum range poking at them, wearing them down over time. He could have destroyed that fleet on his own, by denying it its greatest advantage, numbers. But he allowed his fleet to get tangled up with the Sowir because he counted on the Nelus fleet to keep at least a part of their fleet occupied.

The second mistake was him holding his ships back, his fleet could have savaged the smaller Sowir force if had allowed his Vanguard ships to fight at full capacity. Instead, he wanted to hold back until the main force arrived. His plan was to move behind into the protective area of the defenders stations, by holding back he wanted the Sowir to think that they could take both his fleet and the defenses. Then when the Nelus defenders could assist with their stations he would have struck back.

Now the Sowir fleet’s numbers were coming to bear against him in full force, as their fleet slowly tried to surround his ships.

Adrian could turn and run, abandon task force two. But the Sowir ships would then turn back and return to their space. They wouldn’t arrive quickly enough to prevent the Empire’s invasion, but if they met up with other fleets in their territory they will become a big threat. Adrian could see the way to win, even now. But it would come at a great cost in life. His battleships had almost run out of shells, their missile supplies were already gone. He will lose a lot of battleships, perhaps even all of them. There was only one way to minimize the loss of life. And Adrian had promised not to use it.

“You know what I need to do Iris?”
Adrian asked.

“Yes. I don’t like it though.”
She responded.

Adrian opened a channel to Invictus, now he had to tell Isani.

***

Invictus

“You are going to do what?!” Isani yelled at the vid feed, seeing Adrian flinch.

“You must see that it is the only way.”

“You can’t even use it for more than twenty minutes!”

“It will be enough, when I lose consciousness you will take command of the fleet and finish what I started.”

“Adrian...” Isani said.

“I know, but we have no choice, you see the situation yourself.”

Isani didn’t respond, instead he watched as Adrian gave him a smile and then closed the link. Isani closed his eyes and hoped that his friend gets out of this alive.

***

Harbinger

After passing on the command of his ship to his second, Adrian walked into the Watchtower room with Akash and Sora following close behind. He sat in the chair and the two wolions sat in front of it looking at him.

“I’m going to be fine.” He said with a smile, the two just canted their heads in a perfectly synchronized motion. He knew what that meant.

“Yes I know that it is stupid, but I need to do this.” Adrian said, then pressed a button on the chair, he felt the connector at the back of the chair reach to the port on the back of his neck. In the next moment he felt the connection establish and his eyes start to close. The last thing he saw were Akash and Sora watching him.

Again, it seemed as if time has passed when he opened his eyes to look at Iris in her fiery form, but he knew that it was just an instant. The two of them were in space and in front of them were the two battling fleets. Just like last time he knew everything that his ships sensors saw. His two task forces had rejoined task force two and he saw his last orders being implemented, the task force two was pulling behind the newly arrived ships. But he could also see that the Sowir planned to encircle his fleet, spread enough to let all of their ships fire. And he could already feel pain slowly appearing.

“Iris, keep an eye on the Sowir tell me if you see any patterns.” Adrian said. And iris floated over to the Sowir positions and concentrated on them.

Adrian knew that this was all in his head, it was information presented in this way to make it easier for him to handle. He put everything aside and focused on giving orders to his fleet.

While in Watchtower with a thought he could send orders to all of his ships, he could see danger faster than if he was reading the c-board, and that allowed him to act in time to mitigate it. He was able to move his ships much faster than if he was using the board. But he also knew that the Watchtower wasn’t going to be preforming as it was meant to. It was designed to be used with drones that Adrian himself could control via the Watchtower, the battleships were operated by people and that meant that their response time was going to be slower.

Then Adrian saw an opening that he couldn’t have had the chance of exploiting if he was using the c-board. He ordered twenty of his battleships forward, taking them through a wave of Sowir fire, but also placing them perfectly to fire on the group of enemy ships that will move out of the way of the fire from the Tiamat in a few seconds.

Then as the group moved the twenty battleships got a clear line of fire for a span of twenty seconds. And that was enough for the battleships laser and particle cannon to fire and destroy fifteen of their ships. At the same time on the other side of the battle, Adrian moved Valhalla back and above his ships position to cut of the Sowir ships that will soon try to move above his left flank.

The more he used the Watchtower the worse the pain got, at the fifteen minute mark he felt the pain almost reach the point where his people pulled him out last time, but he still kept going.

***

Invictus

Immediately after the fleet started receiving orders from Adrian, Isani had noticed a change. It wasn’t apparent at first. The Empire still lost ships, but suddenly they found themselves perfectly positioned to take advantage of short lulls in weapons fire from the Sowir ships. The Empire and the Sowir now exchanged ships at the average rate of one for fifteen.

Adrian had spread the Vanguard ships across the formation, using them to both shield the battleships and unleash devastating attacks at just precisely the right moments. The Titan, Tiamat, and Retribution followed by twenty battleships were moving at the enemy fleet, closing the range and drawing fire from the Sowir. And every time that the Sowir shifted their fire to the three Vanguard ships, the ships still in the formation punished them for it.

The flow was shifting, the Empire’s ships were switching from defense to offense as the holes started to appear in the Sowir formations.

***

Space

As the two of the Sowir battleship groups placed in the top of their formation focused their fire at the battleships in the middle of the Empire’s formation, the Vanguard ship - Invictus launched its missiles. In a span two minutes it fired its entire load, five thousand missiles burned towards the Sowir ships. By the time that the missiles entered the range of the Sowir defenses the rest of the Empire ships punched another hole in the Sowir formation, effectively cutting off the two Sowir groups from the bulk of their forces. It was perfectly executed, with just the right timing. The missiles moved unopposed towards the two groups, as their now lessened defensive power couldn’t harm the advanced Vanguard missiles. The bottom of the Empire’s formation fired with its laser and particle weapons at the top of the Sowir formation, providing even more cover for the missiles.

The leading wave of the missiles was three thousand Enforcer missiles, with their fields protecting them from most of the defensive fire. Out of the three thousand the Sowir managed to take down two thousand and fifty, but still almost a thousand missiles slammed into three hundred Sowir battleships. The Sowir battleships were extremely well made, and their hull upgraded and reinforced since the last time that the Empire encountered them.

Out of the three hundred, one hundred and six were destroyed immediately, others were damaged whether by missiles or debris. It didn’t matter, because the last two thousand missiles slammed into the remaining ships unopposed. These were the newest of Warpaths missiles, the MAHEM MK 1 missiles. Each of the missiles had a powerful magnetic force generator that powered up just before impact, shaping the liquid metal core of the missile into a spearhead that then punctured through armor, delivering the explosives directly inside the hull.

Two thousand MAHEM missiles struck at the Sowir battleships, penetrating inside their hulls and then detonating the explosives. The explosions of the remaining Sowir battleships made it look as if they were blown up from the inside.

Chapter Twenty Two

Harbinger

The destruction of almost half of the Sowir battleships in a span of minutes gave Adrian the opportunity to press his advantage. He pushed his remaining battleships to take the Sowir weaker ships, their light and heavy cruisers as he kept their remaining three hundred battleships occupied with his Vanguard ships.

The pain in his head was now far worse than anything he had felt the first time, but somehow he managed to function despite it. He felt as if his brain was tearing itself apart, but he couldn’t stop. He applied everything he had to block out the pain.

 The Sowir were just now moving their “dreadnought” class in range. And they still had the numerical advantage. Adrian was down to two hundred ships, while the Sowir had around eight hundred. And he didn’t know what their new class of ships could do. He knew only that they were slow, like the Empire’s dreadnoughts are, which suggested that they were heavily armored.

He sent out orders for the Tiamat, Titan, Retribution, and their small group to move in the line of fire of the newly arrived Sowir ships. He would need to get them close enough to fire their weapon, which meant going through a group of three hundred light and heavy cruisers.

***

Tiamat, Titan, and Retribution and their battleship support entered the close range of the Sowir cruisers. Immediately Retribution opened up with its most powerful kinetic weapons. Slugs of metal exploded out of its rail guns, and turrets. The rail guns fired explosive shells, while the turrets fired grav-shells.