Nova Wars

For someone, every mission is a suicide mission. - Legion, Mar-gite Xenocide

Task Force Lonely Peach consisted of a single ship.

The Confederate Space Force Naval Vessel Gray Lady, a Super-Colossus hull, a Stellar System Siege Rampart Unit. Designed to operate by itself or in support of an entire Fleet in setting siege to a fortified stellar system. It possessed thousands of Digital Sentiences, millions of troops, hundreds of thousands of crewmembers. It did not follow the current theory of a spherical ship so it is the least amount of hull surface to defend with the maximum interior area. Instead, it was a massive vessel that was tens of kilometers long and kilometers thick.

Captain N'Skrek, who had only been a commander not too long ago, was in charge of the entire ship, all of its crew, to carry out the mission that had been handed off to Task Force Lonely Peach before it had left the front lines of the Mar-gite invasion of the Confederacy.

The mission was simple: Destroy the enemy.

The Gray Lady was in the gulf between the galactic arms, far away from any stellar mass.

That didn't mean there wasn't anything to fight.

The Mar-gite spears were still incoming into the system. Petra and Tetra Constructs measured in the thousands of miles long and thick. Before the Gray Lady had launched her attacks, there had been a series of rings, ten thousand miles in diameter, connected by structural members that looked like thin straps even though they were hundreds of miles thick. The clusters would move through the rings, bathed in energy, before leaving the chute of rings, moving to roughly a hundred thousand kilometers from the structure before vanishing.

Now the rings were broken up and shattered. The Petra and Tetra constructs that had been in the systems had been hammered by guns, broken up and destroyed. The ones coming in were still under attack by the 'Fruit Flies', small craft piloted and crewed by short-life combat clones, which were hammering the Mar-gite constructs were C+ cannons and missile strikes that utilized gravitational singularities to destroy the constructs.

The Gray Lady had shifted position, now near where the Mar-gite constructs were warping into the system.

He currently stood on the Show Bridge of the Gray Lady, which he had slowly come to appreciate more and more as the mission had continued. Normally the Show Bridge was manned by lower ranking command officers and more than a few Captains just had the Show Bridge kept shut down and unmanned.

But there was something ultimately satisfying about commanding from the Show Bridge.

He currently stood in front of the primary holotank, facing the crysteel smartglass windows that showed the outside view. Data windows were open on the smartglass, showing the status of the fleet that the Gray Lady was about to engage.

A fleet of the pumpkin-seed shaped ships had arrived through methods unknown into the combat operations area. They were gray and pebbled, like unpolished, unsmoothed, unbuffed chrome. They had used a type of Akka-Berry drive to fold space and arrive in the system.

More and more were arriving in ranks behind the earliest arrivals, waving into existence, forming arcs of ships, the earliest in the lead, the later appearing behind.

There were eight arcs already with a ninth appearing.

Over by a secondary holotank was drama that Captain N'Skrek was only paying half attention to.

Two of the Immortals of antiquity, well, technically two even though there were four people over there, were by one of the secondary holotanks. While Captain N'Skrek knew that it was easily categorized as physical assault, the way the three males were holding the sole female in order to force her to stare at the holotank.

But they were Immortals and N'Skrek was not about to get involved in a family argument between Immortals.

The male was known as Legion, an Immortal capable of replicating himself over and over until there were millions of him, all able to handle different jobs and perform different actions. There were five versions of him on the Show Bridge, two wearing the uniform of a Confederate Admiral. The other three were wearing standard Confederate adaptive camouflage uniform.

The female human they held was dressed in leather clothing, her black hair braided. She was staring at the holotank, her bronze skinned face pale, her green eyes wide and full of tears. Her name was Sacajawea, an Immortal that N'Skrek could not even find reference too in the historical databases.

"No, no, no, no. Too much death. So much death," she moaned, twisting in Legion's hands.

"Look past the deaths, look at the results," Legion was saying.

N'Skrek had already given the order to open fire, roaring out the order verbally. While he could have whispered it, he had chosen to bellow it out, have it carried by the Gray Lady's speaker system to the entire crew.

He could feel the ghostly plucking in his ichor as the C+ and C++ cannon batteries fired on the newcoming ships. He could see the streaks arcing away from the ship, so many that thick lines of light sped away from the Gray Lady as the missile pod flights were fired. He could hear the loud THUMP of the phased wave plasma motion guns firing.

The world shattered into fragmented pieces of mirror that floated through midair before crumbling into crystals as the superstring compressor cannons fired.

"Multiple direct hits. Bogeys breaking up," Tactical called out.

Icons of the newly arrived ships were being covered with red-X's of destroyed or flashing blue X's of presumed mission kills.

"No. Please. Stop," Sacajawea was moaning out.

"Where, little sister," Legion was saying. "What is our correct course of action?" he asked.

Her back arced and she made garbled noises.

Two computer consoles gave out shrieks and imploded.

Technicians ran up with replacements even as the crew members using the consoles pushed themselves back and called out that their stations were inoperative.

Sacajawea's finger pointed into the holotank at an empty area that was already flashing. Legion had spotted the red-shift of the stars that occurred just prior to the enemy ships arriving.

"Seize and hold," she gurgled. "Take and hold. Hold close."

Legion looked at N'Skrek. "There will be a ship come in with that wave that will only be damaged. Board it and take it."

N'Skrek just nodded.

"Get a Marine boarding party ready," N'Skrek ordered.

"Aye, sir," the combat operations officer replied, turning away from the tank and putting his hand to his temple.

More ships came in.

The Fruit Flies swarmed the new ships. C+ and C++ cannons were already hitting. The light speed lag had finally caught up and on the Show Bridge smartglass windows the data-windows were showing the ships, already shifting from pebbly gray to smooth gray, taking hits before they could even get their battlescreens up. Most exploding in place, others breaking up as the C+ rounds dropped out of hyperspace and into realspace, materializing inside the hull of the ships.

More ships came in. These were not like the pumpkin seed ones. They were seven round orbs, connected by thick struts, each orb connected to the central hexagon by another strut. From the center of the hexagon's top and bottom was a single strut, connecting to another orb, those orbs connected to the seven orbs of the central ring.

"ENGAGE!" Captain N'Skrek ordered.

He could feel the guns firing.

"Keep an eye out for more red-shift," N'Skrek ordered.

The guns were still hammering the enemy ships that had survived the opening salvos. More red-X's were appearing, replacing the blue ones.

The probe was close enough to transmit realtime visuals on the effects of the Gray Lady's guns on the ships. The data was less than a second old, showing the results of the deadly accuracy of the Gray Lady's gunners and targeting systems.,

The hits from the C+ cannons were slamming into the new ships. They were breaking up, shattering into pieces. Struts and globes torn away from the rest of the ship, the hexagons exploding. The ships were pebbly gray but rapidly smoothing and turning shiny.

One took a near-miss from a phased wave plasma motion gun shot, something about the passage of the energy causing the ship to start tumbling. The shine began to vanish and the smoothing began to return to pebbled surface.

Sacajawea's finger stabbed at a single icon, which made a highlighting circle appear around the tumbling ship on the real-time data-window.

"That one!" Legion said.

"Order the Marines to take that one," N'Skrek ordered.

"Redshift detected around us," the tactical officer called out.

"Guns ready! Get the targeting drones past the red-shift," N'Skrek ordered. He looked at Legion. "Get your reinforcements ready."

The Legion in an Admiral's uniform nodded. The other one suddenly dissolved into black mist that flowed across the floor to wind around the other Admiral and vanish.

"NEW CONTACTS! TEN! TWENTY! THIRTY! MANY MANY POINT SOURCES!" tactical called out.

The closer range weapons opened fire on the hundreds of ships that were surrounding the Gray Lady, vomiting out fire and heavy slugs. The missile launchers went to rapid fire, the pods surrounding the Gray Lady belched out their missiles then converted the entire missile launcher into an nCv round.

The ships were two hexagons joined by a thick strut, each hexagon connected to the other by a hexagonal strut, each hexagon connected to seven globes around it by struts connected at the corner of the hexagon. Above and below the hexagon were orbs connected to the hexagon by a single strut and connected to the opposite orb on the same side by another strut.

The hexagonal ships had opened fire as soon as they had materialized, even though they were still pebbly appearing and dull.

The Gray Lady's shields flared as strange beams lashed out from the surrounding ships, trying to rip and tear and the *Gray Lady'*s armor. The beams were centered by light that looked like chrome, with four lines of energy spiraling around the central core beam.

"Shields taking heavy depletion," the combat control officer called out.

"Any time, Mister Legion," Admiral N'Skrek said.

There was a bright white flash. Half of the controls went down. The Show Bridge windows went white even as the blast shutters closed as they lost power. The lights flashed and went down, the red lights coming up. The consoles and the holotanks flickered and went out then returned with red and silver graphics.

"Systems coming back online," DCC called out.

"Now would be..." Captain N'Skrek started out.

"CONTACTS! MANY MANY CONTACTS!" Tactical called out.

The Legion in the Admiral's uniform stepped forward, holding out one hand. A hologram of around the Gray Lady appeared. Dozens, scores of ships appeared. N'Skrek could see that there was everything from light frigates and corvettes all the way up to superdreadnoughts.

"Opening fire on targets. Fruit-Flies away," Admiral Legion stated, his voice cold and remote.

"Direct hits upon our hull. Armor damage only, no penetration," DCC and tactical stated.

"One is disabled," Legion stated. "Launching boarding parties."

N'Skrek just nodded, moving to stare at the hologram that Admiral Legion was projecting from his palm.

Legion opened another window, showing the comparative size of the two disabled enemy ships to the Gray Lady, including the transportation bays. There wasn't anything large enough to hold it.

"We need those ships, Captain," Legion stated. "We want those ships but we can't go over them in the middle of the combat zone."

N'Skrek nodded.

"The question is, how did they know how bad they were getting chewed up? How did they know to send reinforcements but didn't know that their leading waves were already destroyed?" Legion asked.

"Which one?" Legion at the holotank asked. He was no longer holding Sacajawea's face, had moved behind her, and was now rubbing her shoulders gently while the other two were supporting her.

"Both. Both. The way to destruction and devastation is through both," she said, shuddering. "They balance one another. Storm aboard them like waves onto the beach, the prize is aboard both but must be seized. The way forward lies within them."

"Sending boarding parties at this time," Admiral Legion said.

Sacajawea's eyes rolled back and she collapsed in Legion's arms. Without saying anything, the third one picked up her legs and the three Legions carried her to the elevator, arriving right as it powered back up.

"How obvious do you think whatever it is will be?" Captain N'Skrek asked Admiral Legion.

"It will be what it will be," Legion stated.

0-0-0-0-0

The back deck dropped down and Jaskel threw himself into the crater that a weapon had driven into the structure of the alien spaceship. One either side of landed two of those Terrans wearing only a breathing mask and adaptive camouflage uniforms.

"SPREAD OUT! TAG ENEMY REMAINS! ROE IS DON'T SHOOT EACH OTHER!" Gunny Zolpad called out over the commo net.

--lets get it on-- 8814 said.