Blue Star Enterprises

SYSTEM: DRAKVOLD

DATE: 2403

Grand Command Thesska stepped out of his quarters and strode to the bridge. He inhaled deeply and crooned quietly in satisfaction at the musk of anticipation from his people. The hunt would be upon them soon.

"Report," he ordered as he made his way toward his command seat.

"The remains of Sivarra's human ships are throwing themselves at the human fleet on the order of Sivarra's clones," his subordinate replied quickly.

Thesska hissed quietly as the fool's name was spoken, but at least the idiot had managed to create some Shican clones. It wasn't enough to operate all of the human ships that were purged, but it did give them nearly a hundred more vessels for the cause, even if they were just fodder.

The biggest surprise is that the human clones took commands from Sivarra's new clones. That allowed him to place one of the ships within the human formation and use it to dispense tactics and commands properly through those clones.

It was a roundabout solution to Sivarra's treachery, but it worked out in the end.

"Do the humans suspect we are watching them?" Thesska demanded.

"It does not appear so, Grand Commander. Their retreat seems to have been planned, and there are more ships in this system."

Thesska curled his lip, exposing his fangs. "Good, then they won't expect a thing when we hit them all at once."

It was easy to see why the humans had chosen the system as a fallback point. It was little more than rocks, dust, and gases, leaving only a few safe approaches to jump into the system thanks to the fluctuating gravity and navigation hazards. The Shican Empire had a few proto-systems such as this, where their most secure facilities were located.

He was glad the humans were competent tacticians. His last campaign, over a hundred cycles ago, had been disappointing. Those aliens had been little more than prey animals. How they had managed to survive long enough to discover space travel was beyond him. In the end, they were hunted to extinction, as all prey should be.

"Is there anything else to report?" Thesska questioned his subordinate, trying to keep his bloodlust from slipping into his speech. Thankfully, his cybernetics dampened the impulses.

"The sensor operators think there might be another station in the system other than the one that is orbiting that proto-planet in the cleared section of the system."

"They don't know?" Thesska growled quietly. His subordinate flattened his ears and looked down. Seeing that his displeasure was known, Thesska continued. "What makes them think there is another station?"

"More of the smaller human ships have been joining the fleet, and some of the damaged ships are returning repaired after their signals were lost in the dense debris fields choking the system."

"I want that enemy asset located before we commit the emperor's blessed vessels. Am I clear?"

"Yes, Grand Commander," his subordinate bowed.

Thesska wasn't a coward, but he wasn't a fool either. If humans could hide something large enough to act as a repair or production facility for ships, they could hide other things in the system. It was time to flush out their quarry. "Send an order to the human ships to engage. They are not to withdraw until they either destroy the entire human fleet or locate what they are hiding."

There was no way the human ships would be able to take out the enemy's larger vessels. Thesska had watched the battle recordings, and it would be plain to even a cub fresh from his mother's teat that those ships were far superior to the ones Sivarra had been relying on.

The numbers should have made up for such a deficiency, but they had not. Thesska clenched his cybernetic hand against the arm of his chair in anticipation, wondering how they would fare against the emperor's blessed vessels.

***

LOCATION: NEAR JOTUNHEIM STATION

SYSTEM: DRAKVOLD

DATE: 2403

Vitor's nerves were on edge as he watched yet another group of debris and small rocks pushed away from the Leviathan's position by its static deflector field.

The power draw on that system was higher than normal, thanks to parking it in a dense section of asteroids and gases, but they needed to keep the facility hidden from outside forces as long as possible, and they couldn't do it the normal way using the stealth armor because there was too much light scattered randomly by the gas and ice in the system.

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That was the only downside of Drakvold. Otherwise, it made a perfect staging ground and funnel, being the only system within range to jump to from the Asgardian border with Xin. At least that was the case for human ships. Vitor had no idea what capabilities the Shican vessels had in terms of jump range or if they had concerns jumping through the void.

That last one wasn't true. It was clear that the Shican had been jumping outside of normal system boundaries, because none of the satellites had picked up their approach. If he hadn't ordered one of the Swordfish stealth corvettes back to Xin Prime to see what the Shican were up to, they might not have been aware that the Shican had even left that system.

The question was, where were they?

Vitor's musings were interrupted by a beep. Another Stingray was completed and heading toward the fleet. Alex had improved his printers yet again, stacking two together and making them print from the center out, doubling the print speed. Now, a full Stingray could be finished in under three days thanks to that and the easy access to minerals.

It was yet another ridiculous improvement by Alex, but Vitor wasn't about to complain about it or the fact that the enemy had seen fit to give them two weeks to enact repairs.

The fleet knew that there were enemy scouts looking for the best route of approach. The system had stealth satellites. The ships had been detected, but responding to the threat was impossible with their current restrictions. The satellites were limited to a tight-beam laser link, which was hit or miss thanks to the same debris that hid him and helped protect the fleet's flank.

Vitor received another ping, this time from Grimnir's Fang. The enemy had finally jumped in. It was time to implement Project Icarus.

"Time to pack up," he told the onboard computer, which acknowledged the command as it began retracting the service arms and moving the manufacturing back into storage. Vitor turned to his sensor operator. "Are the bots in position?"

"Yes, sir."

The Leviathan was not a warship, but Alexander had given it a few advantages. One of those was the stealth armor, and the other was the laser pods. Pods that could be printed ten at a time and took less than an hour to complete. The pods could be assigned to any of the capital ships with a computer core for additional offensive punch. Over a hundred were, but it was the control ships hiding within the debris field that were really going to give the enemy a fit.

The thing was, Vitor's Leviathan wasn't the only one in the system. Alexander had sent two more, and they had been seeding control ships and laser pods throughout Drakvold for over a month. The system now had nearly half as many laser pods near the lone station as Eden's End did.

As soon as the enemy engaged, those control ships would launch their assault.

Vitor really wished he could be at the forefront of the conflict, but his purpose was to draw in the Shican by acting as the standalone signal once they activated their comm nodes. It was time to use the enemy's detection ability against them. It was risky considering he wasn't in a warship, but he wasn't alone.

It was clear when the two fleets engaged, as the comm node lit up with traffic from the fleet. His skeleton crew monitored the information and relayed updates, while they remained within the cover of their cloud.

Seeing the battle unfold in real time gave Vitor some peace of mind. The Xin ships were falling by the dozen, but they were still fighting forward instead of jumping like they had been before.

Char had been right. The enemy was done trying to whittle them down; they wanted blood.

"Where are you?" he asked under his breath, scanning the tactical display for the Shican ships.

They had to know he was here by now. His ship was acting as the bridge for most local comms, but the enemy hadn't taken the bait yet.

He flashed a quick message to Char to go to phase two.

The control ships jumped in behind the enemy fleet and deployed their laser pods, while other pods started firing from within the nearby asteroid fields.

With the upgraded pods, only ten needed to work in tandem to flay open the Xin vessels.

"Contacts!" the sensor operator yelled.

The space near Vitor's Leviathan was filled with enemy contacts, but they weren't Shican vessels; they were more Xin ships, and they began firing almost immediately.

Vitor cursed, but quickly took stock of the situation. He had been expecting the twenty-five Shican ships, not nearly a hundred human ones. The enemy must have suspected a trap and sent in more of their fodder to trigger it.

It worked, too, because the enemy ships were flooding their gravity plating with additional power to destabilize any jumps, not that it would take much to lock down the small area of stable jump space Vitor had been hiding in.

"Prioritize targets, and fire!" he ordered right before the ship rocked as enemy projectile rounds slammed against the durable stealth armor.

The Leviathan's turret returned fire, the FE Cannon easily punching through the Xin ships as the nearly two thousand laser pods emerged from the field of rocks surrounding them and opened fire on the enemy fleet.

Being able to dedicate nearly twenty lasers to each target quickly cut down the enemy numbers from nearly one hundred, consisting of a mix of destroyers and corvettes, to just a dozen destroyers. Thankfully, the Shican had not allowed their human clones to make anything larger than a destroyer.

The only issue was that the laser pods were now spent and needed time to recharge, while the enemy missiles were closing fast.

The PDLs were picking them off, but there were simply too many to get them all.

"Brace!" he shouted as the ship rocked violently, as the first of the missiles struck one of the gantry arms.

Honestly, the Leviathan may just be the safest ship in the fleet thanks to its odd construction. The four arms folded out like a flower when in use, but when folded up, they acted as a secondary set of armor around the outside and front of the ship.

Only the area where the lone turret and thrusters were housed had less armor, but it was also toward the rear of the vessel, and the enemy was mainly focused on their front, thanks to Vitor's positioning within the dust cloud.

More missiles impacted the ship, rattling the crew, but failing to punch through the armor. Each strike was slowly deforming the gantry arms, however, and soon one of the missiles would slip through to strike the inner armor. Despite that, Vitor ordered the weapons to continue firing on the enemy ships because he knew that once they were down, the gravitational disturbance would go away, and they could jump to safety. He just hoped he had enough time to make that happen before the true threat appeared.