The Compact came in, and then found out that the Ruk Very Large Array was precisely twice as dense as normal. All the components that could be taken off the Grimshield had been added in, and were running off the Unforgotten’s systems.

The external systems were finally picked off by the Compact, but they’d done the job they were meant to, inflicting heavy damage early on... and the Ruk were paying, so it was throwing Ruk money at a problem and getting results, as it turned out. The results indicated it was money well-spent, too.

Encircled, the siege and bombardment began, but now there were some very unexpected adjustments that had to be made to the Compact’s long-range harassment.

The first was the fact the Citadel was spinning around, and actually shifting axis, orientation, and orbit in an irregular fashion. Given how obdurate the Citadel was, any impacts that weren’t on gun positions were basically just wasted shots, and this amount of motion was unprecedented by them.

The second was that they were spinning around the silent Grimshield, which naturally started to inherit some incoming fire of its own... and when it did, it woke up.

The big guns of the Citadel unrolled and came to life, and began to return everything being landed on it. Its shields were almost non-existent, and the incoming fire became almost a torrent. Ignoring it all, more and more guns on the Grimshield opened up and shot back with tireless rage at its attackers, even as it sat in place and took everything they sent at it.

Third was the human ships working with the Unforgotten.

Against the massive bulk of the Citadel, the Ruk and human fleet were just barracudas around a whale, but that was all that was required.

They spun around the Citadel in arcs and circles, slipping back and forth, changing opponents, dipping into and out of the Citadels shields at key moments, their combined fire converging and splitting at odd moments.

Reconfiguring shots to extreme long-range was taking place on all the vessels, because within the range of the main guns of the Citadel, they certainly didn’t have to worry about close-range engagements, and the Compact began to learn about the differences in human and Ruk fighting styles, and how they complemented one another.

The Citadel mounted far heavier guns than any of the human vessels, or any of the Compact vessels. However, they had performed complete overhauls and reconfigurations on the guns, an extremely complex process given their power, adjusting a good portion of them for extreme long range and cutting into their close-range destructive power.

That was fine, because the Compact ships started to die.

When the horror wave came exploding through, the Mi-Go and N’grth could even hear the low bass of the chant, something whispered in the Warp they had caught from afar... and which had spread throughout the galaxy among the Goblins...

Trembel, oh ohhh oh, Trembel, vir kommen...

The constant flashing and sustained fire of the human vessels meant the Compact’s shields couldn’t build up the power necessary to defeat the thundering Ruk cannons when they came in with their overwhelming punch. Sometimes, just the timing of breacher shells flaring their shields synched with the Ruk heavy guns was enough to take out a ship.

It took a while before the Compact realized that the Ruk and Human fleet had both integrated themselves into the heavy gravity field of the Citadel, and were basically being orbited about it like its own moons, turning entire ships into ready-made orbiting weapon platforms, their maneuvering jets and rockets firing off in conjunction to make erratic changes and adjustments to their wheeling orbits, skimming past one another.

It made it impossible for the Compact to do anything resembling sustained fire on any one ship, as they kept dipping into and out of the Citadel’s shields, or falling behind its mass shadow. Their systems were not designed to coordinate fire at that level, and those that started to do so found themselves the abrupt targets of that extreme ranged fire, nexus ships blown out of existence with uncanny expertise.

They had never seen the Ruk perform so well in an encirclement, using tactics like these, nor humans ally so effectively with them. Even the generous margin of error they came in with for losses was shrinking rapidly at this unexpected convergence of effectiveness.

However, they did notice that the fire coming from the wide-open Grimshield was considerably less effective, as if it were firing with machine intelligences, and it was basically being left to guard a flank and ignored overall.

Seizing a Citadel would be quite a prize. The boarding vessels swarmed to the attack, staying out of the arc of fire of the Unforgotten and its endlessly sniping array of ships as they swooped into the attack, and disgorged thousands of cyber-enhanced bioforms to stream into those open mouths... and the Unforgotten didn’t even fire in support of its brother Citadel, to the absolute confusion of the waiting Compact.

Pulses of heavy gravity and psychic screams raged through the Grimshield, and the invading troops were literally crushed to pulp in seconds. That it would have killed any Ruk still in the Mount would have been a bonus, but there were none.

The internal self-defense guns rolled out with no Ruk at the controls, and methodically blew the landing vessels and their jellied crews to flaming ruin. The Compact could only watch.

About then, they realized that neither ship was actively using its Dark Matter Core. As a good portion of their strategy had revolved around forcing the Ruk to do so and initiating a Warp Event to destroy them from within, consternation rippled through their psychic communications as their tactics and strategy was thrown out the window by this very unexpected development. The Unforgotten couldn’t be engaging in that level of firepower without a primary power source supplying them, but there were no Dark Matter fluctuations in the surrounding mass field at all.

Some of the Compact wondered if they were fighting the Ruk at all, but their psychic presence in that chant coming through the horror waves was indelible and unmistakable. This... was simply beyond their experience...

--------

-They would be miffed if they knew we could listen in on their coms,- I /noted to nobody.

King Rargyle sort of /smiled, but Ruk don’t do cheerful well. Dour is kind of their default mindset. -You seem to have acquired a very broad array of technology, Engineer Rantha,- the King /observed shrewdly.

-Generous terms of agreement with high-minded and open-hearted trading partners,- I /replied loftily, and Cantor snickered. The Ruk all grunted grimly, loving the irony, clearly working out the alternate terms for decapitations and eviscerations.

We weren’t trying to break their communications, just getting the tenor and feel of them, which was perfectly possible. Yeah, getting ahead of their tactical moves would have been nice, but we had the space out there threaded with so many nanites interwoven into a sensory web that we had real-time coordinates of every ship within a million miles with a degree of accuracy more than high enough to shoot them... and the main guns of a Citadel couldn’t quite compare to the long guns of a Threshold station, but only because a Threshold Station was even bigger. Pound for pound, the Ruk guns were indeed better, but they weren’t bothering to show their extreme long range yet, contenting themselves with coup de grace shots, one after another, relentless culling of the thousands of light to medium capital vessels encircling themselves.

The constantly spinning starfield was a very different firing sensation than they were used to, but as my skinny alien butt had prodded them, they were the best cannon crews in the galaxy. They should be taking advantage of it! Spinning made the citadel more defensive, so them being able to do so actually contributed to the defense, as well as the offense of the situation.

Their targets were already painted and ready before they entered the arcs of fire, the head gunners all Marked and everything being fed into their systems. Armored hands worked the levers and gears to move the great guns, knowing that the living element was needed to stave off Axiom and apply the skill and power of living souls to their fight.

Timed volleys lanced out between the interwoven rings of orbiting ships, who were alternately an extra layer of defense and benefited from that defense. The amount of damage the Citadel was taking was nominal, and with double-sized emergency crews on the job, repairs and reinforcements were happening with extreme speed.

It had been a long time since the Ruk had been able to enjoy being encircled and under siege. The toll they were taking on the Compact was not something they had seen for thousands of years.

We had a few ships knocked out, but we had this massive carrier sitting here who could scoop up every single one of them and tuck them away, minimizing casualties. Indeed, our entire fleet could be fit into the Citadel’s hangars if need be, a tribute to just how big the damn things were.

In reality, the best tactic the Compact could have taken right now was to swarm in with everything. Half the Citadel’s guns were configured for long range, and useless in a short-range mauling contest, taking hours to be reset and reconfigured. However, none of them wanted to run at all the ships spinning around it with mixed-range weaponry, and dare the finishing salvoes of the Ruk!

-Engineer, the first gravity lane is almost clear,- King Engrad /reported. He was on the Cruiser Long Hand, out here with the spinning fleet. The subtle duty of his ships was to slowly open up a path through to the mass-free approach lane of Compact Fleet Two, and so the ships in that vector had experienced extreme amounts of bad luck on their rotations.

-Preparing for sub-light Harmonic Jump! Ready fleet break!- Some of the best pilots and navigators in the galaxy were spinning through the calculations and vectors, orbits swirling and breaking as the fusillade of fire swept this way and that, and the smart Compact ships got out of the way...

“Break!” Engrad ordered, and the orbiting ships were flung apart on gravity waves, tumbling and lining up, roaring in full burn forwards as the Grimshield fleet spun with uncanny precision into the suddenly opening doors of the hangars. In less than thirty seconds, they all swept inside, even as the Corunsun Fleet flashed out into the tunnel in the Compact Fleet.

Full broadsides were all ready, and expended with all due haste as dozens of the Unforgotten’s guns fired in support, other stations laying off to enable them to take maximum energy draw. The empty corridor expanded vigorously as the pounded-on ships inherited starfire from the Citadel, and then we were into the mass-free corridor, and Jamming was open.

We punched in the Harmonic Drive, and blew out to almost light speed in seconds. Five seconds later, as their sensors were lagging and trying to keep track of us, the Tachyon Bubbles came out, time dilation inverted into real-space speed, and our velocity turned into parsecs per hour.

What was a multi-million-mile-wide battlefield at that speed? We might as well have been teleporting as we curved around the battlefield and came hammering in on the flank of Fleet One, which had enjoyed our attentions before.

The Compact had quickly and carefully calculated some preferred arcs of the Unforgotten, and so their ships had naturally crowded into those positions where the amount of incoming fire was roughly halved.

It lined them up nicely as we fully cooled and recharged all guns, and then came up right on the flanks of the control motherships in the rear of the fleet.

They were not happy to see us coming out of Jamming behind their most important assets. Still, their mass shadow was big enough to give them some warning, and our opening barrage of missile fire wasn’t enough to do significant damage.

But they had never seen the full reach of a Citadel’s main guns when calibrated for extreme long range, and suddenly all their shields were active in the wrong direction.

King Rargyle almost grinned. “FIRE!” he pounded his hammer, and there was thunder in the stars.