Thirty-two torpedoes slammed into the side of the wounded dreadnought. Each one unleashed a multi gigaton warhead on the wounded ship, and in a massive flash, she disappeared from the screens of every ship in the area. Now cloaked by the nebula was a drifting cloud of twisted metal and debris. Some fragments were as small as a grain of dust, while others were the size of a small building. Most were only about as big as your average car.

Elsewhere in the clouds, other Cylovan ships were meeting similar fates as torpedoes started slamming into their unshielded hulls. With their shields down, they had no defense against the torpedoes. High yield AMF torpedoes slammed one after another into the heavy capital ships that formed the core of the fleet, while cheaper photons tore into the escorts. None of the escorts that were hit held up well to the bombardment. Dozens of hit ships were soon nothing more than drifting debris hidden by the dense clouds of the surrounding nebula. The capital ships held up better, but a few were still reduced to drifting debris. Others were left heavily damaged with huge chunks of the hull torn away from the detonations. Off the three dreadnoughts in the fleet. One was destroyed, a second was left drifting dead in the water, and the third had taken heavy surface damage, but she was still moving.

After that first volley only around two hundred Cylovan ships were still operational, with some of those two hundred having sustained damage. Some ships were no longer operational, but were still intact, and drifting. Some of these merely disabled, and it would not take long for the fleet to get them moving again. The rest while intact had taken too much internal damage, and would require an extensive refit in the yard, and some of those had taken so much internal damage that they were destined for the scrapyard.

The remaining ships scattered and began evasive maneuvers. While releasing their docked fighter complements into the clouds. The collective lacked data on the positions of Refuge warships, and by scattering they could maximize their chances of finding a ship. The maneuvers were designed to make it harder for the Refuge to get a torpedo lock, and improve their odds of dodging a second wave.

A second wave of torpedoes, however, was never the plan. At the same time, the Refuge ship used the clouds to cloak their approach. At the same time, they were deploying their own fighters to deal with the Cylovan fighters. Many of the remaining Cylovan ships were damaged, and thanks to the nebula they were running with shields down. Making them excellent target practice for the Refuge beam weapons. Without shields, the optimized weapons would be able to carve through their armor as if it was little more than wet tissue paper.

It did not take long for the Refuge ships to close the distance, and they opened fire. Firing their beam weapons revealed their position, and the battle was. Each side exchanging heavy fire with the other. However, a clear advantage emerged within seconds of the battle’s start. The Cylovan vessels had been designed with the advantage of powerful energy shields in mind. This meant two major things in regard to the ship itself. Their ships were less armored and were not as reinforced as their Refuge counterparts. The Refuge reliance on heavy armor meant that this battlefield greatly favored their ships. They were able to shrug off most of the heavy Cylovan weapon hits with little damage thanks to their sturdy armor, but the Cylovans were not.

Only their larger ships outfitted with neutronium plating could take any appreciable number of hits. The smaller ones were often reduced to scrap metal in a matter of seconds. The heavier capital ships, on the other hand, were perfectly capable of taking multiple hits.

The Sword shuddered a beam raked across its hull. The heavy beam did little damage to the ship as it failed to penetrate the heavy armor. The Sword rolled out of the fire of a follow-up beam and returned fire from her arrays. Several vibrant violet beams streamed from her aft cannons as she came about. Each one setting the clouds alight in vibrant displays of color. The violet particle streams tore into the Sword’s opponent one after the other. Each one punching holes in the thick plating, but failing to do more than superficial damage to the superstructure beneath. The Cylovan ship was too large to be easily destroyed by the Swords smaller aft guns.

The Cylovan dreadnought opened fire again, as she maneuvered. The ship was trying to avoid a second hit from the Sword’s main cannons. The first one had dealt massive damage to hangers and some of her weapon systems. A heavy beam struck the sword across her dorsal plating but did minimal damage. The dreadnought proved too slow and entered the arc of the Sword’s main cannons.

The order to fire was given, and a massive glow proceeded the beam. The nebula lit up in vibrant swirling colors moment before a massive particle stream was ejected at the speed of light. It crossed the distance in just over a second and connected with the dreadnought. Impacting a section of plating that had been weakened by previous impacts. The beam punched right through the weakened plating without losing any strength and then punched through several damaged sections before tunneling through internal corridors and bulkheads untouched by previous hits. By the time the beam dissipated it punched a massive hole through the ship and halfway to the core.

This time unlike with the last hit, the ship went dark for a moment, as the main power temporarily failed. The Sword took full advantage of it and opened up with a second volley from her secondary guns. A series of high energy heavy phase lance blasts tore into the superstructure. Rupturing plasma conduits and tearing internal plating.

At the same moment, the Sword was firing into the superstructure a pair of destroyers flew out of a dense cluster of cloud and opened firing into her flank. Both were targeting the port hanger of the Sword. Green disrupter beams raked across the hanger’s hull plating for little effect, and the Sword returned fire from her portside arrays.

A series of violet streams ripped into the attacking destroyers. The first beam tore right through the targeted destroyer and out the other side. A follow-up beam ripped into the ship, followed by a third. A forth proved unneeded as the ship detonated in a brilliant fireball. Her sister ship did not fare much better and managed to escape the Sword’s firing arc with heavy damage. She had taken two direct hits, and half a dozen grazing impacts. Her outer hull was a mess, power was out on most decks. Her weapons were down and she was on fire. Leaking fuel had been ignited and was now burning on multiple decks. Worse a number of critical systems were on the verge of failure. Most important of which were her reactor containment systems.

The Sword ignored the escaping destroyer and continued to bombard the breach in the dreadnought’s hull while waiting for her heavy guns to recharge. Only her mechanical crew had just about finished bypassing the critical damage and was bringing the weapons and engines back online.

The dreadnought immediately attempted to gain distance and kicked in some rotation to move the breach out of the arc of the Sword’s guns. The Sword stayed with her maneuvering to keep her angle on the breach. As she did so one of her heavy guns penetrated the plating of the core. Mere seconds later a catastrophic secondary explosion claimed the heavy Cylovan capital ship.

Elsewhere on the field, another explosion marked the destruction of her sister ship. The other dreadnought finally succumbing the bombardment of the four capital ships engaging her. Including three heavy cruisers and a single light cruiser. None of the ships carried the superheavy guns that the Sword did, so they had required a more extensive bombardment to breach the sturdy hull and bring down the large ship.

With the last dreadnought dead, none of the other ships in the Cylovan fleet represented much of a threat. They started to go down with increasing rapidity.

The collective watched the signatures of its fleet go down. It had calculated that three dreadnoughts should have been sufficient to ward off any attacks. It had known that the fleet would not be able to flush species 11257 from the nebula, but that was not its purpose. The fleet was meant to reinforce one of its outposts on the far side of the nebula. It would have preferred taking the direct route, but recent events had led to that conduit being destroyed. The only other way was the slower path through the nebula. It had a few enemies threatening that outpost, and the outpost was in dire need of additional ships and materials to hold.

With the fleet gone, it needed a new plan. Otherwise, it was going to lose its only foothold in that part of the galaxy. A setback it could not really afford, but 11257 was proving to be stronger and more resourceful than it had previously calculated. Evidently they had weapons it had not previously encountered. The nebula, however, was also proving greatly to its detriment. Without shields, its ships were proving to fragile to last long against 11257, while 11257’s reliance on powered armor proved to be beneficial here. Their armor could function unimpeded by the nebula’s disrupting effects on shields.

Not to mention their other advantages. It seemed it would need to develop a better method of detecting 11257’s ships or it would never make progress in the nebula. If it could find some weakness in their technology that would prove helpful as well. Problem was it knew less about their ships than they did about its.

Its focus was suddenly moved from the problem. Something else had drawn its attention. An anomaly on one of its colonies. A major industrial world in grid 4911-13b. The planet LBX-1322 was one of its oldest colonies in the region. Built nearly a thousand years ago as a mining colony. Those minerals are largely gone now, but the colony’s surface is now covered with massive factories. It produces most of the industrial goods it needs to keep its shipyards in the region running, along with weapons and shield generators. However, while important these high tech products weren’t its only major production item. It also manufactured new soldiers for its army. The import of the manufacturing here has led to the planet being heavily fortified. A class nine planetary shield grid was put in place to prevent any bombardment. It would take a dozen dreadnoughts a week of constant bombardment to take down the shield.

In addition to the shield, eighteen orbital Battlestations were placed in orbit. Each Battlestation was larger and better armed than a dreadnought. They had nearly eight times the firepower and more than twice the shield strength. Representing a formidable defense against all but the most determined attacks. Especially given that the stations carried thousands of fighters, and were supported by floating hangers and gun platforms. On the ground were additional hangers and heavy ground batteries. Nearly five million fighters, along with a contingent of sixty ships were assigned to patrol and protect the system. On the ground, it had nearly two million mechanical infantry as part of the permanent planetary garrison. That number often fluctuated as the place was always churning out new soldiers. There were often extra infantry on the planet waiting for transport to off-world sites. Along with the vehicles meant to support these troops. The garrison was well equipped with heavy tanks, artillery, transports, and walkers.

What drew its attention here was an anomaly in the southern hemisphere. Its attention was drawn to one of the smaller continents in a region that was not heavily industrialized and where nature wasn’t quite beat back. The area had never been rich enough to justify mining, and it had found the local terrain and natural creatures a good test of combat units. As such it had been left mostly alone. New units were often tested in the area, and one such test unit had been deployed. Only it had lost contact with that unit. Oddly it was also having difficulty pinpointing any activity in the area. Nor could it find the remnants of a failed unit anywhere. It was as if the unit had merely vanished without a trace. Conducting several more scans it found something odd. According to the new scans, the region had no life of any kind. Nor could it detect any of the heavier minerals it knew were still in the area. Taking a couple more scans, it found that this sensor ‘void’ for lack of a better word was expanding. At the current rate, it would encompass the nearest settlement, A small military base that tested and designed new combat units, in just three days.