Demispace: TUSS Vigil

Due to the nature of faster than light travel, space combat always favored the defender. Exiting the partially formed dimension of demispace caused a massive surge of tachyon radiation as particles moving faster than light were annihilated upon their entrance into realspace, this effect was something that was unique to breaches in the dimensional plane and it served as a dead giveaway that someone had just arrived.

Thus, the defenders had the twin advantages of knowing where the attacker was and how many of them there were, while the attacks had neither of these. Additionally, the electrostatic field generators that humanity used for shielding had a unique interaction with the ravening energies of demispace, the shields converting faster than light protomater of demispace into raw energy upon impact with the barriers.

Thus during transition, ships had to keep shields powered down, and upon entry into a new system they had to spend precious time bringing the generators back online, or be surrounded a constant halo of exponentially scaling atomic explosions during the transition through demispace.

None of this mattered to Commodore Samada, because Humanity had figured out at least a partial solution to the issue of defenders advantage. Armor.

According to her approximate appearance the Vigil might have grossed a few hundred thousand tons at most, but human automation had replaced most regions used for living space, leaving her with what would have appeared to be a skeleton crew for a craft of her size a few hundred years ago. The designers had opted to use their new spare space, not to shrink they ship for more efficiency, but to slap plate after plate of additional armor onto her hull. Thus instead of weighing four hundred thousand tons, a respectable mass for a five hundred meter long cruiser such as herself, she weighed almost seven hundred thousand. Such heavy armor could withstand critical minutes of punishing main gun fire from defending enemy ships, giving her time to find and engage them while bringing her shielding online. It was this emphasis on his own ships sheer survivability and firepower that Commodore Samada was banking on.

Of course all this armor came with its own set of drawbacks, acceleration and maneuverability had to be sacrificed for the additional defenses, but these were secondary concerns to the commodore. He had met many pirates who could outrun his ships, he didn't mind, he had yet to meet one that could outrun a main gun round from one of the turrets back on his old command, "Azuma" She was more modern, faster, sleeker, more heavily armored, and had better weapons than "Vigil", But that was to be expected when you were taking a ship deemed outdated two hundred years ago into battle.

"its not the Hand you're dealt, its the way you play it." Samada muttered under his breath as he looked to the ships captain.

"And there's a damn good reason I don't play you at poker." The captain responded jovially.

Phaethon system: Command Cruiser "Jiva"

Battlemaster Thars Krast clicked his mandibles in approval as he looked at the incoming reports, it appeared that the number of attacks from these Humans had drastically decreased after a measly two hours of combat. Groundmaster Lek Koz was at least doing that part of his job. He looked at Voidmaster Thad Yac expectantly as he received his report on the conditions of the enemy spacefleet, nothing, nothing at all.

That was of course to be expected they were still sorting through the data that they had garnered from the terminal in the large brick building, but so far they hadn't found anything that would lead them to suspect any form of faster than light travel yet... of course it was all fragmentory, and most of the data had been corrupted but that was nothing strange, the shockwaves from orbital bombardment tended to have nasty side effects upon electronics.

Apparently however the building had been deemed valuable enough that they had stationed a guardian in the building though, so perhaps they were simply not looking hard enough... he shook his head that would be a question for later, after the pacification was complete.

That particular goal would only be a few more days at this rate, and then he would return back to the Imperium as a hero! His expedition would have single-handedly obtained an entire colony world and brought in a new stockade species as well! He had tasted one for himself, they were delicious... for that find alone, he would become rich beyond meas-. he was snapped out of his reverie by the scream of the alarm Klaxons.

"it seems Voidmaster, that this system is not quite as pacified as you claimed it was." The battlemaster remarked as he glanced at the naval officer, who was calmly moving over to a holographic display table, a simulation of the system already flickering to life as they assessed the fleet's status.

"I apologize battlemaster, but those are the demispace breach alarms." the Voidmaster replied with a twitch of his wing-covers. "I appear to have a battle to run Battlemaster, I apologize for the inconvenience."

Hyperion city: Ruk base camp

Groundmaster Lek Koz was enjoying his breakfast when his command table turned from the crystal blue of all clear to a nearly solid red. He looked at it uncomprehendingly, the table showed the locations of every single unit he had positioned, and almost all of them were glowing the crimson red of having come under assault, every single one. Simultaneously. He flicked the table off, and turned it back on again, surely this was just some sort of error right? he had eliminated what he thought was the last human holdout almost an hour ago... sure enough for a moment it was solid blue again... until it updated. Then it was back to glowing its dreadful red, and the unthinkable started to happen. The lights started to go out.

"Technician!" He called out, not believing his eyes.

A moment later a technical specialist entered the Groundmasters command tent.

"Yes Groundmaster, how may I-" The tech began to speak before the groundmaster spoke over him.

"Is this broken?" The Groundmaser interrupted. The tech took a look at the table and slowly shook their head in the negative.

The Groundmaster quietly began to curse, right before he had been finished, right before he was done with this horrible world... he had been preparing to pack up and head back to the comfort of his shipboard suite... now he had to deal with what was doubtlessly a large scale human raid. Oh how he hated this species... It was worse than dealing with parasites.

Hyperion city: Front lines

Pioter smiled savagely as slugs from his rifle ripped a beetle in half, he slipped back behind his corner and began to reload before a beam of solid plasma smashed a long rut through the street a meter away from him before it cleaved through the car Peters was taking cover behind, causing it to flash detonate and consuming the unfortunate in a ball of fire.

"Damn it, they set up a heavy emplacement." Cursed Sergeant Chernov

"fuck." Agreed Pioter.

"Distract it for me, I'll try to frag it." Nathan called out over the squads com net.

"Roger." Replied Pioter, "Providing covering fire."

"Three, two, one." Pioter steadied his breathing before he sprung out from behind the building for a moment firing on fully automatic at the heavy weapons emplacement, simultaneously, Nathan hurled a grenade into the emplacement. With their respective jobs of bullet magnet and hammer completed both popped back into cover. It appeared that the trick had worked... until the frag landed in the middle of the intersection and detonated harmlessly.

"Damn it. this is taking too long..." Cursed Chernov.

Pioter nodded in agreement and cast his gaze around for a more advantageous position... and noticed an autocar... it looked to be in good enough shape....

"Sargent, I have an idea..."

"Do it, we're on the clock and not the good kind."

Shak Kall Cursed these humans, he cursed how they always managed to just stay a step ahead of his plasma beam, how they managed to almost slip a grenade into his heavy weapons nest and kill him and how they had already killed a third of his squad.

He hated fighting these humans and he'd barely been doing it for more than a few hours. A human poked out for a just a fraction of a second, those dreadful kinetic weapons ripped apart the air as they fired and he took cover behind the vehichle again cursing that he hadn't managed to pull the trigger in time.

"these damned fleshbags... why won't you freaks just die already?" the squadmaster paused as he heard an odd whirring, that worried Shak kall, he had learned that odd things often caused a great deal of bodily harm to the incautious. He poked his head above the vehicle he was using as cover and three odd glyphs filled his vision. B.M.W. A small fragment of his brain wondered for a moment, just what those glyphs stood for.

A few fractions of a second later the black SUV plowed his cover out of the way and crushed his lower half beneath its wheels as his cover was flipped on its side and sent screeching down the street. The tortured vehichle screamed throwing sparks everywhere as the improvised plow smashed aside anything that stood in front of the behemoth.

Strangely enough Shak Kall didn't really feel anything as he watched the thing scream down the remains of the destroyed road... but perhaps that was because he was at that point unconscious from the pain.

Pioter grinned viciously as the BMW smashed through the hastily built beetle fighting position, one of them almost manged to avoid it, but their lower half had been crushed beneath the SUV's mass.

"Strike." Nathan said chuckling darkly. "but I think you might have left one of the pin's standing."

"I didn't know you liked bowling Nathan." Pioter replied, stepping out to survey the carnage the car had caused.

"Well Pioter, we all have to have our guilty little pleasures now don't we?" The spotter replied, shouldering his rifle with a smirk.

"cut the small talk," Chernov ordered, "we're running behind, now lets move. after all, we don't want to be late to the party do we?"

Pioter and Nathan nodded and followed Chernov down the road deeper into the heart of the city.

"with the party favors the Major is giving out? hell no." Nathan said chortling.

Phaethon system: TUSS Vigil

The bridge of Vigil was in chaos as battle finally came upon them. Samada listened as the captain "fought the ship" while the Commodore began to maneuver his "game pieces" into a better tactical position. The die was cast, the cards were dealt, now all that was left was to play.

"Spin up the shields, rotate gun turrets one through five to engage sierra thirteen- " The captain barked to the crewmen

"Missiles reloaded sir!" one of the weapon's officers reported, cutting off the captain, delivering the report clearly above the din of the hectic bridge.

"Good, then fire racks one through ten at sierra eleven and eleven through twenty at sierra twelve, next reload I want odds armed with cluster and evens with atomics." The Captain replied, not once did he take his eyes off of the tactical screen, watching the flood of reports and orders flowing throughout the ship.

"Sir gun turrets six and seven are reporting a possible firing solution on sierra fifteen and request permission to engage" A gunnery officer reported, "Loaded rounds are Armor peircing on evens and atomic on odds."

"Permission granted Guns, you have authorization to fire at will." He then turned to an officer surrounded by what appeared to be communications screens, "Are the drone racks armed yet?"

"Sir racks five six and seven report catastrophic failure, they were struck by some form of plasma beam." the strike coordinator replied, "Racks one through four are reporting that they are at three quarters loaded on armament and full load on fuel"

The Captain made a snap decision, "Launch the armed drones, we'll lose them anyway if we don't."

"Aye aye sir, Strike wings away" the ATC officer replied.

"Sir enemy battleship sighted! designated sierra forty sevem, it is engaging the "Veracity"..." The tactical controller blinked at the data he was receiving, "Captain, "Veracity" reports extreme hull damage from the enemy main gun, she's out of the fight Captain!"

"Navigation, Swing us to port, Weapons! bring All available guns to bear on that battleship, Strike wings! set sierra 47 it up as the target for the drones attack runs." The Captain ordered assessing the threat immediately, "that ship cannot be allowed to fire again."

"Yes sir!" the three officer's responded in tandem.

Commodore Samada listened to the chaos aboard the bridge and smiled, it was like a symphony, and he was its conductor. The orchestrator of the flow and pace of the music that flowed around him, the drumbeat of the ship's heavy guns, the shriek of her launching missiles... he was a maestro and he played no mere instrument, but war itself. The feeling was both terrible and glorious at once.

Silently he continued to maneuver the pieces he had on his side of the board as best he could to maximize the effectiveness of each individual ship, while minimizing that of the enemy. He was Commodore James Samada, history would remember him as the first human naval commander to ever battle a species other than his own.

He'd be damned if he went into the history books with an unfavorable battle report.