Fifteen years. That is how long the Diln had been waging war against the entire Orion Arm. For Master of Fleet Kalhinfizett, it sometimes seemed as though he’d spent his entire life fighting them. He scarcely remembered a time before the war. A time when the fate of all civilization wasn’t hanging in the balance. He’d been a young whelp of a junior officer when the war had broken out. The fact that he was now a senior flag officer spoke both to the length of the war and to its heinous casualties.

He stretched, thudding his giant tail against the solid metal bulkheads of his flagship. He was a Tlassiopei. Like all his people, he looked like a velociraptor that had been morphed into a particularly large bear with a long, shaggy coat.

“Ten minutes, Master.” said one of his subordinates.

He gave a growl-hiss of acknowledgement, not taking his eyes from the tactical display. He had been given command of the single largest fleet ever assembled by the Coalition, and then tasked by the Coalition High Command to defeat the enormous Diln invasion fleet currently rampaging through their periphery. Nearly a thousand ships from dozens of species would face the Diln menace in open combat.

The fleet had every species and government in the Coalition shivering with terror. It was the largest the Diln had assembled in the war thus far. Previously, they had seemed to shun large concentrations of assets in favor of smaller, incremental operations. Their primary method of making war throughout the lengthy conflict had been to weaken the Coalition with irregular forces (the various ne'er do wells on their payroll) on a macro scale, and concentrate their regular forces on carefully selected strategic targets. They fought “wide”, and this forced the Coalition to do the same.

Kalhinfizett stared at the tactical display. It was not a pleasant sight. The Diln fleet was roughly equal in size to his own, but outgunned it by an appreciable margin. A major factor tipping the scales in the Diln’s favor was the two massive superdreadnoughts that were the centerpiece of their formation. The gargantuan ships were each armed with two spinal mounted hypervelocity cannons. When one fired, the other primed. With this relatively simple design, one ship could lay down continuous spinal mount fire. The vast armada of heavy cruisers and destroyers that followed the two superships certainly didn’t make things any better, either.

If he got into a prolonged gunnery duel with the Diln fleet, he would lose. The Diln focused heavily on their gun batteries, to the point that any single Diln ship outgunned any single equivalent Coalition ship in terms of kinetic weaponry. It was a difference in doctrine: the Coalition favored guided munitions, and sacrificed gun mountings for more silos, while the Diln favored kinetics, and sacrificed silos for more gun mountings.

It was this disadvantage that Kalhinfizett was counting on

The two fleets were going into battle “ass-first”, with their main engines facing each other as both sides decelerated. Kalhinfizett watched the timer tick down. When it reached zero, the entire fleet flipped over. A few brief moments passed as the computers seized control of the ships maneuvering suites and aimed their spinal mounts. Fine adjustments were made within the weapon’s own limited traversability. As one, the computers of the thousand coalition ships let loose a slug.

They were answered a few microseconds later by the Diln launching their own volley. The computer of Kalhinfizett’s flagship struggle to track and show the two volleys on the tactical display. Kalhinfizett strapped himself in. At this range, dodging was still practical, and he didn’t want to get plastered all over the bulkheads. Throughout both fleets, ship computers seized the helm and burned their maneuvering thrusters or steered with gimballed engines. The machines struggled to avoid the incoming fire without sacrificing their ability to return fire.

The volleys struck within instants of each other. Small ships like the Coalition frigates were simply vaporized when struck, destroyed with all hands in a matter of milliseconds. The larger ships like the Diln heavy cruisers and Coalition battleships had something resembling survivability. But not that much.

A Diln heavy cruiser took a round head on. The slug pierced clean through the nose, shredding the reactor on the way out. Somehow, its antimatter containment held, but it made little difference, as its entire crew had been liquefied when the shot shredded its way through the main body of the ship. Another ship, a Coalition battleship, took a round on its nose at a sharp angle when it attempted to dodge. The entire massive war machine spun end over end at a sickeningly rapid rate. Military ships had their crew modules as close to the center of mass as possible, to minimize the injuries that could be sustained from inertia. Because of this, the crew of the battleship suffered only broken bones and ruptured organs as they were slammed against the bulkheads, rather than being pasted against the walls.

It was all over in a matter of seconds as the two fleets rapidly reorganized and fired another volley at each other. Seconds later, the rounds struck and there was chaos again for a brief time. The cycle continued like this for some time. Volley, maneuver, reorganize, volley, maneuver, reorganize. Soon, it became clear that Kalhinfizett’s prediction was accurate, as the Coalition fleet slowly but steadily bled to death against the superior firepower of the Diln. So, the Master of Fleet did the only sensible thing.

“All ships, make an orderly retreat.” the Master’s voice carried over the fleet communication network. It was the obvious next move for a commander in his position. He knew it, his subordinates knew it.

Most importantly, his opponent knew it.

Accelerating away from the oncoming rounds, the coalition fleet had an increase in the amount of time the slugs took to reach them, which gave them a generous amount of time to dodge. This proved a boon for the retreating fleet, as their casualty rates fell dramatically in a matter of minutes. However, the extensive dodging left the fleet disorganized and scattered.

The Diln commander, unwilling to let such a spectacular victory slip through his claws, pursued at an even higher acceleration.

Got you, you slaving bandit bastard. Kalhinfizett thought.

He keyed a command into his console, and every ship in the entire coalition fleet opened its silos and emptied them of torpedoes.

The torpedoes “fell” as their mother ships accelerated away from them at a blistering rate. Then, as one cohesive swarm, they turned and fired their chemical thrusters. Torpedoes were situational weapons, their limited delta-v compared to the powerful fusion torch drives of their targets meant that they could simply be run out of fuel by their quarry if fired from long range. Yet, their power was too great for this crippling weakness to entirely prevent their usage. A single torpedo hit could mean the end of even the largest of ships.

The Diln fleet was coming on at the greatest acceleration the Diln body could consistently handle. They were very close, by the standards of space. They had little time to attempt a dodging maneuver against the full volley of torpedoes burning towards them. It was every guided weapons officer’s dream.

The Diln opened their own, much less substantial, silos, and launched. Then, two large subfleets of destroyers suddenly vanished into Dark Space.

Trying to save part of the fleet? Kalhinfizett pondered. He thought for a moment, then it hit him. Of course! I’m reasonably sure those ships were auxiliaries from client races. Unwilling to take a full torpedo salvo for the overlords, no doubt.

The Diln counter salvo came rushing onward. It was smaller, but the torpedoes were of much higher quality. It was another difference in doctrine, with the Diln preferring high-quality, versatile warheads. The exceptionally advanced weapons could strike with a weaker precision lance of nuclear fire, or explode with maximum energy output in a sphere of pure energy. The torpedoes of this salvo had been set for the latter.

Kalhinfizett watched the Diln torpedoes on their unusual vector. They were burning far too hard to be able to reach the fleet-

Spirits curse me!

“Stop decelerating immediately!” Kalhinfizett ordered.

The order was carried out with decidedly less precision than the premade orders he had activated earlier. Hundreds of captains from dozens of species acted independently to decelerate their ships. It was sluggish. Too sluggish.

It happened so quickly it was difficult to follow. The Diln torpedoes activated their final stage, each one launching multiple independent warheads. The warheads flew to optimal locations in the oncoming enemy salvo and detonated. Kalhinfizett watched in dread as more than sixty percent of his salvo was instantly vaporized. Moments later, the remaining Coalition torpedoes activated their own final stage, and a still-large swarm of warheads came in. They drew within fractions of a kilometer of their target, and then detonated.

Even severely depleted, the salvo extracted a grievous toll. Yet, the Diln fleet maintained its discipline and came hard for the Coalition fleet. The Master of Fleet knew despair as he watched the oncoming enemy. His own fleet had started to decelerate, in anticipation of delivering a followup volley on the Diln fleet. Which was supposed to be disorganized and scattered from maneuvering to escape the torpedoes.

Kalhinfizett got a grip of himself, and let his fear and anger at his own failure go. The only thing to do now was salvage the situation. He’d have to engage, and try and break out and begin a rapid retreat-

The two Diln superdreadnoughts opened their remaining silos, and fired the torpedoes they had evidently been holding in reserve. The guided weapons moved as one flock, before splitting off and going towards several carefully selected targets. It was the heaviest ships in each individual squadron- which were, naturally, usually the flagships of their respective units. The units in question burned in chaotic vectors, with the heavier ships struggling to evade while the smaller moved to intercept.

It was in this moment that Kalhinfizett knew. His opponent wasn’t improvising on the fly. This was a carefully crafted battle plan being executed before his eyes.

He predicted every single action I would take, from the moment he laid eyes on my fleet.

To have been outplayed in such spectacular fashion almost made the Master of Fleet lose control. Then, he remembered his duty.

“All ships are to activate their transition drives immediately and burn for friendly space!” the ragged, disorganized fleet struggled to comply with their new orders.

He was then immediately squashed into his acceleration couch as his flagship made a hard evasive burn. His ship was one of the targets. Under the strain of the acceleration, Kalhinfizett couldn’t move. All he could do was think. With this defeat, the Coalition was wide open. To say that the war had been lost in this battle would be an exaggeration. Yet, because of this defeat, the meaning of “victory” would take on a new identity for the Coalition. Waving the banner of the free peoples of the Orion Arm over the many worlds of the Diln’s vast, previously unseen civilization had hardly ever been in the cards, but now even just reclaiming what had been lost would be next to impossible. For some, the prospect of becoming a client race might even start to seem more acceptable. With this battle, the hope for freedom in the Orion Arm teetered on the edge of the abyss.

The flight of torpedoes targeting the flagship had unleashed their warheads. Many fell to the laser point defenses of the flagship and its escorts. But all it took was one. It detonated, sending a thin lance of nuclear fire through the heart of the flagship. The antimatter containment was breached, and the entire ship was vaporized.

—

The remnants of the Coalition fleet appeared into Dark Space piecemeal, rather than as one cohesive unit. This lack of cohesion made them fodder for the squadrons of client race destroyers that had vanished into Dark Space a short time ago after firing their torpedoes. While outnumbered, the destroyers were a disciplined firing line, while the Coalition was a ragged mob with no consistent formation. They were turned to mincemeat.

The rest of the Diln fleet appeared into Dark Space. The rain of gun fire became a hail. The two superdreadnoughts carved a bloody swath through the besieged enemy, with each shot from their dual cannons having the potential to completely destroy even the largest of ships. The scattered few ships that had survived to this point fled in a full-blown route. The many Diln ships made to pursue their enemy as they fled like wild animals in every possible direction.

“No.” a voice rang out in the command deck of one of the superdreadnoughts, the flagship. “There is a point where pursuit brings diminishing returns. We have reached it.”

The voice came from a man that most would know as the Supreme Commander of the Diln Hegemony. Some would even name him Emperor. As his officers looked upon him, awed once again as he delivered his people another spectacular victory, many could certainly understand the sentiment. The Emperors were sacred figures, their dynasty long extinct. To claim their title was sacrilege.

Yet, for those that followed him, it was hard to find a more fitting title. What else do you call a man who brings every one of the dozens of squabbling warlords to their knees, bringing peace to the Realm for the first time in a thousand years? What else do you call a man who led the Diln to greatness, dragging them from the ignorant muck of stagnation they had been stuck in for so long it felt as though it had always been this way? What else can you call the Ruler of All the Diln, other than “His Majesty, the Emperor”?

The Supreme Commander sucked down a breath, closing his predatory eyes and running a claw through his coat. A great victory, they would call this. Yet, for all that, the losses had still been significant. He’d need every single hull for the work that was to come.

And it still might not be enough.