Citation Series 1: Naero's War: The Annexation War (35 page)

She got on one of her secure channels to Baeven and his strange ship.

This time, fortunately, the outcast answered right away.

“How’s the war winding
down, Naero?”

“Horrific. Need a
huge favor. Came across some secured files on some kind of new Triaxian super weapon. But we can’t get past the security measures, unlike anything we’ve seen before. And we have no time.”

“Do a shadow-level-13 Intel duplication and send me the raw data files
, complete with those defenses. I’ll see what Jia can do with them.”

The mysterious Jia again.
Another one of Baeven’s weird, unseen crew?

Ty
and Surina prepared and sent the files. Naero already made ready to jump after the fleeing enemy fleets.

Baeven came back a few minutes later. “What the hell
did you send me? It’s even giving Jia fits. But from what we can tell, it does not look good at all. This must be alien tek. Whatever the enemy is planning with it, it’s going to be big. From what we can tell at the outset, we think they’re trying to unleash something that will destroy an entire system and everything in it.”

Not good
.

“
We’ll know more in a little bit, if we can crack the rest of the defenses. They are very tough. To be safe, tell Sleak and the other Alliance leaders they’d better focus on stopping those enemy nutjobs at all costs.”

She broke off
instantly and opened her link to Aunt Sleak once more.

“Admiral. Contact all the other Admirals in the Alliance. Get every fleet
and ship that you can to Najindo-9. Anything that can float and fight. We have intel that the enemy is planning the biggest surprise for us yet. We need to hit them before they can unleash it, and take them down once and for all.”

“What’s this new threat
, Naero?”

“An advanced weapon that can destroy all life in an entire system.
Deets when we have them, sir. What’s the population of the Najindo system?”

“Among the heaviest in all of Triax.
Trillions, multiple billions each on several worlds. The most heavily populated of all of the Capital Class Systems. The crown jewel of their bloated empire.”

“Then we’d better get in there and stop them.
I feel certain that the Triaxian Supreme Commander means to take everyone down with him, if he can manage such a grand slam.”

Naero didn’t wait for
further orders. Minutes to the nearby, neighboring system at maximum jump.

Everyone kne
w where the enemy was heading.

There wasn’t any place left for the
bastards to go.

She
again called for reinforcements, seized the initiative, and sent her fleet into jump, prepped and ready for battle.

41

The combined firepower,
the main guns, of six Alliance fleets tore a breach through the dense Triaxian defenses surrounding the last capital class system.

More fleets rushed in
, now that the way was clear, pounding and decimating key enemy elements.

Najindo-9
remained the key to capturing the entire system, and a battle royal in its own right had just begun.

More
fleets from both sides jumped in, engaged, and locked together in deadly combat.

Naero
and Strike Fleet Six raced after the secret Triaxian armada, led by
The
Kronos
, Admiral Maximillian Dreth’s huge flagship.

The
same ship that barely escaped from the Triaxian Naval Shipyards.

The
same enemy shipyards that had been blown up and completely destroyed on Moon Noraga-3, in an effort to hide the enemy’s most vital secrets.

Five
entire enemy fleets came about, fanning out in various formations to intercept Strike Fleet Six.

Two hundred
and fifty warships against fifty–five to one odds.

While Admiral Dreth’s fleet
pulled farther away, at top speed, with his remaining fifteen fleets still held in reserve.

T
he lopsided battle ensued.

Aunt Sleak and the rest of the Alliance sent in three reserve fleets to assist at the last
possible moment.

Naero’s hands flew across her holoscreens to
instantly redirect her fleet.

“All ships,
follow my lead, Romeo-Sierra-1. Let the reserves hit them and bust them up. Screen out and sweep over the top of these foes. Keep up the attack. Rake them with all batteries as we soar over them, but continue to advance and overshoot them. Do not stop. Keep going at full attack speed, no matter what. Drive on!”

Mike Marshall called out to them. “Naero, we’ll never catch them at this rate. Both forces are at maximum acceleration
.”

There had to be a way
.

Varcas Adams called out from scanning
.

“Several new fleets jumping in,
interposing themselves between the enemy and the sun, cutting them off. One of those fleets is extremely odd—multiple planetoid vessels of all sizes, sir.”

Naero put both hands to her mouth
.

Klyne told her
in secret that those new ships were in production.

These had to be them
.

The
Titans
.

An entire fleet
—comprised of all planetoid vessels—leading several other Alliance fleets in to back them up.

They cut
the enemy flagship off and engaged all the other ships as they piled in. They stopped the enemy advance in its tracks and stomped on them.

The enemy fought
fiercely, doing their best–even sacrificing entire ships–in an effort to allow Admiral Dreth’s flagship to break away. That was clearly their objective.

“All ships, concentrate all fire on the enemy flagship. Des
troy or disable it at all costs!

Naero and her fleet did what they did best, racing in to hit the enemy hard from optimal vectors
.

Yet even as they did so, every enemy fleet and ship broke off from the other
ongoing battle, and attempted to reach this new one.

Such madness o
nly added to the intense confusion.

Worse still, enemy warships activated their jump drives close in,
committing flaming suicide, and gouged burning ruts of destruction through both friend and foe.

Multiple
ships on both sides burned, broke up, and exploded.

Naero’s fingers flashed in fury.
“Triple-stack, Sierra-Victor-3 formation. Wheel above the battle in an inverted cone. Pour all fire on the enemy. Disrupt their shields; I want their shields down in their exact center within one pass.”

Several more enemy warships prepared to go into jump, in order to obliterate the Alliance formations and gut them
.

The
Titans
spiraled out and did their best to sweep forward and intercept the looming jumpers, sending sheets of destroying fire against them.

The
y unleashed the fastest rates of fire Naero had ever seen from any major warships.

The sheer volume of it obliterated entire swaths of enemy ships
.

Only one
in seven of those suicidal foes flashed into jump.

The
Titans
blasted the other six straight to oblivion.

If the enemy wanted death,
The
Titans
would give them all they could stomach.

Naero’s fleet succeeded in collapsing most of
the enemy shields at the core of their formations.

For an instant,
shields collapsed on
The
Kronos
.

Then back up shields
came on, before it could take much damage.

Without warning, the enemy counterattacked, swarming over
The
Hippolyta
and her ships, in an attempt to take them out.

The envelopers became the enveloped, and Naero and her people struggled to stay alive and break
free.

Admiral Dre
th revealed himself to be an exceptionally clever bastard.

O
nce actually forced to fight, he proved to be a more than capable opponent.

Shields
reduced rapidly on all of Naero’s ships, as the enemy used her own tactics against her and her people.

Collapse shields, then destroy them all with overwhelming fire
.

The
Titans
had their own problems, stretched to their breaking point and outnumbered. They focused on fending off other enemy jumpers trying to plough through the mix. With their own hands more than full, they were incapable of coming to anyone’s aid.

Naero and everyone else simply had to fight it out on their own, against superior odds
.

The
Hippolyta
and the other bigs were hemmed in, fighting for their very lives.

Only her cruisers, destroyers, and such could still maneuver
.

“
Mohawk
,
Panther
,
Swordbreaker
–
y
ou are our only hope. Lead all equal and smaller vessels on close-wheel, Charlie-Whiskey-6 attacks, right on top of the packed enemy ships hemming us in. Hit them in every vital spot with everything you’ve got, and I mean everything. Drop you garbage on them and set it on fire if you must, but bust us out. Our only chance is for you to blast us free!”

“Copy that, sir. Engagin
g in close assault formation…maximum fire underway. Unleashing all possible ordnance.”

So much heavy firepower
hit Triax in such a tightly confined space, that it was difficult to sort out what actually went down.

T
wo things happened.

First,
The
Kronos
slowly pulled away from the general quagmire of the confused battle.

The
Hippolyta
broke and blasted its way free not an instant later.

“Continue to pursue that flagship.” Naero commanded. “Smash into anything blocking our way. Knock them aside!
Any ships available, try to get out in front of them!”

The two huge
warships took poundings from relentless assaults directed at them from both sides.

Both
vessels sustained heavy damage, and kept up their chase, still punching at each other–like well-bloodied prize fighters.

Once she had time to think straight,
Naero recalled that she still waited impatiently to hear back on her secured link from Baeven–urgently concerning the strange, heavily encrypted Triaxian tek files they captured from that enemy research base.

Only he
r outlaw uncle and his strange, miraculous ship possessed the ability to decode those files, in any time frame to be useful.

Naero trusted her instincts fully now.
A final endgame masterstroke was about to unfold. Of that she felt certain.

By the thin
facts alone, the enemy Admiral had destroyed his own naval base for some desperate reason, and the fixers deduced that some major enemy research project had indeed just been finalized there, only scant minutes before everything went all to hell.

What
precisely did the enemy load up and whisk away from that top secret base in such a hurry?

What was the
new enemy objective? What was this new super weapon they now prepared to unleash against them all?

Admiral Dreth
seemed charmed and strangely fortunate. He had barely escaped thus far, and now he and his damaged flagship made every effort to abandon even the last chaotic battles around Najindo-9.

The enemy commander did so
at all hazards–setting an evasive course directly toward the System’s star–for some bizarre, unfathomable reason.

Naero
did all within her power to keep after them.

Baeven’s link on her com
finally flashed and sounded in warning.

She took
the message immediately.

Transmitted h
olo readouts and schematics passed rapidly before her eyes.

A pity sh
e could no longer teknomance.

“Stop that
enemy fleet at all costs!” Baeven warned her.

She had never heard such fear in his normally calm demeanor
.

“T
riax has developed a way to cause a chain reaction in their sun and force it to explode like a massive gigabomb—a quanta bomb of tremendous destruction. They will most likely attempt to do so with specialized, advanced missiles by the looks of the intel we just decoded for you.” Baeven paused and caught his breath.

“
Naero,–this new super weapon will kill everyone currently in that entire sector, and on all of its worlds.”

Naero covered her mouth with one hand, staggered by the sc
ope of the approaching atrocity–flagrant Cosmicide.

Triax wo
uld murder trillions, in spite of its own defeat.

How typical
.

The Alliance
really should have expected something exactly like this.

She knew
now that there had been good reason to follow her gut instincts and pursue that fleet and flagship to the death and take it out.

Every fiber of her being
just told her so.

Naero s
hot the details to Tyber, Captain Hayden, and the rest of the Alliance forces–instant priority one.

Yet m
ost of the warships on both side remained locked in the deadly, final struggles focused around Najindo-9.

More enemy ships
attempted to converge, doing all that they could to cut
The
Hippolyta
off.

Naero’s flagship
emerged as the only chance that anyone had to stop the Triaxian High commander, once and for all.

They were the last hope
to prevent the enemy from murdering…everyone.