Our people were secure in the fortress the Duke had provided. Our ships were in formation. Our troops on the ground were ready.
The Duke hailed me. "Mr. Grange. This is the moment I have been waiting for! The grandest battle on the grandest day! Have you ever imagined forces of such size being brought together for a single, spectacular battle? I am giddy with excitement!"
I replied, "We are as ready as we are going to be, Duke. Let’s get this started so that we can get it over with. This galaxy and all these galaxies will soon be rid of your menace. And if it’s all the same to you, I have no interest in listening to you squeal as you give a play-by-play. Unless you are contacting me to surrender, please don’t bother me again."
The Duke spoke. "You sound serious, Mr. Grange. Which is good. These are serious times. The end of your species is at hand. That never-ending Human spirit will not be enough to save you this time. Good luck, Mr. Grange. I shall miss these conversations."
The comm channel to the Duke closed. Several seconds later, the forward ships in his fleet began to move. Ten thousand ships on the left flank moved forward. With a single command, the two hundred thousand ships of the Earth fleet blinked out.
The Duke’s ships blinked out as well; however, our sensors were still able to pinpoint the location of each ship. As I watched on my holo-display, the ten thousand ships streaked straight forward. Our own ships slipped to each side as if opening a doorway for the attackers to come through. Forward particle beams and ion cannons began to fire as the ships approached.
The Earth ships held fire until the assault force was well within range. In a single volley, eleven hundred saucer-shaped Prassi ships were destroyed. The tight formation then disintegrated, and chaos ensued. Fifty thousand of the Duke’s ships then lurched forward in a second wave. The new attack consisted of Dakar, Colossun, and Bulgar ships.
As the ships began to mix with our own, their strategy became known. Blind firing would be used to find the location of our ships, followed by a focus of fire of particle streams and ion cannons from multiple ships. Three hundred Dakar ships were ripped in half by our return fire before the first Earth fleet casualties were taken. A pair of Earth cruisers had their sodium skins overwhelmed. The attacking ships near their location wasted no time bringing the brilliant white Earth ships to an end.
As the third wave of attacking ships moved in our direction, I took note of some species that we had not seen for centuries. The Duke had enlisted every hostile species in the Triangulum galaxy as well as many others.
I spoke as a Prassi battleship came our way with its cannons firing wildly into the space in front of it. "Move us down below its plane of attack, hit it with the Yacabucci, and follow up with a particle beam."
My navigator and weapons officer made well-timed and precise moves. The
Rogers
dropped below the immense saucer, freezing it in place with our powerful Yacabucci web. A particle beam then began to slice through the great ship, cutting through deck after deck.
The enemy adjusted their strategy. In a change that brought about a dramatic rise in our casualties, the Duke’s ships began to target our weapons fire. A particle beam or ion bolt brought a focus of fire to its point of origin. Our counterdefense was rapid changes in speed, constant turning, and shorter bursts from our weapons.
The Duke then introduced a new, unknown technology. Much like our Yacabucci inhibited positive ion particle movement, the Duke’s new tech employed a strong magnetic field inhibitor. The active skin on every ship within a million kilometers of an inhibitor began to pulse off and on. The magnetic field inhibitor generated an extreme magnetic pulse that momentarily interfered with the active sodium skins on our ships.
I spoke. "We need to identify which ships have those field inhibitors! They are making us easy targets!"
My weapons officer passed a holo-diagram to my display. "Sir, check the red blip in the bottom left of that screen. It’s a black orb, and every indication is that it’s the source of the inhibitor in that area. They have that tech on multiple orb ships, Sir."
I replied, "Mr. Haskel, take us over to that orb. York! Get your team ready! You are boarding a ship. We need to find out how it works and how to shut it down!"
As I stood, Ashley came to me. "You aren’t thinking of going over there, are you? York and Frost are more than capable of this detail."
I pulled her in for a hug. "This is what I do. If you have those memories back, you know it’s who I am."
Ashley pushed back slightly. "If you are going, I am going too."
I smiled. "I wouldn’t want it any other way. Besides, I don’t think it’s any safer on this ship with those orbs out there."
I walked with Ashley down to the docking bay. York was standing ready with three squads of Marines.
As the
Rogers
circled near the orb ship, we began to take fire. A heavy ion bolt struck just as the active skin came back online, sending our level of absorption up to 68 percent.
I spoke as we flew towards the orb. "If they ever figure out they should be timing those shots around the pulses, we are going to be in a world of hurt."
Ashley replied, "They will figure it out, Don. The Duke is just trying to give us false hope with dumb mistakes being made on their side. He has seen too many wars to not make the best use of the technology he has. Remember, he no longer has any rules stating that he cannot get involved."
The
Rogers
absorbed two additional hard strikes before we arrived beside the seven-hundred-meter-diameter orb. I powered up the portal generator.
Ashley placed her hand on my shoulder. "Don, we can’t risk jumping in there. That orb has an active skin of its own. If we were to jump at the wrong time, we might get caught in the absorption phase of that skin. It isn’t worth the risk."
I replied as I stood, "Fine, then we will power in with our BHDs."
Ashley shook her head. "That has the same issue, Don. If we don’t pass through that skin at the right moment, we get caught in it. Power up the Yacabucci, and let’s see if we can stop those pulses."
York spoke as she stood behind us. "I like the way she thinks, Sir."
I powered up the web and applied a full wave to the orb floating just in front of us. The web had no effect.
Frig spoke over the QE comm. "Sir, I’ve been observing from here. Why not just time a shot from your particle beam? Synchronize it with the active skin of that ship coming down."
I sarcastically replied, "Always wanting to take the easy way out, huh."
After several swipes of my holo-display, the weapons were at the ready. "OK, let’s give this a try."
With a precisely timed pulse, a section of the orb ship exploded outward, with the active sodium skin no longer covering the damaged area.
I spoke as I stood. "Let’s get in there and see what this thing is made of!"
As we powered through the docking bay, we could see the exposed decks of the damaged orb. We set down on the fourth deck from what would be considered the bottom of the ship. The ship’s gravity generators remained online.
York immediately sprinted ahead. "Follow me, Sir!"
I briefly looked at Ashley. "We have mop-up duty."
As we moved across the deck, we began to encounter heavy fire. "Everyone keep in mind that so long as this ship is functional, we lose our active skins every time that pulse fires. We are very vulnerable at that moment!"
York blasted the first two crewmen she encountered. "Sir, looks like Durians are running this show!"
I turned the corner into a side room and was surprised at what I saw. A female Durian was standing in the corner holding an ion blaster. Her hands were shaking. I powered over to her position. I blinked in and grabbed the weapon from her hands.
I spoke. "I didn’t think Durian women were welcome on the battlefield."
She snarled and leaped at me with her claws extended. As I blinked out, she fell through my position to the floor. I again blinked in, reached down, took her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet. I then turned towards the door, pulling her along with me.
As I stepped into the hallway, another Durian female transited the room across from us. I stepped into the room with the first female in front of me. After a moment’s hesitation, the second female pulled the trigger. As I fully blinked out, the Durian female that I had held exploded in front of me. I raised my hand and let fly a tungsten round.
I spoke. "Ashley, York, Frost. It looks like this ship may be manned by female Durians. This has to be a desperate attempt to field as many people as they can, because the Durian females never see battle. I think the Duke has put everything he has on the line."
Ashley replied, "I’ve studied everything we have on them, and I would have to say you are right. They revere their women and would never put them in danger."
York then spoke. "Sir, I’m in the control room. There isn’t much here. It looks like we may just be sitting on a big fusion reactor with a mag pulse generator. I can kill this one terminal and shut this place down."
I replied, "Do it, York. We have a whole slew of these things out there that need to be shut down."
I got on the comm to all of our space forces. "This is Grange. You can kill those mag pulse generators by timing your particle beam shot to align with the pulses. If you manage to go aboard, you will find they are manned by Durian females. We can only conclude that the Duke is desperate to beat us since he can no longer just sweep us all away. No matter how bad it gets out there, just keep fighting, and we can win this thing and win our freedom!"
Ashley spoke. "Don, the Duke just placed forces down on the planet’s surface! I’m counting nearly two billion soldiers!"
A hail from the Duke came over the comm. "Mr. Grange. I am sure you have noticed the ground war is now in the beginning stages. I would like to offer this appeal to you. Should a single ship under your command change course to go assist in the ground war, I will divert all ships under my command to do the same. Let our ground forces fight ground forces and those in space fight those in space."
The Duke continued, "And, if you have thoughts of moving your people from the fortress to elsewhere, I will consider that a transgression as well. Violate this agreement once, and I will throw everything I have at wiping out your people. That fortress is only protected by walls. A single warship could easily destroy it from above. We play this by my rules, or your people will pay the price."
I replied, "I would expect nothing less from you, Duke. We will honor those rules if you do as well. Either way, you will be dead before we are."
The Duke laughed. "That’s the spirit, Mr. Grange! Now, good hunting!"
We reboarded the Rogers, and after firing several more particle beams into the crippled orb ship, we turned for another. The battle in space raged for hours, with both sides taking casualties. We had lost more than eighteen hundred ships to the Duke's thirty-eight hundred.
As I targeted the next orb ship, I spoke to Frig. "Hey Frig, whatever happened to those portal bombs we came up with? Do we have any, and would they be useful?"
Frig replied, "We only had the opportunity to produce a few. I can have the bots work on constructing more once they are done with the containment structure."
I smiled. "Make that happen, and if you can scale those up to make ship killers, all the better!"
Frig again replied, "Sir, I hope you realize that you could be using your portal generator as a weapon. Open a wormhole beside your ship and have the endpoint sweep through an enemy ship. I would be certain that you could cripple any number of ships by transferring several decks at a time to another location. You would have a portal recharge time to deal with of approximately twelve seconds with the Rogers. And the portal could be used at the same time as the other weapons."
After we changed strategies to what Frig had suggested, the space battle began to turn our way. On the ground, our cloned BGS Marines from Earth were holding their own. That is, until the Duke transferred in another billion soldiers.
The numbers involved both in space and on the ground were staggering. Having billions involved, whole adult populations of species, was something that was unfathomable, even for the imagination. I was certain the Duke was pacing about on his command ship as he watched the data from a hundred different mini battles. I was also sure that he was grinning over what he had set in motion.
Making use of the portal as a weapon allowed the
Rogers
and her crew to destroy three orb ships every minute, but there were thousands in the space surrounding Megiddo, with more joining the fight in a seemingly never-ending stream. Our own ships were seeing no such replenishment.
In another change of strategies, the Duke moved in nearly fifty thousand of the network ships we had fought against at Tresha. Wide sweeps with the webs forced our ships to take alternate paths, funneling them into kill zones and once again giving the Duke’s fleet an advantage.
On the ground, the larger force of the Duke was beginning to gain ground against our forces. The four directions surrounding the fortress of Megiddo saw continuous surges of millions of soldiers at a time. With a new portal sweep from the Duke, the entire adult population of the planet Targ was transferred onto the plains of Megiddo. Another four billion fighters, the Targ, armed with hand weapons, joined the fight and were immediately used as cannon fodder during the continued surges. We were slowly losing on all fronts.
After killing an orb, I flipped the
Rogers
in a new direction and was confronted by a ship that I had not seen before. It was a destroyer, equal in size to the
Rogers
. Each move I made was countered by a similar move. Weapons and shielding were also evenly matched. The destroyer, however, did not have the sodium skin as did most of the other ships.
I spoke to York. "We have an issue with a destroyer that is tailing us. I think we should prep a party and give them a little taste of boots-on-the-deck fighting against a BGS Marine. Get your squads ready, York. I will be down there momentarily."