Chapter 277: Total War (2/2)
Pluto broke apart but the surviving guns kept firing. They could fire through other planets, through the debris field, keep hammering the enemy.
Outbound Station, empty except for the military crew after the emergency evacuation, died in a flash.
29%/14%
Still the Lanatkallan kept coming. Tens of millions of ships still remaining. A third of them ignored the Terran military vessels, hitting anything else they could, striking at the planetary defense shields, striking at anything they could see through the haze of jamming.
30%/15%
A third wave arrived.
The Unified Executor Fleet.
All of it.
Millions more ships activated their sublight drives and drove into the system even as they were blown out of the sky.
The casualties did not matter. The Great Herd had plenty more where that came from. The Unified Breeding Council's computers could replace every lost Lanaktallan ten times over in a single generation.
The combined fleet took the Terran fire, smashed into the Terran defenses, crashed against the walls of Fortress TerraSol to ensure there would be another Lanaktallan generation.
TerraSol command could not risk another wave coming in, despite the low casualty rate of the Terran warships and the insanely high K/D ratio, the Lanaktallan were driving hard for the planets and satellites, obviously intending on orbital bombardment and planetary landings.
It had been tested. It had been used at the end of the Mar-gite War.
TerraSol activated it.
Space for a quarter-light year around Terra shimmered, flexed, and wobbled as massive graviton generators created carefully placed and synched artificial singularities.
The TerraSol System vanished into The Bag.
Where the Sol System had been there was only empty space and the gravity shadow of a singularity.
Inside The Bag the fighting roared on.
The last fleet, a combined force of Corporate, Military, and Executor ships dropped out of jumpspace into where they thought the Sol System would be.
Alarms wailed as the carefully placed singularities tore at the ships with their gravities. The ships couldn't jump back into jumpspace that deep in that strong of a gravity well.
The last fleet, the one that was supposed to finish the Terrans once and for all, were torn apart by the singularities that formed the 'drawstring' of The Bag.
Inside The Bag, the fighting raged.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
I couldn't find him. I looked in all the usual places but I couldn't
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ALERT ALERT ALERT
TERRASOL UNDER ATTACK
CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA
ALERT ALERT ALERT
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MANTID FREE WORLDS>FORredeyesTREredeyesSS TERredeyesRASOL is unredeyesder atredeyestack?
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Who the hell is dumb enough to...
oh.
oh shit.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
What? I thought the Unified Council Ships couldn't even hurt the Terran ships?
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
That depends on how badly they want it, kid.
There's roughly 24,000 active duty combat vessels in the system, millions of ground troops on each world big enough to stand on.
Hell, there's practically a Terran Warborg with an anti-ship missile launcher on any asteroid big enough for them to stand on.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
They're not going for the ships, kid. All they need is one lucky shot onto a planet to cause an extinction level event or even break up the smaller planets.
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
MANTID FREE WORLDS> Thiredeyess wonredeyes't go as weredeyesll as thredeyesey think it wiredeyesll.
RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA
RIGEL IS UNDER ATTACK BY ENEMY IN FORCE
CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA CASE OMAHA
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---
TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
HANG ON, BROTHERS! TELKAN IS WITH YOU!
---NOTHING FOLLOWS---