Chapter 284: (TerraSol) (1/2)
Sangbre reached the surface, blinking at the sunlight after spending long minutes? Hours? Days? in the depths of the caverns. Lanaktallan, Tnvaru, and other refugees were being guided to the massive elevators inside the cave. Urged into orderly lines by the smaller cyborgs, they all shuffled nervously. Many of the Lanaktallan mares were quietly crying but putting on a brave face for the colts and calves.
Sangbre rushed out of the cave, following D-Mee3, Captain Manners following her. As soon as he cleared the cave entrance he staggered, one hand going his implant, the other hand dropping to his pistol butt. Sangbre turned around, looking at the Terran as he went down on one knee.
”What?” She asked, rushing back to him.
”It's a Case Omaha. Solarian Civil Defense is ordering everyone into the shelters,” Captain Manners said. He shook his head like he was a boxer trying to shake off a hard right hook. ”You were right to get these people to the shelters. They only have a short amount of time until the first attacks hit Terra's planetary shields.”
”Stand up, Space Force,” D-Mee3 urged, holding out his hand.
”How long?” Sangbre asked, looking at the thousands of refugees who had not been able to leave Terra yet for the newest homeworld. Captain Manners looked at Sangbre even as he took the cyborg's hand and was pulled to his feet.
”If they started firing nCv rounds as soon as they got in, the first impacts against the planetary defense shields will be in roughly four and a half hours,” Captain Manners said. ”It'll get bad before then,” he said.
”Define... bad,” Sangbre said.
”Guns are already firing,” Captain Manners said. ”C+ Cannon subspace shockwaves should start being felt within a few minutes.”
Sangbre turned to D-Mee3. ”Will the refugees reach shelter in time?”
”Only thanks to your timely warning, Matron,” the bulky cyborg said. He looked up at the sky. ”Like others before them, they think that Terra will be easily taken,” he sneered. ”The planet will break before we do.”
”My daughter?” Sangbre asked, feeling a cold chill. Her daughter was still young, which meant headstrong, and she feared that her daughter would take her ship into combat against the Overseers to attempt to pay them back for thousands of years of indignities.
Captain Manners put his hand to his datalink. ”Unknown. The It Tastes Sweet would be a civilian vessel and ordered out of the system,” he dropped his hand and touched Sangbre's shoulder. ”She survived a Precursor attack in an unarmed vessel, I'm sure she has sense to run.”
Sangbre nodded, looking up.
And urged her daughter to run.
------------------------
Legion stood on his command deck, deep within the Leviathan Class warship. It was not some ancient relic sporting weapons and defenses long ago made obsolete. It was the warship of an Immortal, upkept and modernized, kept state of the art.
He had already interlinked his war plan with TerraSol Military Command, even as his guns kept thundering at the enemy ships charging into his fire. He was taking return fire now, nCv cannons, plasma cannons, particle cannons, massive missile strikes and runs of multiple torpedoes. Nuclear detonations blossomed against his shields, antimatter fury roared against his battlescreens, and missile payloads wasted themselves against shields thicker than most Lanaktallan planetary defense shields.
Legion knew every detail of his fleet. From the lightest attack craft pilot to the secondary C+ Cannon battery gunnery officer aboard the Leviathans, he was they and they were he.
Lanaktallan ships shattered under his guns but still came forward, their battlescreens pushing aside the debris of their dead fellows as they charged.
”BRACE FOR IMPACT!” Legion roared out to his crew and himself aboard the light frigate in the lead as the lead ships started to attempt to sweep around Legions armada like river water around a rock. The ship began to shudder as battlescreen slammed against battlescreen, weapons were fired at point blank range, and aggressive VI's leaped from Legion's ships to the Lanaktallan ships as fast as possible.
Legion's eyebrows raised as he looked at the long range scanners and saw a second wave of millions of ships drop into realspace and immediately move to engage. He reached out to his gunner panels and redirected his C+ batteries even as he updated the targeting solutions on the local control systems in the belly of the ships.
The newcomers started taking fire even as the C+ shells were loaded into the chambers. Legion tightened his grip on the command yoke of his starfighter as he threaded through the Lanaktallan formation, his little ship nothing more than a frame wrapped around a C+ Cannon, two creation engines, and a missile launcher. He recieved the targeting update from himself and oriented, stomping the pedal to fire the C+ cannon.
Legion watched as his carriers launched a second wave of starfighter torchships and ordered the next wave to come out of the massive creation engines to be a 70/30 mixture of interceptors space superiority fighters and heavy bombers.
He knew how to deal with the massive ships of the newcomers, ships that rivaled the size of the massive Goliath class Precursor vessels.
With ammo. Lots of ammo.
And, of course, blood and lives.
But Legion had brought enough.
He grinned from where he stood on the deck of his ship, lightning flickering on his uniform.
It was good to be back.
---------------------
The Lanaktallan were taking horrendous casualties. Over half of the Corporate Wave was destroyed and they were barely inside the orbit of the seventh planet and the guns of the furthest out planet were still firing despite the planet itself breaking up. The Military Wave had taken 25% casualties and they were barely inside the orbit of the eighth planet.