Chapter 425 (1/2)

System 391-3888-a83. The system possessed only a few technological assets. A GalNet Repeater, a low fidelity system scanner, a communications hyperlink capable of transmitting messages at 25,000 times the speed of light. Other than that, nothing.

There really wasn't any use. Even for the Great Herd, the Unified Council, the system was next to worthless outside of overly expensive resource extraction.

As far as its physical makeup, it was a mess. A trinary star system. A red giant with a yellow star and a white dwarf orbiting it. Sixteen gas giants, a third of them super-massive. Five winding asteroid belts. A Kupier Belt and Oort Cloud so thick with debris it was measurable and prevented outside observation.

An observer could not sit a light month or two outside of the system and observe what was going on inside the system. As little as two light-days out and the system was nothing but a hazy glob.

That meant any exploration or examination of the system had to be done from within the system. The gravitational pulls of all the supermassive gas giants and the three suns made estimations based off of gravity completely useless.

The system was a nightmare of physics.

The system had been largely left alone throughout history.

But not always.

Debris from an ancient battle had slowly been drawn into one of the stars, or into the gravitational well of the gas giants.

Originally, far far back in history, the system had contained a single planet. A small rocky planet that had orbited the system in a winding path. The planet had been important, back in those days, as there was a single resource that could be extracted from the center of one of the supermassive gas giants.

What it was, there were no records or evidence any longer.

But back in history, far enough back that nothing in the Orion-Cygnus Galactic Spur was recognizable, there little planet had been important enough that all three of the dominant races had ensured they had representation.

Then, a disagreement had led to warfare, as the disagreement could only be solved by the elimination of the other two.

The planet had been destroyed, broken into chunks that were eventually devoured by the stars.

In the silence afterwards the system had been forgotten.

Decades, centuries, eons moved past. The system went on as it always had, a confusing mix of gravitational force, orbits, and radiation.

But history is a flat circle.

Four different groups had plans.

One intended on trapping the other and ambushing them.

One intended on springing the trap with overwhelming firepower and destroying it.

One intended on using the system as a deep strike base.

One intended on investigating on whether or not the supermassive gas giant still produced a rare and valuable material.

Four plans.

The universe, cold and malevolent, saw the plans.

And laughed.

The first two intended on showing up early to prepare their ambush.

The second two had no idea that the others were on their way.

The first was confident in their ability to arrive, hide, and prepare an ambush.

The second planners had a history of everything going bad, of plans lasting only thirty seconds into reality or ten seconds after contact with the enemy. They knew that the best laid plans of mice and men had less than optimum outcomes for either.

The third had computed an overwhelmingly positive analysis of how seizing the system would enable them to strike deeply into enemy territory. It did not matter that the older, more experienced of them had broken contact and vanished into their own plots.

The fourth had taken the time to analyze the damage to the system caused by that ancient battle. Between the damage and the gravitational anomalies, they would have to follow linear flows rather than their preferred methods, but the promise of the resource was too big of a lure to resist.

All of them were confident in their ability to manage any battle that took place, the last two considering any battle to be unlikely.

The universe laughed harder.

The law of averages, just plain common sense, would rule that each possible combatant would arrive at a different time, have a chance to prepare, have a chance to deploy their plotting and plans, with the first to arrive having the longest.

One of the combatants preferred fourth dimensional warfare.

Time, in the laymans terms.

Two of the combatants had experience with temporal warfare and countermeasures.

The third did, but had forgotten about it in the long march of time.

One of the combatants engaged in temporal warfare the same way the others engaged in ground warfare. To them, it was merely another battlefield, one they were the masters of.

So they used it extensively.

The universe disliked that.

All four fleets left at different times, travelling or not travelling for different amounts of time.

For one, it was a long journey in hyperspace. They dropped deep in with a roar to bleed off extraneous energy and warn/threaten everyone in the system.

For the other, it was a long series of jumpspace transitions. They came into the system by the tens of thousands without any fanfare. They arrived first and rapidly spread out to take positions.

For the third, it was a single eternal second of a Helljump, with hundreds of Hellgate portals opening up to disgorge a single vessel the size of a continent all over the system.

The last had been there at one time, the system they were using as a jumpoff point had intersected with the target system in the aeons past. They simply arrived in silence and uttered a single phrase.

They all arrived nearly at the same time.

The universe howled with laughter.

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Cu'udchu'ar had been assigned the Great Grand Most High of the Great Herd Armada Unstoppable Dominion nearly two months prior. At any other time he would have considered it to be the greatest accomplishment of his life.

To be put in charge of three hundred twenty eight million ships was more than any one Lanaktallan had commanded in known history.

Even with the fact he was to be pitted against the mad lemurs of Terra he would have felt nothing but pride and awe at the sheer weight of metal he commanded. More even than the attacks on the Terran Confederacy homeworlds.

Every ship that could be shaken loose, even if it meant denuding a system of protection, had been added to his monstrous fleet.

A month ago he had submitted, as had everyone else in the fleet, to neural pathway enhancement, which promised to fill his brain with even more knowledge of space combat.

The helmet had settled on his head and then he'd felt nothing but agony. When he had woken up he felt as if there were two of himself inside his head. He knew tactics, strategy, everything he would need to fight the mad lemurs of Terra in space.

But there were other things too. Strange things.

The feeling that this was all wrong. That there was something wrong.

He had the memories of a great war stallion of the past, but those memories told him that all of his ships, all of his billions of men, were wrong.

That there was something wrong with it all.

And his head hurt.

All the time.

Still, he put it out of his mind as the Great Herd Armada left jumpspace, a safe two light seconds back from the resonance zone. Any ship that tried to jump into a system inside the resonance zone was either rebuffed or torn to shreds by gravitational force.

It took nearly an hour for the data to come back.

No ships had been lost.

He sighed in relief, ignored the feeling something was wrong, and ordered the Great Herd Armada to break into Lesser Herds. Each of the Lesser Herds would conceal themselves in the gas giants, blend in with the twisting and active asteroid belts, and go to full stealth.

His own ship, the Dominion of Implacable Onslaught, headed deeper into the system to hide in one of the gas giant moons of the supermassive gas giant.

The Terrans would arrive. He knew they would. He had been told they would.

But why did it all feel off, feel wrong?

He was unaware that he spoke as the ship headed for the gas giant.

”Hail the Great Herd.”

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Twenty-Ninth Fleet was the largest in the Terran Confederate Space Force Navy. Nearly five times the size of any other fleet, it had been bolstered by the addition of Von Nuemann Logistics System vessels as well as additions from other members of the Confederacy.

The Cybernetic Fleet of the 8th Electronic had joined, as had the Digital Sentience Warfare Fleet. Even the biological fleets of the BASS had joined. There were Mantid and Treana'ad vessels, a Pubvian Battle Division, even a small Telkan Task Force and an Akltak Combat Flight.

It wasn't as large as the fleet that had entered the ”Mar-gite Occupied Zone” several centuries back, but it was damn close.

Admiral (Upper Decks) Samantha Johnathon Kwagarkak Smith had been a Naval commander for three hundred years, had decades of experience when it came to full fleet operations. She was experienced in everything from ground combat oversight to material transport convoys.

When the 29th Fleet dropped into the system, just outside the resonance zone, it took nearly a half hour for the computers to analyze the stress patterns of the entire system's gravitational forces.