Turbolaser blasts shattered an Akira’s shields, before another volley tore the ship apart. Moments later and it exploded in a blinding flash of light, as containment failed and antimatter freely reacted with the ship’s hull and other components.
The Imperial Fleet surged forward at maximum battle speed, easily clearing high orbit. Well, at this point it was just the Star Destroyers left, the smaller and lighter vessels having since jumped into hyperspace on my orders. We held the rearguard, and once the rest of the fleet had retreated, we broke through the enemy left wing and advanced towards open, interplanetary space.
Not without interference, of course. Most of what was left of Starfleet’s Home Fleet had disengaged and rushed towards low orbit, aiming to provide assistance and conduct rescue operations for the planet below, as a radioactive cloud spread over most of North America.
…
…
…
…
…
A part of me, rooted in the fading memories of my past life, felt regret and horror at that. Millions of people would have been killed by the bombardment alone, and millions, if not tens of millions more would follow as radioactive fallout spread across North America. This would leave a scar on the Human, or at least Terran psyche, for generations to come. Earth itself had been attacked, and in a way that would leave a physical scar that would last for thousands of years – assuming they didn’t perform geological engineering to fix it – in the form of the radioactive crater that had once been San Francisco and its environs.
It wouldn’t be the only scar either. Soon stories would be circulating of plants and animals, whether crops and livestock or flora and fauna in the wild, mutating and fatally falling ill from radiation sickness, followed by people soon after. And while the Federation’s medical technology was incredibly-advanced, at least on par with the Empire’s own, it would certainly struggle if not more so with the scale of the disaster I’d unleashed on the Earth.
Then the numbers would come, of the dead, injured, and missing, opening the psychological wound even wider, and darkening the resulting scar. Whether they liked it or not, the result of such physical and psychological scars could only be inevitable: Humanity…the Federation, must change.
…
…
…
…
…
Or not. The Eugenics Wars…World War III and the post-atomic horror…the Xindi and Romulan Wars…the Cold War between the Federation and the Klingon Empire…the Borg Invasions and then the Dominion War…
…through it all, they still refused to change. The nobility of their ideals aside, the Federation – Humanity – still stubbornly insisted on looking at the world and people around them, to say nothing of the stars above, with rose-colored glasses. I doubt Q wanted them to replace those glasses with jade-colored ones instead, but I was almost certain he wanted them to take those glasses off and just see.
See and live…
…I’m still not sure what he meant by the latter, but I was fairly certain about the former. And from the look and sound of things, it needed the Federation being passed through the crucible that was conquest by the Empire.
At the thought, a memory stirred from my past life, just a series of words from a novel whose name and characters I could no longer remember. What a shame…the words…struck a chord…
We’re about to pass through the crucible, but we’ll come out on the other side…rising from our own ashes…changed…
I closed my eyes, and sighing, pinched the bridge of my nose. I’m still a long way away from conquering the Federation, and this was only the first taste of the crucible’s fire, a fire that would forge a new, stronger Humanity.
Green lances burned through space, dozens of Star Destroyers of various classes raining fire at distances nearly a hundred thousand kilometers out. Explosions blossomed above the Earth’s atmosphere, as multiple defense stations exploded nearly at the same times. They might be able to stand up against Y-Wings, but against Star Destroyers?
Not a chance.
Then there was a blinding flash, enough to make me and Sara turn away, shielding our eyes. “What the hell was that?” I demanded.
Sara immediately checked the tactical display. “…it appears that the low orbit docks have been destroyed.” She said. “The light was most likely the result of a runaway antimatter reaction.”
“…I see…how much longer until the strike force arrives?”
“Estimated time is forty standard seconds.”
I nodded, and narrowed my eyes. Already, those elements of the Home Fleet which had foolishly pursued us were breaking off, rushing back to orbit to assist crippled vessels which had retreated earlier in battle, to evacuate burning orbitals and drifting hulks, and of course, to pick up escape pods.
As for my core destroyer force, well, a number of ships had suffered serious damage, mostly Venators and some Victories, but no Imperials. I’d also lost only one Star Destroyer, the Venator Class Black Prince, which had been unlucky enough to take salvoes of quantum torpedoes in its hangar. The halves of said Star Destroyer were still hanging in orbit, and a potential treasure throve of intelligence and engineering data…
…except the Federation and United Earth would soon have bigger problems on their hands to go rooting about a wreck. A wreck that was about to become radioactive scrap too. Good thing my commanders and I had taken the trouble of picking up as many escape pods from our ships as we could.
I would not want to be in one of them when Typhoon struck as fast and fierce as its name.
“All ships have cleared the Earth’s gravitational influence.” Sara said.
I nodded, and silently looked through the bridge windows as I faintly heard the captain give the order. Then the starlines were stretching out to infinity, and the fleet jumped into hyperspace.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“The enemy fleet has jumped into the quantum slipstream.” Anderson said, and Shanthi slumped into her seat with a weary sigh.
“How many?” she asked.
Matsuda worked away at his console for several seconds. “Out of one thousand and eighty-two ships at the start of the battle,” he began. “Only two hundred and sixteen ships are left space-worthy. And thinking hopefully, only half of those are either combat-worthy or can be restored to combat readiness.”
“And realistically-thinking?”
“…only a third, ma’am.”
Shanthi shook her head. “Damn it…” she said, and then grit her teeth as she saw the radioactive cloud blotting out most of North America. “…damn it…GOD DAMN IT!”
With the battle over, Shanthi finally allowed her control to slip, and slammed a fist against her seat’s armrest. “We’re all but annihilated!” she spat. “The Home Fleet’s gone, and we barely managed to scratch the enemy’s battleship core! We…!”
Anything more was interrupted as alarms began to sound. “What’s happening?” Matsuda demanded.
“Imperial warships have jumped into the Earth-Moon System.” Anderson replied. “Reading…four Vindicator Class Heavy Cruisers, six Carrack Class Light Cruisers, and sixteen CR90 Corvettes. They dropped out of quantum slipstream approximately eighty thousand kilometers from Earth, and proceeding through the system at fifteen thousand kilometers per second.”
“What are they up to now?” Shanthi softly asked before erupting in rage. “What is that damn Targaryen plotting?”
“Enemy fire detected…!” Anderson warned.
“What…?” Shanthi began to say, but was unable to finish as blinding light filled the viewscreen.
Unknown to the Starfleet Fleet Admiral, on dropping out of hyperspace, the fast attack force had immediately began spinning its drives up for an emergency hyperspace jump. Its course had been plotted and followed at maximum speed, carefully set to avoid being caught in the gravitational influence of either the Earth or the Moon.
And its weapons had sought out and locked onto the Lacus Somniorum, a volcanic plain located on the side of the Moon facing the Earth. The plain was an industrial region, home to over three hundred thousand people. Most of them worked in various heavy industries, ranging from metallurgy, to manufacturing, and precision engineering. Others worked in the service industries, such as medical and entertainment fields. Others more worked in the civil service, either as part of the local United Earth government, or providing oversight for the Federation.
It was a natural place to develop an industrial zone, though this was a given for the whole of the Lunar surface. The Moon was rich in metals and other minerals, vital as raw materials for heavy industry. Much of it was processed on the Moon itself, before being fed into local factories or exported to other places in the system. These included the even greater industrial districts and facilities on Mars, and the massive civilian and military shipyards over Earth, the Moon, and Mars.
Another major industry on the Moon was fuel production. Billions of years of exposure to the solar wind had deposited vast amounts of fusible elements into the Lunar regolith, and despite centuries of extraction, enough was left for centuries more at current rates of extraction, before the gas giants became the primary source of fuel for the fusion reactors that were the backbone of planetary energy infrastructures. To be sure, Earth’s oceans, and those of some moons such as in the Jovian system could produce fusible elements as well, but environmental interests stood as massive and unyielding obstacles to such exploitation.
But fusible elements were only one kind of fuel. Fusion reactors provided auxiliary power for starships, yes, but they simply didn’t have the output needed to make warp travel possible. And so like most known spacefaring species and organizations (the Romulans being an exception due to their mastery of artificial quantum singularities as energy sources), the Federation used antimatter to provide main power for starships, enough to sustain comfortable life in space and to achieve warp travel.
And so the Moon boasted the largest antimatter production and storage facilities in the entire Sol System, easily producing half the system’s output. Sheer proximity to the great shipyard complexes and naval facilities both on Luna and the Earth overrode safety concerns, with both the Federation and United Earth within it addressing said concerns with multiple-redundancy safety and security measures, ensuring that there was virtually no chance of an accident occurring with such a volatile form of fuel.
There was also the risk of attack from the outside, but the Federation believed that was unlikely, given the presence of the Home Fleet. And certainly, it didn’t seem there was any reason to worry. Subspace sensors around and surrounding the Sol System meant the Home Fleet could detect any incoming attack in advance and intercept before they could threaten the antimatter farms, and more importantly, no enemy had ever attempted to attack the antimatter farms or shown any indication of planning to do so.
Indeed, even in Starfleet Intelligence’s worst-case scenarios, the antimatter farms, while a target, were not for destruction, but for capture. Capture and use the antimatter kept inside the farms as fuel for the occupation forces.
And most Starfleet officers believed no one would be so…savage, to attack the antimatter farms and potentially trigger so great a catastrophe as to make the Third World War’s nuclear exchange look like a mere bar brawl.
That didn’t take the Galactic Empire into account.
Interrogation of captured Starfleet officers had not only revealed to the Empire the existence of the antimatter farms, but also their precise location. This information had been further confirmed through under-the table deals between the Orion Syndicate and Imperial Intelligence, and again in the recent battle by reconnaissance flights by ARC-170 Starfighters.
And ultimately, it wasn’t as though the location of the farms were state secrets. They serviced both military and civilian shipping, after all.
It took only few volleys from four Vindicator Class Heavy Cruisers to rupture the farms, and compromise the particle accelerators that made up the antimatter production lines. And then the Imperial Fleet was jumping to hyperspace, even as the escaping antimatter violently reacted with all the surrounding matter.
The resulting explosion shattered just over twenty-five per cent of the Moon into space-borne debris, much of it sent flying at significant fractions of the speed of light. The Moon was irradiated, guaranteeing a slow and painful death to anyone who stepped on its surface for more than an hour (if even that), though mercifully most of its population of approximately fifty million had been killed by the geological shock of what would be known as the Lacus Somniorum Catastrophe.
The radiation surge blinded the sensors across most of the Sol System, and destroyed what was left of Earth’s orbital defense satellites, at least those not shielded by the Earth’s mass. The people of Earth themselves were shielded by the magnetic field and the atmosphere of the planet, though anyone unfortunate enough to be looking to the Moon or to the sky was left blinded. Even then, aurorae would dance and swirl over Earth’s atmosphere for years to come, as radiation from the Moon’s corpse and high-energy particles left over from the catastrophe struck Earth’s ionosphere.
As for what was left of Starfleet’s Home Fleet, as well as the remaining orbital defense platforms…
…those on the ships and stations were safe, so long as their shields held, and with multiphasic shielding, even heavily-damaged ships did better than feared.
All their sensors and in some case, communication systems were fried though, and in cases where shields failed or had no shielding at all (like in hulks or escape pods)…
…rescue teams sent in months later reported finding boiled flesh fused into warped metal…
It would be weeks before the radiation settled down enough for anything more than short-range sensors could work in the Earth-Moon System, and all non-subspace communications beyond courier ships would be unusable for months, and unreliable for decades to come. It would also be months before anything unshielded could travel through the Earth-Moon System safely, necessitating the towing of damaged ships to Mars, for repairs and more.
Worse than that though, was that the Lacus Somniorum Catastrophe was not the only antimatter production and storage facility attacked. Two others in the asteroid battle, both producing between them the remaining half of the Sol System’s antimatter, were also attacked and destroyed by the Empire. In their cases, their distance from the rest of the planet’s inhabited worlds reduced the damage, but the radiation surges still further damaged the Sol System’s already battered sensor infrastructure.
And this was only the opening blow of Operation Typhoon.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“What the hell happened here?”
The defenses of the Belsavis Gateway were battered, but holding. One of the Golan-IIs was gone, and another was on fire, escape pods and shuttles streaming away, the battle to contain its main reactor clearly having ended in defeat.
A third Golan-II had sustained moderate damage…
…and that was it, really. Well, there were less escorts around, and on a closer look, it seems that one of the assigned Victory Class Star Destroyers had been destroyed.
Kriff…
…a Star Destroyer destroyed…
…how…?
I sighed, as the redundancy of my first question was made clear by the sight of wrecked and burning Klingon Birds-of-Prey drifting across the battlefield. Then the nearby holoprojector was lighting up, and Vice Admiral Valaras Broxin was there, and sporting a bloody bandage around his forehead.
“Welcome back, admiral.” He said.
“Admiral Broxin, you are injured.” I noted.
“Just a minor injury, ma’am.” He said. “A Klingon cruiser rammed my flagship, and I knocked my head on a railing. No concussion according to the doctor, though it did give me a fairly-bloody wound.”
“…head wounds tend to bleed heavily.” I admitted. “Now, report. And keep it short, I’m sure the details can wait for a written version.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Broxin said, and drawing himself up. “Approximately five standard hours after Operation Yellow’s commencement, our CGTs detected large numbers of cloaked vessels approaching from multiple directions. Assuming they were hostiles, we opened fire, forcing them to decloak and engage in battle.”
“And then what happened?” I asked.
“We held out long enough for reinforcements to arrive,” Broxin said. “The Eighth and Ninth Battlegroups arriving in about fifteen standard minutes.”
“And…?” I prompted.
“It took us just over an hour,” Broxin continued, “But we managed to rout the enemy. About five hundred ships in all, mostly heavy cruisers, but also a number of corvettes. We managed to capture one heavy cruiser in fact, though the crew put up quite the fight. We lost three Spacetroopers, who I would put forward for posthumous promotions and commendations.”
“Consider them granted, admiral.” I said, feeling slightly-cheered by the news. Slightly – I should have expected the Klingons to join in…
…now, what about the Romulans? Or the Cardassians, for that matter?
Romulans were no friends of the Federation, even their cooperation against the Dominion required…manipulation, by Starfleet Intelligence to achieve. They were also notoriously-opportunistic. Hmm…that could prove problematic, and I’m not entirely sure if we could make an arrangement…
…the Cardassians…okay, probably no worries there. They were spent after the Dominion War, though they might go for Bajor. And…
…oh kriff…Bajor…and their space gods…
…one thing at a time, Jaenera. One thing at a time. Hopefully, I can figure out a way to get around that problem…hopefully…
…kriff…
“…intelligence and engineering are already poring over the captured vessel,” Broxin was saying. “We should have preliminary reports ready by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
“Very good, admiral.” I said. “I’ll expect a detailed report about the battle by this evening. In the meantime, focus on repairing damaged ships, picking up survivors, and repairing battle damage.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Broxin said with a salute. I saluted back, and then the hologram faded away.
“What do we do, admiral?” Torrhen asked.
“The lost Golan-IIs need to be replaced.” I immediately said. “Reassign a battlegroup to assist in gateway defense until they are. We also need to adjust our long-term strategy, given this early appearance by the Klingons. I’d expected them to sit this one out for a bit longer, see how things were going before picking a side…well, now that they have, we’re going to have to deal with it.”
“As you say, ma’am.” Torrhen said with a nod.
“For now though,” I said. “Operations White and Typhoon will continue as planned. Similarly, all fleet units which fought as part of Operation Yellow will proceed on rotation to Sluis Van for full repairs. While at Sluis Van, personnel will have seventy-two standard hours of shore leave. Reinforcement and transfers will also proceed as planned therein.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I nodded at him, and then took a deep breath. “Seeing as we’ll be taking a breather,” I began. “I suppose I should pay a courtesy visit to Grand Moff Tarkin at Eriadu as well. Sara, make the arrangements.”
“Yes, admiral.”