The Dilgar War

by Lord of Misrule

It was the event that started it all. Thirty years before Babylon 5 the Dilgar race launched an Invasion of League space, a war which would cost Billions of lives, whole races destroyed and at the end give birth to a new super power The Earth Alliance

36. Chapter 36

Chapter 35

Brakiri home system

Dilgar strike fleet.

The atmosphere in the fleet was positively electric with a low murmur of hushed conversation forming a noisy background in every corridor and duty station onboard the ship. It was one more quirk of battle that Ari'shan hadn't expected and proved fascinated by. He had always imagined the time before battle to be completely silent as the warriors of Omelos gathered their thoughts and steadied their souls for the upcoming trial, but instead the vast majority of his crewmates were laughing and joking or just chatting nonchalantly about how many Brakiri they could kill before the day was out. To say it was a culture shock was an understatement.

Ari'shans life had been a relatively sheltered one, as son of a council member and later the Supreme Warmaster he had gone to the most exclusive schools and the elite of the military academies where his ascension to high ranking service was guaranteed just by his fathers influence. He absolutely hated that, becoming deeply angry and ashamed when he found out he had been assigned a commission within a week of joining the academy without even taking one test and that his future was already decided. Ari'shan didn't want that, he wanted to earn his place as an officer by his own merits and as a result had put every effort into his studies and training graduating at the top of his class far ahead of the other grace and favour students. Unfortunately he had still come away with a job on the General staff on Omelos, sat far behind the lines planning battles and organising strategies, a vital job of course but not for him.

So after a lot of petitioning and arguments he had finally convinced his father to release him to the front lines as a pilot, a role he had trained for and long dreamed of. In practice his skills were exceptional and he had already been award an experts laurels but to date he had never fired his guns in anger and felt that to truly embrace his role and to one day become a Warmaster himself he needed to fight beside his people and accept the risks of battle so he could greater understand what he would be sending his subordinates into during future wars. Naturally his superiors were reluctant, mostly out of a desire to see him live, but Ari'shan had to do this, he had to grow up and the battle over Brakir looked set to do that.

The lighting within the ship changed, becoming an amber tinted shade which permeated the narrow corridors like a warm haze. Dilgar ships were not known for being spacious or comfortable and on some smaller classes the Captains had to share their quarters with the other officers in zero gravity, only the biggest ships had separate rooms for senior officers. Warmaster Jha'dur's lavish quarters would have housed fifty regular crewmen on a frigate or destroyer, and even Ari'shan had no favours billeting with two squadrons worth of pilots in bunks four beds high. Leisure space was something virtually unheard of with only a rough gym and unarmed combat hall the only distractions beyond sleeping and writing up reports. At least as a pilot he could get outside once in a while.

With the light denoting a new alert status the gaggles of officers and crew broke up and efficiently made their way to their combat posts, the fleet was on active standby and it seemed the long awaited battle for Brakir was imminent. Warmaster Sha'dur had taken on his supplies and outfitted damaged ships to their maximum capacity, every vessel that could bear arms was due to be thrown into the lines orbiting the desert world in the distance. The Dilgar had been reinforced with a further hundred ships including a powerful bombardment group equipped with mass drivers, nuclear missiles and biological agents scheduled to begin their attack as the main assault began, the Warmaster hoping to sow confusion and uncertainty in the defenders by attacking the fleets and their homes simultaneously. A large collection of asteroids had been gathered over the last week and formed a store of ready ammunition for the warships.

Ari'shan made his way down a flight of steep stairs and passed by thick blast doors into the hangar bay coming face to face with brightly painted rows of Thorun Dart fighters. They were magnificent craft, the root of many woes in the League and a vehicle which had gained almost cult status back home, its pilots almost revered by the populace. The fighters were unmatched by anything their enemies possessed and had proven a key component to victory in most battles, these particular craft were brand new Thorun MKII fighters fresh from the factories on Alaca glistening in mottled green with the symbol of the Imperium emblazoned on their wings and fuselage, a four taloned claw. Like the craft the pilots were also new, just like Ari'shan though they were of course eager and well motivated.

"Is this it? This is it isn't it?" an excited voice caught Ari'shan's attention. He turned to see the source was a female officer in full flight gear.

"I think so." He answered calmly. "Flight leader Ari'shan, hunter nine squadron."

"Pilot Eri'lor." She returned his introduction. "We're in the same unit."

"So we are." He smiled and noted she had few adornments on her flight suit. "First mission?"

"Yes." She nodded enthusiastically. "I deployed from the academy about two weeks ago, but I have two hundred hours flight time."

"Good for you." Ari'shan encouraged her. "We'll be going into a very hectic battle, I want you to stay close to me, understand?"

"Yes sir."

"I might be flying some difficult manoeuvres, you don't have to match everything I do but at all times watch your position and be aware of any threats. You'll do just fine."

"Alright, I'll do my best." Eri'lor nodded, seemingly possessed by nervous energy. It was nothing new in a fresh recruit about to enter battle for the first time, their minds each handled the stress in different ways and for this young female it was over excitedness. Strangely Ari'shan himself felt no worries or concerns, just a sort of anticipation and curiosity about what it would be like.

The lighting turned from amber to red, the colour of blood signifying danger and risk on a dozen worlds and civilizations. It was a strange coincidence, one of those things unlikely to be ever really explained. In this instance it was a warning to prepare for battle, it appeared the fleet was now fully committed to attack.

"That's our signal to launch." Ari'shan glanced up at the lights. "Remember to stay with me, it'll be just fine."

"Yes sir." The new pilot nodded. "Permission to ask a question?"

"Go ahead."

"Are you related to the Supreme Warmaster?"

Ari'shan smiled despite himself. "Yes I am, and if he lets me serve in this squadron then he must be very sure of my abilities don't you think?"

"I suppose so." Eri'lor nodded without much conviction.

"So if he believes in me, so should you." He grinned. "We'll survive this and toast victory tonight. See you in the stars of glory."

The Thorun had a notably spacious cockpit and Ari'shan settled in comfortably, by now considering the fighter more of a sanctuary or second home than a simple tool of Dilgar policy. He strapped the restraints across his chest and pulled on his leather flight gloves making sure they fitted snugly to his fingers. At this point the average pilot would put on a helmet and fully seal their flight suit, but Ari'shan did not. He still wore the G suit like his comrades to keep him from blacking out during extreme turns and acceleration but he refused to wear a helmet, if he was foolish enough to let an enemy gun hit his fighter and crack his canopy he deserved to die. It was a hard philosophy to live by, but he strove to be the best pilot and the best person he could. He could not falter or give up in this mission, and if he did he believed he was unworthy of continuing to live and death was the logical conclusion.

Across the flight deck the leader of a companion squadron was performing his own ritual, anointing his pilots with blood drawn on their cheeks from a small bowl. Ari'shan recognized it as a very ancient tradition and while it seemed to be useful in motivating that particular unit Ari'shan himself would never use it, he looked on it as a barbaric right and a true warrior should be above all that, a true warrior fought for honour and for the knowledge he or she was better than the enemy. No more, no less. He shook his head at the scene in equal parts amusement and despair, pointless rituals were no match for training and skill. He flipped the canopy controls and brought the clear armoured hood clanking down with a thud and a hiss of pressurized air.

The flight crews made their way out of the hangar leaving the two dozen fighters in the red hued silence, heavily armoured doors sliding down at the exits sealing the bay off from the rest of the ship. His cockpit displays reported the atmosphere in the bay was been evacuated leaving the space outside his Thorun complete vacuum, he reflected that the distance between life and death was merely an inch or armoured cockpit. This was how real warriors fought.

With a jolt his fighter started to slide into position on electro magnetic rails, taking its place facing the hangar's main entrance along with the ships other squadrons. Still he remained calmly curious going over his basic training in his mind and remembering the intricacies of Thorun special tactics, not one thought strayed away from the task at hand, his thought processes becoming as mechanical as his metal steed. His flight recorder came online and he began to hear a series of beeping tones in his comms speakers, the time between beeps slowly lengthening. It was the ships way of giving the pilots a count down for launch, as the gap between beepd lengthened the time for battle grew nearer, it forced the pilots to focus on the silence waiting for the next tone, it centred their thoughts and drew their attention to their fighter and its surroundings.

The hangar doors parted, grinding open silently in the vacuum but shaking the fighters slightly with vibrations passing through the hull. Black sky waited for them, and far in the distance was the coin sized sphere of Brakir half shaded in blackness. He couldn't see the Brakiri fleet but it was there somewhere waiting between the Dilgar and their destiny. Ari'shan did not hate the Brakiri, indeed he didn't hate anyone, but he did believe that if the Dilgar were to live then others had to die to clear a space for his people, and so he committed himself totally to the cause. He did a final pre-flight check and then waited for the last tone.

Brakiri Dreadnought Corumai

Admiral Dokan sighed under his breath, it was a sorry turn of affairs when half of his flagships bridge was unlit forcing the crew to use portable lights to adequately see their consoles. The Dreadnoughts performance during the first attack on Brakir had been utterly appalling, it had suffered a series of power failures preventing it from performing anything more than serving as the butt of a million jokes. It was more than embarrassing, it had been almost fatal and with the fate of the Brakiri race itself in the balance the ships battle record was a national shame. Since then teams had been working around the clock to fix the warship fixing up secondary reactors and bypassing damaged systems wherever they were found. The corridors were filled with thick bundles of cables and whole sections were sealed off for plasma conduits feeding the ships main cannons. It was no way to go into battle, but Dokan didn't have much choice. There were ships in his fleet in far worse condition readying to defend their homes, Dokan would not dishonour them by complaining about his own situation.

"Admiral sir." Commander Rolan his acting first officer interrupted his thoughts. "Planetary defence centre on channel one."

"Acknowledged." Dokan nodded and patched the communication to his side console. "Commodore Broma?"

"Admiral." The voice of the ranking officer planetside answered. "Dilgar forces are on the move sir, patching through data to your ship."

The Corumai had a sensor suite and tactical analysis and display systems which put the old planetary defence HQ to shame, sadly none of those systems were actually working. The data seeped through and the main video display showed a simple schematic of the local system.

"They've reinforced." Dokan noted.

"The enemy have approximately four fleets at full strength and a fifth made up of damaged ships from the first attack." Commodore Broma narrated the changing displays. "They are attacking across a wide front, it looks like they are going to try and envelope us."

"I agree." Dokan watched the Dilgar ships spreading out, one fleet held the centre while the other three began branching out like the points of a triangle. "He will pin us with his centre fleet while the three units at the extremes loop around our flanks and attempt to surround us and drown our fleets in a crossfire."

"He's also deploying some Mass driver equipped ships close behind his main force." Broma pointed, highlighting the data for his Admiral.

"They'll be able to hit homeworld before we are even defeated." Dokan grimaced. "He's not even waiting until he destroys our fleet, he's rushing."

"He must be behind schedule, the Dilgar expected us to fall a month ago." Broma reasoned.

"It gives us something to work with." Dokan mused. "If he is in a rush he will be less cautious, we must find a way to exploit that."

"With respect sir we aren't in a position to exploit much." Broma reminded the Admiral. "Our fleets are shattered, crews exhausted, most of our ships are held together with glue and prayers. We can't face the Dilgar on equal terms."

"Your suggestion Commodore?"

"Hold in orbit and support the planetary defences."

"Turn our ships into oversized defence satellites?" Dokan clarified.

"That is my suggestion, yes sir." Broma ordered. "Each facet of the defences supports each other, ships, satellites, ground weapons."

"A solid and reasonable plan." Dokan complimented. "And exactly what Warmaster Sha'dur will be expecting from us, this is why he has chosen to attack from multiple angles because he knows we will not do anything other than hold our line and trust in firepower."

"Yes sir." Broma replied. "If we concentrate our power…"

"As I said a good plan, but not the one we will be following." Dokan interrupted. "No, we will instead play the Dilgar at their own game and launch our own surprise attack."

"Attack sir?" Broma's voice wavered.

"With every ship capable of moving." Dokan confirmed. "We will hit the Dilgar centre and destroy the bombardment ships. We will strike quickly and then retire, achieving our objectives before the rest of the Dilgar ships on the flanks can move in to support the centre."

"We're going to leave the support of the ground batteries?"

"We are, we will meet the Dilgar at range, we do not want them to enter bombardment range of Brakir."

"Sir, the Dilgar are ruthless." Broma spoke. "What if they do not send the flanks to support the centre and deploy them against Brakir itself?"

"Then those ships will be trapped between our fleet and our planetary defences and will be crushed." Dokan replied.

"Or they'll cut off our forces from home." Broma pointed out. "Admiral, I cannot support this decision."

"You don't have to." Dokan snapped. "You just need to follow orders. The fleet will form up and attack the Dilgar centre, those are the orders. You have control of the planet based weapons, activate them and be ready."

"Yes sir." Broma said formally but without conviction, then ended the message.

Rolan had been listening carefully to the conversation and was deeply divided. On the one hand it was an incredible risk and would put their outnumbered fleets in the middle of the Dilgar battlefront, but on the other it would keep the battle itself away from Brakir's upper atmosphere and reduce collateral damage or ancilliary Dilgar strikes on the surface. If they held the initiative they could push the Dilgar back and force a retreat, buying more valuable time for Brakir and hopefully encouraging their neighbours to help. The Dilgar were jamming all communications and had picquets waiting on the hyperspace beacons, the few ships which risked the journey were never heard from again and no one knew if they made it out or were destroyed. Their pleas for help to the League, the Narn and even their trading partners at Earth had been scrambled by the invaders and no signals had reached the embattled populace since the siege began, they had no idea what was happening beyond their borders, it could be the League was battling hard to reach them or were themselves under siege and facing annihilation.

The Brakiri were isolated, and in some ways not knowing was worse than simply learning the Dilgar were still undefeated in their campaign. Help had come once before in the shape of the marauding Balosian task force, but those ships were long gone by now hitting Dilgar supply lines in deep space. Rolan and his people could count on themselves and that was all, the fate of Brakir would rest firmly with the Brakiri. Dokan was a good leader and his crews had confidence in him to do the right thing, but whether that would wok or not against the virtually unstoppable Dilgar was another matter.

"Divisional Commanders answering Admiral." He relayed his information. "Forming for attack."

"Very good." Dokan stood up in front of his command chair. "Bring engines online, very carefully." He ordered. "Then begin the advance."

Dilgar Dreadnought Conqueror

"Our units are in position." Captain Evenil said without turning from her console. "Estimate ten minutes before our bombardment ships have range to hit Brakir."

"Fire as soon as the reach optimal range." Sha'dur commanded. Technically the rock throwing ships had unlimited range, but the further away they were the more time the Brakiri defenders had to intercept or deflect the unguided projectiles, so for his purposes optimum range was to close the distance and close the enemy reaction times. "Flank units will concentrate on enemy ships first, then strip the planet of its weapons."

"Warmaster." Evenil's tone changed. "Brakiri fleet is moving."

"Moving?" he frowned. What formation are they taking?"

"It looks like an attack formation." Evenil concluded. "But that makes no sense."

Sha'dur fought to remain calm, he hated it when enemies did something unexpected. He had planned for the Brakiri to sit tight and weather the Dilgar storm, he certainly had not expected them to outright attack. It was completely suicidal as far as he was concerned.

"Tell all flanks to standby, we might need to adjust our plan."

"Confirmed Warmaster, the Brakiri are breaking orbit."

"How many?"

"All of them sir, they're performing a sling shot manoevre."

He grimaced, that would give the Brakiri ships a sizeable speed boost and probably put the battle closer to the Dilgar starting point than to Brakir itself. His biggest problem now was making sure his forces reacted quickly enough to the changing battle. As a rule Dilgar forces were rigid and highly disciplined but they did poorly when presented with a surprise beyond their battle plan, Jha'dur's fleets were the exception and could alter formations and tactics in a heart beat, his sister emphasising creativity and fluid strategy to her officers. Sha'dur had tried to emulate this, but it was still early days and his fleets were still mainly using the fixed tactics outlined in regular fleet doctrine. This could turn really nasty.

"Order Battlemaster Al'rosh to bring his flanking force down to cut off the Brakiri, the remaining flanks will proceed on mission and engage the defences surrounding Brakir." He commanded trying to think ahead and visualise the forces in space as his sister had taught him. "I want fighters airborne and engaging the Brakiri warships, ignore the fighters if possible."

"Confirmed." Evenil's fingers flew over her control panel.

"Then get a message to Naval command, tell them we are engaging the Brakiri."

With a final long tone Ari'shan's speakers whined, then the fighters launch systems kicked in throwing him back in his seat. The main engines roared into life and pushed the Thorun along the Electro magnetic rails and out through the open doorway into space passing between the cruisers forward mandibles and finally becoming free. Out here you had nothing to rely on except your own skills and a handful of your closest comrades, and Ari'shan relished it dearly. The acceleration faded as his ship coasted at an unchanging velocity towards Brakir, his sensor grid coming to life and instantly showing him an armada of Brakiri ships on its way.

"Fleet, this is Captain Evenil." A clipped female voice came through the speakers. "Pentacans will deploy to meet the Brakiri advance, fighters move forward and engage warships at will. Hunter group and Slayer group will engage enemy fighters and bombers to cover the remaining Thorun wings on their strike mission."

As a member of the ten squadron Hunter group Ari'shan was more than happy to follow those orders, he would much rather take on fighters than warships, it was a greater challenge.

"Eri'lor, take your position on my wing." He spoke conversationally. "Remember to stay there and watch my back. We are a team and together we will be just fine."

"I'm with you sir." She replied nervously. "There are a lot of them."

"Yes." Ari'shan agreed. "In fact they outnumber our central fleet, but with our flanks closing we will outgun them three to one, we just need to keep them busy."

"How do we keep them busy?"

"Well I thought we could start by killing them all, that should keep them occupied." Ari'shan suppressed a laugh, maybe the anticipation was getting to him a little. "We'll hit them fast, open your throttle to three quarters and keep a watch on your scanners, you have the agility advantage, exploit it."

"Yes sir." She swallowed hard trying to remove the lump in her throat.

"Just remember, they're more scared of you than you are of them." Ari'shan advised. "Now open yor throttle and keep up."

Corumai

"The upper flanking force is altering course," Second officer Remik noted. "It's heading our way."

"What about the other two flanks?" Dokan demanded.

Remik shook his head. "Still heading for Brakir."

Dokan briefly considered turning back, but his fleet had too much momentum by now and they were going to hit the Dilgar no matter what. "Hold course and speed." He decided. "Spin up all batteries, prepare to engage as soon as we reach effective range."

The lighting and gravity on the bridge noticeably faltered as the weapons began their arming cycle, but remained more or less active. So far the ship had managed to keep its place in the battle line and providing nothing fell off or shorted out the Corumai would finally get to justify its existence and perhaps earn some redemption for its past failure. Flanking it were the best ships the Brakiri could scrape together, a few dozen heavy cruisers escorted by light carriers and escort frigates. It wasn't much but it was all they had. On the edges of battle were the more heavily damaged Brakiri ships, and for those ships the coming battle was most likely the last thing they would ever do. Their orders were to delay the advance of the Dilgar flanking forces by forming a living barrier and sacrifice themselves so the more combat capable ships could smash through the Dilgar centre and force a retreat. It was a tactic that the Brakiri had never even considered using a few months ago, now it was an act of extreme courage and selflessness, a quality few would have believed the Brakiri possessed.

"Dart fighters moving our way, intercept course." Rolan read the intermittent sensor data. "I'm picking up nuclear missiles on some of them, ship killers."

"Order all fighters forward to intercept." Dokan kept his eyes fixed on the tactical screens. "Bring the frigates in close to the heavy ships to provide final barrier fire for our core ships, we can't afford to lose anyone before we hit the main line."

"Aye sir, instructing squadrons." Rolan tapped the preset frequencies into the console and gave the release orders for the fighter wings, something the Brakiri at least had plenty of. Ship and ground based squadrons had united and literally swarmed the sky, what they lacked in quality the more than made up for in quantity.

"Two minutes until range." Officer Remik announced. "All weapons armed, oh, and the targeting scanners are actually working."

Dokan suppressed a smile. "Pick me a Dilgar battleship and prepare an alpha strike, let's make an impression."

Rolan wiped the gathering sweat on from his palms onto his jacket, hoping nobody noticed he nerves. His face was set in a harsh and expressionless stare at his console and his mind was forcibly emptied of any thoughts beyond his immediate duty. He watched as friendly units prepared for battle, fighters breaking away without fear to engage the almost legendary Thorun wings while escort ships but themselves between the heavy warships and the main threats to bodily intercept incoming fire and protect the main combat power of the fleet with their lives. The Brakiri were ready to fight for their place in the galaxy, and if courage alone could win the day then his peope had surely secured victory. He whispered a quick prayer and counted the seconds until they entered firing range.

"Flight leader, do you see that!" Eri'lor exclaimed in fear and excitement.

"I see them, Brakiri squadrons." Ari'shan replied intensely, carefully looking for squadron leaders among the hoarde of incoming Falkosi interceptors. "This is our moment, accelerate to full speed and engage any target you get a clean shot at, but remember to stay with me."

"Yes sir." She answered. "This is the real thing, finally!"

"Stay in control, don't let your emotions override your senses." Ari'shan warned. "We're going to have trouble all around us, stay mobile."

"Weapons active." Eri'lor reported. "I'm getting enemy weapon locks!"

"Don't worry about it." Ari'shan said. "Just be ready to evade." He noticed he had about thirty weapons locking on to his own Thorun, this was going to be very interesting.

The Brakiri fighters swooped around the capital ships, dodging between the green cruisers and forming up in loose groups. They weaved between tall fins and even ducked through the beams and supports holding the various gun emplacements rigid on the Avioki's supporting the advance. The did not hesitate to attack, which earned them respect from Ari'shan, but they did so in uneven formations betraying their lack of experience. Personally he was hoping to find one or two veteran pilots somewhere in the group for honourable single combat but he had little concern about blasting his way through the unskilled but worthy pilots currently entering range.

"Are you ready Pilot officer Eri'lor?" Ari'shan asked formally. "Ready to accept either victory or death?"

"I am." She agreed, sounding quite sincere but on the brink of terror.

"Open your throttle to full, pray if you want, and then go without hesitation into the very heart of the enemy. Good luck, and we will toast our victory and our glory either on the flagship of in the after life."

He activated the ships cockpit recorder and selected playback, from the speakers a slow building form of ancient music began to play, a sombre piece of orchestration generally reviled on Omelos for being too miserable and for mourning death instead of celebrating triumph. Ari'shan liked it, he liked to be reminded that all things must end and that everything dies, accepting death meant he no longer feared it and he would not hesitate or second guess himself in the coming battle. As the notes soared mournfully higher he flicked the safeties for his cannons off and rested his finger on the trigger. He took one deep focused and breath and waited for the Brakiri to take the first shot.

The leading Brakiri squadron knew it's stuff, they must have been veterans because they held for a further five seconds after entering range before actually firing, making sure they were opening the engagement at optimum range. On their cue the other squadrons also engaged, they were ordered to follow this veteran unit and try to copy what they did, though ultimately Admiral Dokan expected the rapidly trained new fighter units would serve as little more than speed bumps for the Dilgar dart fighters. The veteran squadron were careful to concentrate their fire on a single enemy squadron while the other units engaged in a more eclectic maner taking shots at whatever targets they thought were easiest to hit.

Ari'shan rolled his fighter out of the way of three separate volleys converging on his craft, flipping over five times in rapid succession as each stream of green energy bolts sailed by. He returned the compliment, firing twice and making a separate kill with each shot. The third Brakiri attacked survived long enough to fire again, forcing Ari'shan to fire braking thrusters on one main engine slewing the Thorun into a tight pivot and allowing the enemy fire to pass through empty space. He fired his twin guns a few seconds before the Brakiri ship raced past, the particle bolts arriving at the precise time the Brakiri ship did. He was captivated by the music that filled his cockpit and the blazing lights dancing all around, so much so it took a moment to realise he hadn't actually locked his weapons on the Brakiri, he had just fired on instinct and hit every time.

White and red Dilgar fire streamed past as Eri'lor made it into range and made her contribution, destroying a novice Brakiri pilot who was flying too slowly and not taking evasive action, a sitting duck in this kind of battle. The Dilgar had more than their share of first time pilots in battle today, but compared to the Brakiri they were already veterans, their training and exercises at the flight academy more than paying off in the developing maelstrom. While the Dilgar held good formation constantly striking and reforming into their units the Brakiri showed very little cohesion with each pilot working alone rather than as part of a team. It was turning into a massacre. It didn't go entirely the Dilgar way, a Thorun shattered silently to the left of Ari'shan, its starboard engine module tracing purple fire across his path as it continued to burn despite being separated from its host fighter craft. There were enough veteran Brakiri out there to make life interesting, and so with his solemn sound track the son of the Supreme Warmaster dropped his fighters nose and headed for the thick of the battle.

Corumai

"Entering range in five seconds, all ships preparing to engage." Remik called out, his voice forced unnaturally loud by excitement and fear.

"Forward weapons charged and ready, I have weapons lock on the leading Mishakur." Rolan reported.

"Is it the Warmasters ship?" Dokan asked quickly.

"No sir, Sha'dur is keeping back."

"We'll have him beneath our guns before this day is out." Dokan growled the promise. "All batteries open fire."

The Corumai had been built as a dreadnought, a warship aimed at over awing the rest of the League by virtue of its size and power. While the Brakiri conveniently ignored the sheer destructive potential of Hyach battleships when making their boast the Corumai design was armed with a very respectable array of weapons, it had many faults but firepower wasn't one of them. Even in its far from perfect state it neatly outgunned any ship in the Dilgar fleet and had solid enough protection to wither the expected storm of return fire, Dokan was hoping to draw fire to his flagship and in so doing leave his cruiser units free to engage at will.

On his order the heavy lance cannons studding the hull powered up, glowed bright green around their muzzles, and then released a torrent of gravitic energy at the Dilgar lines. The ship had never fired in anger before, in fact in tests it hadn't once released a full powered alpha strike and there were many onboard expecting the ship to either explode or fry its reactors at the first volley, but fate must have been favouring the foolish today and the overly ambitious ship made a text book attack, hitting with all but one of its weapons. The Dilgar dreadnought was cut to pieces, fracturing into thousands of pieces as ammunition stores and weapons capacitors detonated instantly destroying the ship, much to the shock of friend and foe alike.

"Got him!" Remik yelled, his statement greeted by cheers across the bridge.

"Well done people!" Dokan grinned. "Now line me up another!"

"The rest of the fleet is engaging, the enemy lines are weakening!" Rolan added to the euphoria. "Reading damage to multiple ships!"

"Keep us on course, continue firing!" the exuberant Admiral urged. "Fire at will!"

Conqueror

"I was rather hoping that monstrosity would explode as soon as it engaged." Sha'dur sighed. "Pity, that would have made my day."

"The Brakiri are in range Warmaster," his aide reported. "Damage to the leading Pentacans."

"Time on target." Sha'dur ordered a tactic his sister had suggested to him. "Missiles, guns and lasers. If that flagship won't destroy itself we'll help it along." Whoever the Brakiri admiral was he seemed to have spirit and Sha'dur was sure his sibling Warmaster would offer the enemy respect for at least trying to force the Dilgar onto the defensive, but personally he just thought it was a rather foolish tactic. Their optimism had blinded them to the truth of the situation, that they were outgunned and outclassed which Warmaster Sha'dur was about to explain to them.

"Begin firing sequence."

Missiles sprouted from across the Dilgar lines, born in white puffs of ejected gas before their engines kicked in with a blue and purple train of ions. They would wobble slightly as the parent ships fed them targeting data and course corrections, then they lined up and lanced straight for their targets on the Brakiri frontline. The tactic required all the precision and discipline the Dilgar and imprinted on their crews, the idea was ti time each separate barrage from each separate battery across the fleet to ensure every singly weapon impacted at the same time. Missiles were the slowest moving weapons and were fired first, then came bolt cannons and finally lasers which would arrive almost instantly. Timing these strikes on a single ship was a difficult task in itself, timing them across an entire fleet was a work of art.

The Brakiri ships continued their drive on, laying down a constant raking fire against the Dilgar fleet and leaving the missiles to the escorts. Half a dozen more cruisers and destroyers were brought down and fell out of formation but still the fleet held its fire until the appointed moment, restricting themselves to point defence guns to knock down stray fighters and occasional missiles. With cold willpower they waited until the counters reached zero and only then did they return fire, a thick fusillade of orange bolter fire bursting from hundreds of cannons and silently rolling through space. They closed quickly on the Brakiri catching up to the missiles enroute and a heartbeat before they met the enemy they were joined by blinding laser fire racing up to join the strike.

The Brakiri force ploughed head long into the solid wall of destructive energy and vanished, shattered into a thousand pieces of debris where ships had once been. The entire advance was stopped dead by the precision and brutality of the Dilgar response as the heart of the fleet was torn out and flattened within sight of the planet they were defending. The last intact warships of the Brakiri fleets took the main brunt of the attack, those proud few ships which were the key to Admiral Dokan's plan and salvation for the billions waiting expectantly below were reduced to a collection of broken parts and hollow hulls. The Brakiri hopes faltered and died along with the ten thousand officers and crew manning those ships, gone in an instant. They had hoped raw courage and determination alone would win them the day, but the Dilgar it seemed were providing a harsh education in the realities of effective total war.

"Advance and close the range." Sha'dur said evenly observing the destruction. "Where is Battlemaster Al'rosh?"

"His force is just about to enter range behind the Brakiri." Evenil replied.

"Very good, all ships will engage at will. Pick apart the survivors and then support the bombardment ships." The Warmaster commanded. "Location of the other flanking forces?"

"Closing on Brakiri orbit, they'll be engaging in minutes."

"Exemplory Captain, this battle will see its fair share of medals and commendations. Relay my orders and follow the fleet in."

Brakir, Government centre.

Minister Brocat kept his eyes fixed on the sky, in the dull evening light he was able to make out the distant flashes a few hundred thousand miles away, almost spitting distance in stellar terms. He was moved and made uneasy by the strobing lights, but he realised that while they still occurred it meant there were Brakiri ships still in combat and the skies were being hotly contested. It was when the sky returned to darkness that he was most afraid of.

"I've found some reports." Minister Norila joined Brocat on one of the balconies attached to the outside of the Syndicracy building, the centre of government on Brakir. Most of the leaders and politicians were long gone to remote bunkers far from the population centres almost certain to be hit in the first wave of attacks. Brocat stayed because he decided he would rather by atomised by a falling rock than live on slowly wasting away in the wilderness from the effects of a Dilgar seeded plague. He didn't consider it courageous, just a logical choice in the circumstances.

"Anything new?" he asked his fellow politician without taking his eyes of the macabre light show.

"It's confused, but not good." The nervous man answered, he too had come to the conclusion that a quick death was the best he could wish for but wasn't quite so calm about it as Brocat was. "Some say our fleet is still advancing, some say te Dilgar are almost in orbit."

He took in the information. "What about our military?"

"They're too busy to return my calls."

"I suppose we'll just have to trust them then."

Norila released a nervous laugh before quietening down. He really wasn't handling this well. Brocat couldn't blame him, he didn't have the long years of keeping a neutral demeanour in corporate negotiations or League debates with Brocat could call on, nor had he really fulfilled his ambitions and would be dying without believing he had reached his potential. It didn't really matter faced with the consequences of what could happen if their defences fell, but clearly Norila could barely accept his own fate, let alone comprehend what was truly at stake for Brakir as a whole.

For a few more moments they stood and watched in morbid fascination as lights flickered and danced high above hinting at the massive explosions that must be surrounding the battle field. For a long time the lights had been concentrated in one part of the sky, but as they continued to watch they began to spread out and seem larger.

"I think they're getting closer." Norila chattered.

"Maybe, it's hard to tell."

Brakiri tended to have remarkably good vision, even in the dull light of the setting sun and Brocat tried to focus on the unfolding battle far overhead to find the tell tale weapons flashes or maybe even reflected light from a low flying cruiser to indicate the fighting had moved to orbit. He saw a few indications of battle but couldn't really tell for sure, and it frustrated him.

"Can you see that?" Norila pointed to movement on the horizon. "Low in the sky."

Brocat followed his companions directions and quickly caught the twinkling rising up above the desert sands and into the sky, at first it was a single point of light like a particularly bright star, but soon it was joined by more and more stars all following on and moving against the black background.

"It's beautiful." Norila looked on in wonder. "I didn't know ships looked like that, are they ours?"

"I don't know." Brocat frowned. "They are keeping formation, looks like they are just settling into orbit."

"Well the battle is still going on." Norila pointed out indicating the flashes in another part of the sky. "So we still have ships engaging."

Suddenly more bright sparks began dotting the sky around the new formation crossing the horizon, the signs of battle definitely indicating the forces were in orbit.

"I don't think they are ours." Norila began to back away.

"You can't tell from this far away." Brocat still squinted, looking for the colour of weapons fire.

"No, but they can." He pointed out across the city before turning and fleeing indoors.

Brocat looked down in time to see a structure rising up at the edge of the city, a vast tube braced by a lattice of girders and wires slowly rotating and elevating. It was one of the planetary defence cannons, Brakir's final line of defence from attack and the fact these four hundred metre monsters were being armed told Brocat exactly how desperate things had become. The cannons were virtual copies of the lances fitted to heavy cruisers but with superior power generators and hence better rates of fire. They did however have one major problem, namely they were designed for battle in space and not for deployment on the ground. During test firings in the desert the weapon had managed to heat the area around it so much the sand had fused to glass for almost three hundred metres in each direction, not to mention deafening the firing team. In vacuum of course there were no such problems, but on Brakir these weapons had been ruled unsafe for anything but extreme emergencies.

Brocat did the smart thing and ducked.

The muzzle blast shattered windows across the city and sucked up air in an inferno of blazing light as the energy released by the heavy cannon ignited the surrounding atmosphere and true to form glassed a few hundred metres of desert. The ground jolted with a small tremor and the thickly built government centre shook and rattled, dust falling from the ceiling and walls dislodged by the shock. The scream of the hurricane speed winds sucked up behind the energy bolt were load enough from Brocat's position miles away, he was thankful the cities inhabitants were all safe in bunkers and shelters because anyone caught outside would be very sorry.

He risked standing up and peering out as the cannon recharged, across the flat desert horizon he could see other weapons engaging, bright green bolts trailed by fire and black smoke arcing high into the air, sometimes passing overhead and giving the illusion of curving through the air. He watched fascinated for a moment, then remembered to take cover again as the nearest gun fired with jaw shaking force and ear splitting noise lighting the whole city for a brief moment before the green light faded. They were fearsome weapons, and despite the damage to property must have done wonders for civilian morale as they imagined the pure destructive effect they must be having on the Dilgar. But in truth Brocat knew the Dilgar had weapons which far outclassed these guns, he'd seen footage of mass driver attacks and if the Dilgar managed to bring bombardment ships in range they could unleash devestation beyond comprehension. On Alaca a billion people had been killed in the first hour of the bombardment, on Brakir where the population was even more centralised around the scarce water supplies the casualties would be even more horrendous.

He stayed on the balcony laying down to avoid the periodic muzzle blasts from th defence grid, looking up into the blackening sky and tracing each volley as it sailed lazily upwards getting fainter and fainter before ending in another flash like a thousand others. The defensive guns were banging like hells anvil, if it was uncomfortable down here it must have been utterly lethal in orbit.

Corumai

The damage had been tremendous and would have gutted the average heavy cruiser, it had been a minor miracle that the flagship had survived and on a day like this the Brakir needed every miracle they could count. The attack had stalled and initiative was lost, grinding to a halt mired in the wrecks of the spearhead force which had fallen to the precise Dilgar counter attack. Now thse enemy ships were bearing down on two sides to finish them off.

"Damage report!" demanded the Admiral.

"Forward and port hull heavily damaged." Rolan shouted back. "Power grid is holding but weapons on the port hull are shorted out, engineers working to repair."

"Where is our support?"

Rolan checked his scanners, then checked again.

"Commander?" Dokan pressed.

"Our escorts are gone sir, we have two intact cruisers left."

The news shocked Dokan into a moments silence before he recovered and spoke again. "What about the other ships, the second rates too damaged to take point?"

"Err, most of them are still with us sir." Rolan confirmed. "Most of the enemy fire was directed at our best fighting ships."

"That means we still have a fleet, and we can still achieve the objective." The Admiral forcibly regained his focus and set about motivating his crew. "The Dilgar are expecting crippled ships and defeated crews, let's give them the last surprise of their worthless lives! All ahead full!"

Officer Remik carefully guided the wounded ship through the tangle of destroyed cruisers which had surrounded it, avoiding them out of reverence more than necessity and then setting the Corumai on collision course with the nearest Dilgar sqaudron. The advance began again with Dokan in the lead, the scraped together remains of the Brakiri defence fleets falling into position alongside the command ship and arming what weapons they had. If the Dilgar were surprised by the rapid redressing of the Brakiri fleet once more into an organized group they made no reaction, they simply adjusted their course to intercept th enew line head on and waited for a clear shot.

The Brakiri got in first firing at virtually point blank and shredding a section of the Dilgar line. Undettered the feline species returned fire shot for shot bringing down some of the damaged cruisers and rattling the Corumai's hull. Dokan finally released his bombers and whatever reserve fighters he had left and they charged forwards into battle with the enemy cruisers, scarring green hulls with close ranged fire. The Dilgar tried to wrap around the edges of the Brakiri force but Dokan didn't take the bait and drove on regardless with the fleet command ship and the mass driver equipped cruisers still considered his primary target. Stubbornly they attacked, and while losses mounte they did not break and began to destroy or disable more and more attackers.

Ari'shan didn't even adjust speed as he dodged through the spinning debris, trusting his reflexes to see him through the potentially deadly terrain at near full speed. His wing mate Eri'lor was being more cautious but to her credit was doing a good job of keeping up and had distinguished herself in the engagement making three kills so far, although Ari'shan himself had so far defeated eleven separate fighters. With the sudden change in Brakiri tactics Hunter group had been recalled to provide cover for the central strike fleet and intercept the newly arriving Brakiri Pikitos class strike craft, a heavy vehicle which represented quite a threat when deployed in numbers. Point defences across the fleet were busy engaging but Ari'shan could see one cruiser spinning out of control with its engines destroyed by a concentrated strike.

"We'll be going in fast and staying close to the big ships." Ari'shan commented. "It's the best way to avoid anti fighter guns. There are enemy fighters in the area so I want to change roles, you go for the strike craft and I'll watch your back and take on any interceptors."

"Okay sir." Eri'lor still sounded unsure, but thankfully her nerves had vanished. She'd managed to sta alive in the middle of a titanic dogfight with fighters exploding constantly on all sides, it had been the best therapy she could have wanted and drove everything except her training from her mind. She was a little hesitant at taking the lead, but Thorun pilots were taught to be flexible so she strengthened her resolve and nudged ahead of Ari'shan's fighter.

"It looks pretty thick up there." She commented. "They're close enough to shout insults!"

Ari'shan chuckled. "Good, gives us cover to exploit. You're doing great, just keep your mind on the job, find a target and follow your training."

The two fighters cruised into battle holding a tight paired formation, the rest of the group following in pairs or quartets and setting up to intercept the marauding Brakiri craft. They flittered through thte edges of the battle with neither side really paying much attention to the incoming fighters. Ari'shan passed close to a heavily damaged Brakir cruiser with most of its rear section shot away including propulsion. Momentum and inertia were keeping it going through the heart of the Dilgar forces engaging whatever ships came into its arc. It was both pathetic and strangely noble, a sentiment he had felt a lot while engaging the Brakiri today.

"Sir, enemy fighters on the scope." Eri'lor interrupted his vigil. "Dead ahead."

"You have the lead officer, decide on the best attack speed and angle, I'm following on."

The new pilot opened the throttle a little more and accelerated, aiming to sweep in behind the Brakiri and take advantage of their weakest spot. The formation was passing between the ranked enemy ships and seemed to be lining up on a heavily engaged Dreadnought currently taking on three other Brakiri warships and certainly too distracted to focus on a strike unit. Ari'shan stayed close as Eri'lor lined up and prepared to fire, keeping a watch on the escorting fighters which seemed to be themselves distracted by the battle ahead. She held off using active weapons until the last possible moment so she did not tip off the Brakiri fighters, and then when she achieved the best speed and position she went weapons hot and locked on.

The Brakiri reacted far too slowly, betraying their lack of military training. The fighters began to wheel away and turn but the strike craft remained on course taking just the minimum evasive action, they were easy targets and Eri'lor began bringing them down one after the other. The fighters were more tricky, Ari'shan destroyed two as they were still trying to decide what to do, and a third as it pulled a sharp turn which would have made the average Thorun pilot shake their head and sigh. Two Falkosi fighters lined up on the pair of Dilgar, one on each fighter which was a mistake, they should have tried to overwhelm Ari'shan first then go for Eri'lor, they didn't stand a chance one on one with a Thorun piloted by even a first timer. It was their incredible bad luck they found themselves up against a pilot as skilled as Ari'shan, and it took little effort to remove both craft from the universe.

With the strike craft taken down by Eri'lor the two pilots found themselves in the thick of the battle as the Brakiri slammed into the Dilgar lines and began firing in all directions at the ships which by now surrounded them. Likewise the Dilgar ships were suddenly confronted with targets in efery arc and returned fire at anything that moved, burning holes through the weakened Brakiri armour while loosing vast sections of their structure themselves to return fire. The battle had turned into a close range slugging match with all thoughts of tactics and strategy firmly thrown out of the nearest airlock, it now came down to Brakiri determination and Dilgar training to decide which side would blink first.

Eri'lor made a sharp sideways slide as a spent missile spiralled past, its engine assembly shot away or malfunctioning. A heavily damaged Brakiri light cruiser collided head on with a Dilgar strike ship ten miles above Ari'shan's cockpit, the Brakiri ships tougher structure splitting the Dilgar ship lengthways before both exploded in an avalanche of spinning wreckage. The side of a Dilgar dreadnought was pitted with a series of explosions as it came under fire from a pair of frigates, moments later the attackers were shredded by massed fire from particle bolters and laser cannons. All around ships from both sides fell apart under heavy fire, some in blinding explosions, some breaking up in a crackle of flames, others simply seemed to stop fighting and drift away out of control. There didn't seem to be any pattern to it, just the randomness of battle and the fickle nature of the fates.

"Fighters." Ari'shan barked. "Coming in high, twenty degrees."

"I see them." Eri'lor replied. "Do we attack?"

The other officer tried not laugh. "We certainly do, it's what they pay us for."

"Accelerating to engage."

"Get in close, use your agility and don't let them dictate range."

The two Thoruns peeled away from their previous course and pointed their noses at the incoming Brakir flight, the smaller green fighters darting around the wreckage that choked space. Trails of glowing hot debris still radiated their heat into the vacuum and destroyed fightes bounced and clanged on passing warships. It was all the expected detritus of battle with one exception, no escape pods. Both sides were fighting to the end and neither abandoned ship instead preferring to ram their enemies in the final moments.

"Weapons lock." Eri'lor stated.

"Jink left, we'll pass either side of them. Fire when you get the shot."

With a burst of manoeuvring thrusters the two Dilgar craft slid sideways opening a gap between them then angled their noses slightly inwards. The Brakiri held course and began firing from long range hoping to score a lucky hit, most of the rounds went wide but one struck Eri'lor and merely bounced of her Dart fighters toughened hull leaving a black scar and a judder in the controls. Ari'shan held his fire and waited until the Brakiri grew closer, performing quick sideways slides to avoid the more accurate fire. He waited until they reached less than a mile distant, then fired. His first target exploded in red and blue flame with a direct hit, its wingmate dodging the fire ball and sweeping around below. Ari'shan had anticipated that and made sure he had another pair of particle bolts ready to meet the Falkosi as it emerged from the bright light, tearing it's fron half completely off. He calmly dropped his port wing as the still active engine section of the enemy fighter spun crazily past and checked on Eri'lor, just in time to see her take an engine off her last opponent and send it spinning wildly out of control to be lost in the confusion of battle.

"Well done officer." Ari'shan congratulated. "How are you feeling?"

"Feeling sir?" Eri'lor semed bewildered at the question.

"Yes, what are you feeling?"

"Nothing sir." She answered plainly. "nothing at all."

"Good." He smiled, she had mastered her emotions and might make a decent flyer after all. "Lets find something else to shoot at, form up on my wing. We're doing well."

Outside the cockpit ships wheeled and died, A Dilgar gunship raored past Ari'shan heading in the opposite direction to his fighter firing intense volleys at something in the distance behind him. A Brakiri cruiser was struck by four laser cannons, its hull folding inwards as the forward section detached and fell away in flames. Two Dilgar frigates raced towards the Corumai itself, the ships heavy weapons discharging constantly. The first frigate lost its entire right side, wobbling out of control and barely missing the dreadnought, spinning out of control and away into the confusion. The second frigate took a hit to the bow, back flipping the small warship and by sheer explosive force sending the vessel in the opposite direction. The intense G forces spelling certain death for the crew.

All around the battle ground on with both sides pounding each other ceaselessly taking as much damage as they dished out, with the people of Brakir watching the battle unfold from the world below.

Conqueror

Warmaster Sha'dur's expression betrayed his concern, tactical displays showed his lines were thinning rapidly and even though every passing minute brought another wrecked Brakiri ship those infernal money grabbers were pushing with single minded determination straight into the heart of his fleet. Losses to his core units were mounting and even with his flanking units heavily engaged the central line wasn't going to hold.

"Captain Evenil, status of Brakiri orbital defences." He asked seriously.

"Still active sir, it'll take at least half an hour to break through them."

"And our central line is going to break in minutes." He cursed under his breath, the flanking move should have worked perfectly, but by splitting his forces the Brakiri Admiral had completely thrown out Sha'dur's timing. He had taken massive losses, but in doing so had ruined Sha'dur's plan.

"Shall we order the flank attacks to support us?" Evenil asked.

"If they break off and try to engage the Brakiri fleet they expose their backs to the planetary defences." The Warmaster thought out loud hoping the act would draw a moment of inspiration. "if they keep engaging and we break the Brakiri fleet will torn around and then they can strike them from the rear, trapping them between two hostile forces. By the time we recover and counter attack it will be too late."

"Warmaster, what are your orders?"

He desperately wracked his mind for a solution, trying to find a way around the immenent defeat. He tried to decide what his sister would do, what incredible and dangerous tactical manoeuvre she would execute, how she would redeploy, where she would hit. He found himself screaming inside, he should know this, he should have a solution, a way to achieve victory. Brakir had to fall today, it was the last window of opportunity they had before the fleet had to press on into the core of League space. He didn't deserve to be a Warmaster, this was ridiculous, he couldn't lead one ship let alone four or five entire fleets. He was badly out of his depth and nothing like Jha'dur.

"Sir?" Evenil pressed.

He forced his anger and frustration aside, he needed to make a decision, a tactic which played to Dilgar strengths.

"Order all ships to fall back."

"General retreat Warmaster?"

"General retreat to the rally point." He confirmed. "We can't beat them and I won't lose ships needlessly, that is one thing I have learnt."

"Affirmitive sir. Shall I ready jump engines to leave the system?"

"Leave?" Sha'dur frowned. "We aren't going anywhere. Regroup the fleet and standby for further orders."

Sha'dur realised he had been aiming for the wrong objective all along, the Brakiri fleet wasn't his mission, the planet itself was. He didn't really need to destroy the fleet if he could just get a good clean shot at the planet.

"Prepare bombardment ships, this will require us to act fast."

Corumai

"Sir they're retreating!" Commander Rolan yelled in an ear piercing shout of joy.

"Confirm that!" Dokan's usually calm aura slipped for a few moments.

"Yes sir!" he laughed out he was so incredibly relieved. "The Dilgar are disengaging! They're on the run!"

"Prepare to pursue!" Dokan snarled. "We can chase them down and finish them off!"

"Admiral sir, we're still heavily outnumbered." Rolan quickly changed his tone. "And we have ships retiring from battle over Brakir which could still cut us off."

Dokan was caught by a moment of indecision, basic strategy told him to keep his knife at the Dilgar throat and turn retreat into rout, but he also had to be aware that his enemy was a highly skilled and opportunistic force. If he presented them even a minor window to inflict critical damage on his fleet they would probably take it. He had a very serious responsibility to keep Brakir safe, and even if he did beat this force it would only bring down another half dozen fleets on him next week, probably under the command of Deathwalker. The Dilgar could replace their losses, the Brakiri could not.

"Alright Commander, conduct a steady retreat to Brakir." Dokan ordered. "We did what we set out to do, we held them off and bought more time."

And time was what Brakir most needed. Every industry on the planet was working constantly to churn out defences, they might not be able to mass produce ships but they could create vast numbers of satellites, fighters and ground based guns. Individually they were no major threat, but in their thousands they could hold off a full scale Dilgar attack with or without help from the navy. Given time Brakir would become a fortress, and if that time had to be bought with the lives of Dokan's fleet then that is the price Brakir would pay for continued survival.

The badly mauled ships slowed down and began to fall back, opening up the range between the Dilgar forces and themselves. They continued exchanging fire, and a damaged Avioki suffered a direct hit to its main reactor ending its career, but as far as Dokan was concerned the engagement was over. Fighters broke contact and turned for home at full thrust leaving the Thoruns to retreat backwards, maintaining a withering fire as they separated. There was a final volley of missiles from the Dilgar before they finally moved out of range leaving a mess of broken ships and dead bodies as silent witness to the carnage inflicted by both sides.

"I don't believe it!" Eri'lor ranted. "We were winning! We had them at our mercy!"

"Clearly not." Ari'shan replied calmly.

"They were outgunned, out numbered, out fought!" she listed angrily. "Why the hell are we retreating!"

"Fleet command has it's reasons. Just form up and follow me. There'll be plenty more action in this war, enough even for you!"

"I'm being serious!" Eri'lor pressed. "We shouldn't be running from Brakiri!"

"Orders are orders, and trust me when I say you do not want to disobey them." Ari'shan's voice grew more stern, his wing mate was starting to lose her composure as an affect of the adrenalin in her system. He liked her and thought she'd be a good pilot to have in his unit, the last thing he wanted was for her rash words to get her executed for insubordination. "They're time will come."

Sullenly Eri'lor remaned silent and followed her wing leaders course, passing by the damaged ships of the fleet and heading for their carrier. She observed in detached wonder the massive gashes and rents of their fleet ships, holes she could have fitted two squadrons of fighters through burned into cruisers and dreadnoughts, some with their edges still glowing from the heat of the impact. Others were gushing air from vents like blood leaking from veins and arteries, and at least one destroyer had been holed completely through its hull, as she passed by she could see the stars and a distant ship through the gaping wound.

"Hunter nine to base, we're preparing for recovery." Ari'shan announced and began slowing down. "Please provide landing details."

"Hunter nine hold your position." A curt voice replied. "We have orders to keep all fighters deployed."

That puzzled Eri'lor. "They don't want us to land?"

"Confirm that please base?" Ari'shan enquired.

"Confirmed." The controller replied. "Reform your unit and stand by for orders. That is all at this time."

Eri'lor was getting more confused now, they were retreating but not recovering their fighters. "Sir, what's going on?"

"At a guess I'd say the Warmaster is planning a little trick." Ari'shan answered. "I think you got your wish officer, we aren't finished yet."

Conqueror

Sha'dur watched as his ships returned quickly to their fall back positions and the Brakiri did the same, lumbering slowly back towards orbit proceding only at the speed of their slowest ships. He had a suspician Jha'dur would be proud of him for his newly developed strategy to win this battle, it was extremely unconventional as far as tactics were concerned and was based on his understanding of the Brakiri mind set rather than on knowledge of their technical or military weaknesses.

As Ari'shan suspected this battle was not over, Sha'dur was playing the Brakiri expectations and using one of the less obvious Dilgar strengths to his advantage, their fleet drills. Both the Brakiri and Dilgar fleets were trained to immediately reform after a battle, to gather their ships into formation, separate combat worthy ships from crippled ones and prepare for whatever came next. Most races did this, some took hours to fully implement a recovery, some even took days. The Dilgar took minutes.

As he checked the tactical displays he saw Battlemaster Al'rosh's forces which had been the least affected were already fully formed up and ready for combat, with his other ships likely to be prepared in a few more minutes. The central force and the wings which had hit the defences were damaged but still a potent force and capable of tying up what was left of the Brakiri defence forces. The enemy fleet itself was still retreating and had yet to even begin reforming its lines, they were out of place and in absolutely no condition to oppose Sha'dur's next move. He could afford to ignore them and rely on his regrouped central fleet to keep them busy, his main mission would be assigned to Al'rosh's forces. A full scale attack on Brakir itself. He could bypass the fleet, punch through the defences and devestate the planet before anyone knew what was happening.

Jha'dur would be very pleased.

"Battlemaster," he opened a channel. "You have your orders, commence attack."

"New orders coming through." Ari'shan noted. "Ah, what did I tell you, we're going back in."

"That's more like it." Eri'lor cheered herself up.

"We're covering the bombardment group, how is your fuel looking?"

"Still over two thirds capacity." She answered. "All systems in the green."

"Alright then, same strategy as before. Keep on my wing and target the bombers first."

Once again the Dart fighters began to move, this time setting themselves up alongside the mass driver armed warships coming in from reserve. Above and ahead of them the flanking force of Battlemaster Al'rosh was already on the move heading directly for the planet while behind them the damaged Dilgar main force was reordering its lines and preparing for a rapid advance again. While the Brakiri were exhaling and thanking whatever deities they worshipped the Dilgar were a couple of minutes from hitting Brakir itself and taking advantage of the Brakiri's exhaustion and weakened forces. They had a small window of opportunity to act before the Brakiri could adequately respond, and Sha'dur was seizing the moment. Dilgar ships raced forward one more time with nothing in position to stop them.

Corumai

The euphoria evaporated in a heartbeat, the cheers died and everything went terribly silent. None of the crew had any idea what to say, much less what to do. The Dilgar had turned their own strategy back against them and were poised to strike homeworld, lines of ships had already overtaken the retreating Brakiri and were fast entering firing range of the planetary defences. Fighters and heavy warships were locking on to the defence platforms, but far more dangerous were the bombardment ships preparing to lay down incredible damage to the Brakiri ecosystem.

Dokan swore heavily, startling the few nearest officers out of their stupor. "What do we have nearby?"

"Nothing sir." Rolan's throat was dry as bone. "All our mobile forces are here, there are just a few dozen platforms and ground based guns in their path."

"Admiral, more Dilgar ships closing on our rear." Officer Remik added. "At our current speed they're going to overrun us."

Their fleets speed were dictated by four cruisers which had taken massive engine damage and were barely mobile. Other ships could move quicker, some even had fully operational drives, but if he released them to head home at best speed it would mean splitting up his forces. If he didn't and kept them together the main Dilgar force would hit them and prevent them from engaging the planetary assault forces. Admiral Dokan was being forced into a corner, it was an almost impossible decision to make and whatever he chose to do it was probably going to cost him the last few ships still active in the navy. Not for the first time he cursed the Dilgar name.

"All ships will break formation, proceed into orbit at maximum possible speed." He said with a great heaviness to his words. He was comdemning the slower ships to certain destruction, without support from the rest of the fleet the Dilgar would turn them to scrap in seconds. "Engage the mass driver equipped ships, take them out anyway you can." He emphasised the last part. "Any way you can."

The Brakiri formation began to spread out as different ships accelerated through different speeds, the lesser damaged ones streaking away to engage the forces approaching orbit. Fighters and strike bombers raced ahead of them, engaging without support was tantamount to suicide but even if success cost each of them their lives they would do it. From the planet the very last line of defence began engaging, anything from armed freighters to assault shuttles put themselves between the enemy and home, some ships were totally unarmed but they would at least be able to soak up damage and keep the more capable ships in action.

Rolan watched the four crippled ships grow further behind, even the painfully slow Corumai was outrunning them which said a lot for their chances. Dilgar fighters flew right past without sparing any attention for the lame Brakiri vessels, and for a while Rolan wondered if they would totally ignore the vessels as no threat. But of course they did not, and Dilgar cruelty once more raised its head as passing destroyers fired on the helpless ships, destroying them in short order. He was incredibly ashamed of himself for following the orders to abandon those vessels, even though he understood it was the right thing to do and the rational thing to do, he could not accept that inside. The ships had not asked for help or cursed their comrades for leaving them, they knew as well as anyone else what was at stake, but for Rolan this was going to stay with him until he died. None of this made sense, none of it should be happening. The Brairi had done nothing to deserve this, they had never offended the Dilgar, there was no reason for this war and certainly no justification for genocide. They just showed up and decided to kill everything as if on a whim, and that filled him with indescribable rage. His sorrow was turned into cold anger, something which was shared by the rest of the crew.

The Dilgar had outsmarted them, but they weren't going to outfight them. The Brakiri navy had bled itself dry protecting its home and it ould be denied victory by a last minute change of tactics from the enemy. They had paid for victory on this day, and they were going to collect it.

"There are lots of targets ahead." Ari'shan reported. "Most of them appear useless, random shuttles and freighters."

"Shall we engage?" Eri'lor asked eagerly.

"No, they're unarmed. No threat." He ordered. "No challenge."

"But sir, orders are to destroy everything we encounter."

"I am aware of that." he replied in a short and stern answer. "We will focus on armed platforms, leave the civilian ships to less skilled and less intelligent pilots who consider them worthy targets. We are above that, now look for some real targets."

Whether she was convinced or not didn't matter and Ari'shan noted she altered course to bypass the easy targets. He nodded with approval, it was not how many kills you acquired but the quality of your opponents. That was how true skill was tested.

"There's a cluster of defence satellites, forty dgrees by ten." She piped up. "would that count as a worthy target?"

He decided to ignore her facetious tone, it was after all her first mission. "Yes they would. We go in fast, one pass and then look for another target whether these are destroyed or not. If we come around for a second pass they will shoot us out of the sky."

Both fighters lined up on the defence stations, the dusty surface of Brakir quite close by now. Ari'shan could pick out individual cities and conurbations which would no doubt be the primary targets for the mass drivers rapidly setting up for a full strike. He didn't really have an opinion about there use, they were just tools used by the fleet to ease ground landings. No nation could deploy an army big enough to conquer an entire planetary population, so the Dilgar had come to the conclusion that if they couldn't increase the army sizes they had to decrease enemy population sizes. It was the simple logic of military strategy, nothing but numbers and ratios to the Dilgar, but for the Brakiri it was a question of existence. Ari'shan was one of the few who knew the truth about why this war was happening, and he appreciated the threat of extinction and the affect it had on fighting spirit.

The two fighters came under fire, the satellites were mass built and as a result were lacking the better versions of the Brakiri targeting scanners. Gravitic bolts sailed by briefly illuminating Ari'shan's cocpit with each passing trail. In return and and Eri'lor engaged, picking off weapons and exposed scanners to render the defence platforms harmless without wasting the effort needed to fully destroy them. Bright energy flared where the weapons hit home, shattering components and flinging shards of debris out from the hull. The Thoruns raced past at close range, tiny pieces of wreckahe pliking on their hulls as they did so, and performed a tight back flip. Ari'shan lost his vision for a few moments due to the G forces but was sure to keep his fighter evading on all axis's despite literally flying blind. They managed to neutralise all but one platform, which was better than he had expected, and then changed course again to look for new targets.

The brief lull in combat was now well and truly over and if anything the battle was even fiercer than it had been earlier. The Battlemasters ships were heavily engaged against the planetary defences and were sweeping through the satellite clouds and hasty minefields deployed by the defenders. Losses were mounting but the attack was proceeding quickly and Al'rosh had few qualms about sacrificing ships to maintain the pressure. The defences themselves were an eclectic mix of pre war satellites which offered the best defence, the more recently and hastily build emergency designs, and an assortment of salvaged scrap welded together and put into action out of pure desperation.

The squadrons rushed past the fruits of the Brakiri labour, one satellite was a cruiser which had been reduced to a quarter its size in the first attack and then restored by the Brakiri. It was little more than a cannon and a reactor on the remnants of a hull, but it seemed to work. Elsewhere Ari'shan identified single gun turrets with old shuttles welded to them to provide turning thrusters, weapons meant for warships which would now never be built clumped together on civilian stations and mining posts, he even spotted Dilgar bolter cannons captured by the Brakiri from wrecks and turned on their former owners. The Brakiri were inventive, he had to admit that, and they had fought well. They deserved to be remembered as good opponents for the Imperium and their defeat would be a worthy victory.

"We have ships entering range, Brakiri escorts." His companion reported.

"There will be fighters close behind." Ari'shan guessed. "Look alive, lets get some speed and prepare to attack."

Sure enough their sensors soon picked up Brakiri light craft swarming forward still in quite impressive numbers. They were heading in at full burn leaving the safty of the fleet and moving directly for the Dilgar cruisers, they didn't even bother to detach a wing or two to keep the Thoruns busy. They were completely focused on putting as much firepower as possible into the biggest threats to Brakir, the ships Ari'shan had been told to defend.

"So be it." He whispered, then started his music once more, closed his eyes for a moment to savour the opening notes, then drove headlong into the fray.

The Brakiri were not giving in. everywhere the sky danced and rippled with fire, lasers and pulses crossed in all directions like burning comets and rivers of light. Fighter burned silently across the void towards their targets, hitting the Dilgar cruisers with all they had. The Falkosi interceptors could do little more than scratch the paint on the Dilgar heavy ships, racing low over the hull and drawing fire so the heavier Pikitos strike craft could try for a better hit. It worked quite well on individual ships at first, though the losses were understandably heavy. However once the Dilgar fighters began engaging that all changed, the light Brakiri fighters were ignored and the Thoruns focused on the more threatening strike craft, taking them out before they had a chance to hurt the cruisers. In response the Falkosi's started swarming Dilgar squadrons and tried pushing them back or even ramming them out of the way, losses began mounting even faster as the ordered fighter units were split apart and engaged in little more than a high speed brawl.

For Ari'shan this was the reason he had wanted a transfer to the front, he was been tested to the top of his skills, weaving and dodging through a complete storm of Brakiri guns. He had to restrain himself from shouting out in enjoyment and excitement as he flipped and turned his fighter from dogfight to dogfight. Two Thoruns beside him were shredded by a squadrons worth of fire leaving little more than glitter in their place, the blast from their fuel cells wobbling his own fighter and embedding some wreckage on the surface of his wing. A Falkosi crossed his gun sights and with lightning reflexes he pulled his trigger and clipped the back quarter off the target of opportunity. It spun out of control and collided with a former defence platform with a brief flash.

"Keep alert!" Ari'shan warned. "Additional ships coming up from the planet."

"I see them." Eri'lor checked. "Fighters, they're weaker than the ones we're already engaging!"

"They must have broken them out of mothballs." One of the other squad mates butted in. "They mustn't have anything better to offer us."

"Doesn't matter." Ari'shan snapped. "They are offering battle and can hurt us, treat them as a worthy adversary and engage if they threaten us, but not at the expense of our mission."

The ancient Brakiri fighters were cut down in droves by the point defences on the warships, but they kept coming and moved into attack range. Ari'shan found a space between the waves of fighters to watch the attack, the older craft peppering cruisers and bombardment ships with their badly outdated guns to no effect, closing in on full burn. He guessed what they were doing before the first line of cruisers did, the fighters didn't even try to evade the fast approaching ships and one after the other collided with whichever target they had selected. They caused serious damage to vive ships, causing one of them to totally lose power and begin to drift planetward. Once again Ari'shan was surprised by the bravery of his opponents and saluted their resolve. He understood what they were fighting for.

A Brakiri cruiser rolled past his field of view spinning end over end leaving a long trail of sparkling wreckage behind it. Even though it was totally out of control it was still firing at whatever came into weapons arcs not willing to stop fighting even then. It was just one example among thousands, the Brakiri were fighting tooth and nail to stop the Dilgar but they couldn't. Massive blasts of energy raced between Ari'shan's squadron forcing them to spread out. The bolts were from the ground based guns highlighting how close they were, crossing through the atmosphere and hitting a dreadnought behind the squadron, reducing it to scrap in just five hits. They had the weapons to do damage, they just did not have enough of them left, and Ari'shan had to admit he felt a slight pang of regret as the bombardment ships finally achieved orbit and began arming.

Three Brakiri fighters looped over a Targrathi class gunship hitting it with all they had, they were so focused they didn't even notice the flight of Thoruns racing in from the side which opened fire and killed them in seconds. An armed freighter pulled in front of one of the bombardment ships and tried to pick off the mass driver, but instead fell to an escorting destroyer. Rather than shunting the wreckage out of the way a group of shuttles moved forward to grapple it, they heavier parts would be just as effective as asteroids when used as ammunition. The irony of that was particularly dark. The bombardment ships were gathering in one place to share from the central store of ammunition been brought in by the replenisher sships and shuttles, this part of the battlefield was relatively quiet with the main forces engaging elsewhere. Alrosh had cleared most of the defence platforms in this sector and was now creating a barrier against the surviving Brakiri fleet elements, pinning them while Sha'dur's main strength whittled them down to nothing.

"Message on fleetwide." Eri'lor chirped in. "They're telling us to keep our distance, orbital bombardment is about to begin."

"Very well, pull back and be ready." Ari'shan ordered. "We'll watch their backs."

"And watch the show!" Eri'lor laughed. "This is going to be incredible!"

While he didn't share her enthusiasm Ari'shan was quite interested to see a full planetary bombardment, one of those events which would be etched on the minds and hearts of all those who saw it until their dying days. It was such a show of power, such un heard of destruction that he couldn't truly grasp how devastating it was going to be to the people below. Billions were about to be flash boiled into vapour by his comrades and not one of them had even an instants doubt about it. He chose to believe it was all down to their will, their determination to do their job whatever the consequences, and not to imagine they would take joy in reaping such destruction.

There were nine ships in total of a few different classes assigned to this mission, a small portion of the fleet but a third of that number would have been adequate to flatten this world with a week or so of continuous bombardment. As well as mass drivers the ships were armed with inertial bomb racks designed to drop warheads into orbit and let gravity pull them down, extremely innaccurate but so destructive it didn't really matter where they hit. The fleet was hauling a combination of radiological, biological and high yield nuclear warheads in their holds, weapons build to utterly destroy. Nobody wanted to capture Brakir, just to totally destroy all life and civilisation. As far as the Dilgar were concerned it was worthless.

Suddenly one of the bombardment ships exploded, a rapidly expanding ball of bright reds and a hint of green. When the light faded moments later there was hardly anything left, no clue that a ship and crew once occupied that part of the galaxy.

"Gods!" Eri'lor gasped.

"Ground batteries." Ari'shan offered a more pointed exclaimation. "They must have kept some guns hidden as an ambush." Despite himself he found a thin smile on his face, credit where credit was due.

"They won't get another shot." Dro'lin flying hunter sixteen added his voice to the chatter. "Cruisers are engaging."

In the same moment that the bombardment ship had exploded a pair of Tratharti gunships had immediately broken out of standard formation and powered up their engines to full thrust diving on the planet. They coordinated their sensors and painted the local surface of the planet easily picking out the recently fired lance cannon below. The moved in with cold professionalism and opened their missile ports, locking on to the ground battery and launching a pair of Nuclear tipped weapons down to the defence site. In less than six seconds the Brakiri gambit had been turned into super heated gas and fallout, one more disaster and one more example of Dilgar military prowess.

"That's opened the way." Eri'lor remarked with anticipation.

"Time for the show to start." Relished Dro'lin. Ari'shan remained silently captivated.

The ancilliary shuttles nudged their selected asteroids into place in front of the bombardment cruisers which then slowly powered up their mass drivers, crackling blue energy arcing between the long rails and girders jutting from the structure. The rocks peacefully glided into the maw of the driver, getting caught in the Electro magnetic field employed by the device and developing a slight spin. Ari'shan kept his eyes on the nearest ship, watching as the asteroid began to course with the same blue energy of the driver before it reached the very heart of the weapon. Then, with a final flash of blue energy, it was hurled from the mass driver and rushed down towards Brakiri along with eight other charged asteroids.

He felt detached watching from the isolation of his fighter, not feeling part of the atack going on in the distance. As a loyal warrior he shouldn't have any thoughts beyond rejoicing at the superiority of his race, just like his squad mates were currently doing. He should be glad, the fleet was fulfilling its mission, but Ari'shan could only feel a sudden cold. He was a warrior, he lived for the fight, but this had gone beyond war. What the hell was he taking part in?

The accelerated rocks caught the edge of the atmosphere and slowed somewhat, thick trails of black smoke streamed out behind them as the burned with atmospheric friction, great charcoal scars slashing the sky above the pale desert world. There was nothing the Brakiri could do to stop them, the defences had been shattered and now the final act was beginning. A few tiny fighters paid the ultimate price to deflect the projectiles, hoping the impact of their ancient jets would destroy the rocks and through some miracle save the targets. It was futile, and they probably knew it, but it was all they could do and Ari'shan wished them luck.

It was of course useless, the rocks atomised the fighters without so much as a tiny alteration of course and dropped down to their main targets, two cities and a major water reclaimation facility. The black trails stopped like giant's arrows jutting out of the heart of the cities for a fraction of a second before the blast wave from the impacts scattered them into wisps. Vast clouds of smoke and dust rose up extending quickly into the sky clearly visible even from Hunter squadrons high orbit, rings of fire and sand extending out from the base of each impact covering the dark cities in white and orange haze. It was a truly awesome sight, an instant of pure terror which they would never be able to go back from, the lives lost could not be returned, this was what his people were giving as their contribution to the galaxy.

As the mass drivers were reloaded the strike ships fired their other weapons, the unguided bombs from belly rack. Dark spheres slowly fell like tears from the fleet and began their descent carrying their unthinkable cargoes to the people below, the latest and vilest creations from Jha'dur's eternally improving knowledge of microscopic death and pain. Nothing rose to stop them, no guns remained, no ships or satellites, no fighters. The last of the Brakiri navy was on the brink of extermination and its civilization had entered what seemed its final days, a time of fire, heat and dust. The hell they had fought so well to prevent.

Ari'shan was curious to see a proximity alert on his main sensor suite. He doubled checked it, whatever it was it didn't have a transponder and it was big. Very big.

"Hunter fourteen," he opened a channel. "Check target at eighty by two hundred. Visually identify."

"I have one destroyer stationary off our flank." The pilot reported.

"That isn't it, the target is moving. Check again."

"Executing pivot, perhaps its…"

The answer never made it, a tremendous flash blinded Ari'shan penetrating the supposedly adequate canopy opacity. It took him a few seconds to regain his vision and for that time he could only hear a speakerful of panicked and shocked voices as his rookie squadron fell apart around him. He blinked and swore, making sure his fighter was moving in evasive patterns almost from habit. His vision returned, though at first just in shades of red as if he were looking at a galaxy painted in blood, an apt description for the scene around him.

The Ochlavita class destroyer which had been watching the flank of the bombardment force with Hunter squadron was wrecked, its engine section careering madly away towards the planet. However of much greater and more immediate concern was the bow section of the ship which was heading straight for his squadron at impossible speed.

"Holy…" he let slip through his evaporating calm. "Break! Break! Break!" he screamed. "Get out of here, full afterburners! Go!"

The tumbling hulk slammed into the two closest Thoruns before they had a clue what was happening, with Hunter fourteen and thirteen colliding with each other in confusion before being similarly destroyed by the friendly warship. Ari'shan threw his own ship hard to the left and performed a side spin. He was too close to get out of the way even with full afterburn so he had to try something else, a snap decision based on what he knew and what he hoped.

The hull was turning as it streaked towards him flung there by whatever had killed it, its entire rear section a ball of glowing light. With as much skill as he could muster he activated his manouevring thrusters and tried to match the pitch and yaw of the ship wreck, ignoring his screeching sensors and gauging the angles by eye only. The ship closed quickly and with a snap twist that threatened to black him out he tucked in under its shattered form and rolled with it, a thousand feet of dark green metal passing over his cockpit within touching distance. He was breathing hard forcing his heart to keep pumping and never taking his eyes off the destroyer.

Finally the iron tomb passed by and the now familiar vista of Brakir returned to his view, its surface sporting more great clouds where the bombardment had struck.

Ari'shan's throat was dry from the intense breathing and his vision was still blood shot from the flash. He was incredibly lucky to be alive, and he was happy to curse himself for demanding that he should face any challenge the galaxy could throw at him to prove himself. This had been one hell of a test, but he had survived it through the natural reflexes and abilities he had so much wanted to show to everyone.

"Hunters check in!" He ordered as his training kicked in. Check his own craft, then check the squadron, then check the objective before executing his standing orders. Something had just hit them hard and needed to be dealt with.

"Hunter ten check." Eri'lor said shakily, she had been far enough away to get clear with a burst of maximum engine power.

"Hunter sixteen check." Dro'lin confirmed.

Three more also called in and that was it, Hunter squadron had lost half it's strength in a few seconds.

"Did anyone see what happened?" Ari'shan demanded. "My sensors show nothing."

"I saw it." Eri'lor spoke with a small voice. "A Brakiri ship, over there."

"Hunter ten, get it together." Ari'shan began to try and tighten up his shaken comrades. "Give me a standard bearing and distance."

"Fourteen by eighty." She read off in an emotionless and seemingly exhausted tone. "Four hundred miles and receeding."

"Understood." Ari'shan flung his ships nose about to the heading and searched, and it didn't take long to see the enemy target. As a Dilgar pilot he felt a tinge of anger and despair, but as a Warrior he was overjoyed. His screen showed the Corumai proceeding at full speed towards the Bombardment ships with all guns blazing, it was a magnificent display. Ari'shan was Dilgar and wanted to see the ship destroyed of course, but he was foremost a warrior and recognized the Brakiri crew as fellow warriors, and that part of him hoped they earned a honourable end worthy of praise.

"Orders sir?" Dro'lin asked with expectation.

"Form up." Ari'shan ordered. "We will do our duty and follow our orders. Brakiri fighters are following the Dreadnought, set course to intercept."

Half a squadron couldn't hurt the Brakiri flagship, but they still had their part to play. With extremely mixed and unsure feelings Flight Officer Ari'shan took his remnant forces into the chaos once again.

Corumai

"We got him!" Officer Remik punched the air. "Clean kill."

"I'm not reading any more escorts," Commander Rolan added. "We have a clear run to the Bombardment group."

Finally the Brakiri flagship had come into its own, it seemed to be operating at more or less full efficiency and despite the heavy damage it had taken in this battle it still had its teeth, and the formidable weapons package had proven itself easily capable of destroying enemy ships in a single volley exactly as the designers had hoped. Unfortunately there were too many Dilgar warships even for this mighty ship, sooner or later they would be dragged down by simple numbers but not before they denied the Dilgar their victory. It all hinged on those eight remaining bombardment ships, for all the hundreds of vessels Warmaster Sha'dur operated only those eight had the power to devastate Brakir, without them the ground based weapons and fighters could hold off the conventional ships and stop them before their laser and particle weapons could do any serious damage.

"Lock weapons." Admiral Dokan ordered. "We'll take out the driver ships and then take up defensive positions above the capital city."

"Aye sir, setting up course to pass ahead of the enemy squadron." Rolan worked fast, like the rest of the crew he was acutely aware that time was working against them. "We'll sweep by and be ready to fire as our guns bear on target."

"Sensors show radiological elements on those ships." Remik said with a grimace. "They're packed with nukes, probably a lot of biological and…"

Dokan waited for the rest of the report for a moment. "Officer, what is it?"

"Admiral sir," Remik croaked. "The bombardment has already begun, Brakir sir."

"Show me." Dokan said weakly, not knowing how he should respond. As a man he was terrified, but as an Admiral of the fleet he had to try and seem unaffected and not appear like his insides were falling through the floor.

The bridges main screen flickered into life, the image was grainy and streaked with static betraying it's faults and problems like so much else on the Dreadnought, but the image it showed was still clear enough to rob the warmth from anyone who saw it. Thick puffs of white and black clouds were rising up from the surface of the planet, tiny looking from orbit but dozens of miles wide and still growing. There were eight giant clouds which analysis showed to be caused by mass drivers, and about three times as many smaller mushroom clouds resulting from high megaton yield nuclear explosions. Even worse were the falling objects still in the air on a shallow descent to the surface, they were trailing a horrific cocktail of chemicals and biological agents through the atmosphere drizzling a soft and lethal rain on any populations caught below. They had been too late.

"Detonations confirmed at Lemat, Selarit and Koskor." Rolan said with a lump in his throat, barely able to force out the words. "Nuclear detonations at orbital defence facilities, and army head quarter facilities. The water processing facility at Mer-Fakal has also been completely destroyed."

"Gods." A whisper came from someone on the bridge, the only response to Rolan's report. All eyes remained fixed on the screen, their thoughts dwelling on the same terrible thought. Those cities had millions of people in them, the Brakiri were a highly social race and their hostile world forced them to live together in vast and densely populated locations, even a minor orbital strike would have been devastating, but multiple nuclear and mass driver hits would have levelled everything for miles around. The worst part was anyone who survived, anyone wandering dazed and confused through the dust and fire would find themselves exposed to the virus's and biological agents sowed from orbit. It was both heartbreaking and steeling, they couldn't do anything for the current victims but by all that was holy they were going to make sure it did not happen again.

"Admiral, we're moving into range." Rolan announced, his hands were shaking and he had to hold them beneath the console in the hopes nobody noticed before he regained control. The sight displayed before him didn't look real, it had no sound and no feeling to connect it to the visceral emotions he had been expecting. If anything it looked like one of those old movies retrieved from the radio signals his people intercepted and decoded from Earth, just a form of entertainment taken too far. It wasn't real, his mind just couldn'r grasp that this had actually come to happen.

"Concentrate fire on each ship in turn." Dokan ordered flatly. "Destroy them completely."

The crew took to the task with grim determination, they had failed to prevent the attack but they could make sure it stopped right now before more innocents perished. The ship was already at full thrust and was well in the clear, some Dilgar forces had broken away from the main fleet to intercept but they were too far away to stop the Corumai, Sha'dur hadn't banked on anything escaping his trap. Sadly it had cost the flagship two escorts to break through the cordon, but with bombardment ships sighted it was the oly option Dokan could take short of abandoning Brakir to destruction, and while the loss was tragic it was just a small part of this days sorrow.

"We're locked on the closest ship." Remik announced.

"Open fire." Snarled Dokan, a deep rage filling his soul. These murdering bastards had tried to destroy his civilization and he would make them pay. The gravity lurched a little as the ship made a quick course correction designed to open up its best firing arcs, then shuddered as its lance cannons engaged.

The Corumai angled gracefully in space with more finesse than such a large and plagued ship should have been capable off, it's tall fins catching the light of the distant sun as it passed in front of the Dilgar bombardment line placing itself between the planet and their weapons. The first ship didn't stand a chance, taking a full broadside from the Dreadnought its bow vanished in a plume of flame, the engine section hurtling backwards as if yanked by a giant rope. The blocky Athraskala class ships had been built for the singular purpose of bombing enemy worlds and were heavily armed for that purpose and little else, some even sported extensive scientific labs for mobile experiments carried out by Jha'dur's staff. These ships were rightly feared and loathed as symbols of the Dilgar depravity and spelt doom to defenceless world, but against even moderate resistance the Athraskala's were target practice. They had no anti ship weapons, fairly poor construction and only scarce protection agains fighters. In a straight fight they died quickly and against a ship as powerful as the Corumai it was a foregone conclusion.

"Enemy destroyed!" Rolan felt elated, they were beating the Dilgar at their own game. For so long the Dilgar had prided themselves on been the predators among the flocks, but now it was a Brakiri warship destroying a flock of weakly defended ships. The big difference was these ships weren't carrying refugees but weapons designed to kill billions, and their destruction was entirely justified and very appropriate. "Next ship coming into range."

"Fire as you bear!" Dokan yelled. "Take them out of our home's sky!"

Another Athraskala ceased to exist, cut in two by a close ranged volley. It managed to launch a nuclear device in the vain hope of impacting the speeding dreadnought but point defences expertly shot it out of the sky before it could impact. The Corumai raced on, passing through a white cloud of gas and glittering debris while its weapons rearmed. With two ships down there were six now left, one of them was deploying its arsenal against Brakir desperately trying to unload as much damage as possible before it was destroyed, but none of the ships had yet managed to reload there mass drivers. The Corumai still had time.

Rolan's screen suddenly beeped unexpectedly drawing his attention down. It showed an urgent threat warning, an enemy vessel was locking on. "Admiral, we have incoming!"

"Source?" Dokan demanded.

Rolan cursed as the sensors finally reveald the enemy ship. "Dammit, Dilgar Gunship dead ahead, she's firing!"

The Athraskala was the main Dilgar bombardment ship, but it was not the only one. Far more capable was the Tratharti class gunship, an expensive and capable cruiser design. The Tratharti was the heavy cruiser of the Dilgar navy designed to take the missions not important enough for a dreadnought, they were fast, powerful, very well armed and as an added touch equipped with a mass driver. The ships were in very high demand by fleet commanders and most of them found their way into Jha'dur's strike fleets and assigned to her best subordinates, the handful which had been sent to the Brakiri front had been priority targets in the first battle and suffered unusually heavy losses leaving just two examples operational, both of whom were now concentrating on the Corumai.

"All hands brace!" Dokan called, then grabbed his chair as the dreadnought jolted six times in quick succession. "Where are the bombers?"

"We're just passing one!" Rolan called back.

"Then shoot it down!"

The gunship fired again punching holes in the Corumai's armour but barely affecting the massive ship. Dokan's vessel fired its own batteries, taking out two more of the lightly armed Athraskala's in a bright show of light. Point defenses managed to stop a row of biological warheads before they hit the almosphere and neatly pierced the reactor of the bomber which had been randomly dropping them, annihilating it in one brief impact.

"Nice work guns, that was a solid kill." Dokan congratulated.

"Thank you sir, we have twenty seconds to recharge." The weapons officer replied.

"That's a problem." Rolan shouted, "That gunship is closing range, it's going to hit us hard."

He was right, the Dilgar ship was getting closer hoping to hit the flagship with a devastating close range volley. With all the damage they had taken and the fact that a lot of systems were jury rigged and quite fragile there was a chance it could cripple his warship and once again open up Brakir to bombardment.

"Any chance on charging faster?"

"I'm already redlining them sir." The Weapons officer replied.

"Then we have no choice, Mr Remik, set collision course."

"Aye sir." Much to Rolan's surprise his comrade accepted the order at once. "Course locked, I'm taking manual control."

The two warships were fast closing on each other almost head to head, the Dilgar captain expecting to pass by the ships damaged flank hitting it hard as he did so. However Remik nudged the Corumai's damaged bow to the side so it ended up directly facing the incoming Tratharti. The Dilgar ship fired and immediately performed a sharp turn, it's Captain smart enough to know his chances of surviving a game of chicken with a dreadnought were not good. Its engines burned fiercely stabbing blue spikes out into space as the slewed around trying to force the gunship out of the way. It pushed against Brakir's gravity and began to climb away but it wasn't going to be fast enough. Remik made a final course correction and aimed for the weakest part of the enemy ship, where the engineering section joined onto the main hull.

"Sound collision alert!" Dokan ordered. "Fasten your seatbelts, this is going to be bad!"

Rolan reached for his seatbelt only to find plain metal stubs where the fabric restraints should be, just one more defect in the ships design. He sighed, braced his legs against the console in front of him and grabbed hold of the chair for dear life.

The Corumai sped into the Dilgar ship, a silent mass of green armour crashing together with a ship less than half its mass and forcing it onto a new course. The gunship was latched to the front of the dreadnought like a bug on a car windscreen being carried along by the immense momentum and inertia of the great ship, one second it had been slowly moving one way, then snatched away to the side under the impact. The Dilgar engines flamed out as reactor links went critical and shut down, hull seams split open and began venting air and internal components, even occasional crew. The Corumai itself had its bow twisted out of shape but any vital systems there where either broken or destroyed in the previous battle.

The moment of impact was worse than Rolan expected, he was flung forward and hit the console hard breaking his nose and dropping thick drops of blood on the controls before him. The station itself was alright, a miracle of resilient Brakiri engineering, but his face was agony. The bridge lights immediately went out leaving just the dim glow of sensor stations and a few portable lights fed by their own internal generators left by the engineers in lieu of true emergency lighting. Rolan's eyes were filled with water not from pain but from the simple after effects of his broken nose. Every blink brought him fresh pain and moving any part of his face was enough to moisten his vision again. But on the plus side he wasn't dead.

"Two left!" Remik pointed on tactical, it showed a single Athraskala and one of the more dangerous Tratharti's lining up for a new strike. The gunship was quickly redirecting power from its mass driver to its conventional weapons to take on the Dreadnought, but the smaller ship was powering up to fire a fully prepared asteroid down on the Brakiri capital itself.

"She's ready to fire sir!" the weapons officer yelled in the darkness. "Main guns locked!"

"Take that bomber down right the hell now!" Dokan roared, only the seatbelt keeping him in his chair.

The ships main weapons spoke again, impaling the enemy vessel and ripping it to pieces, its shell peeling away as destructive energies reduced it to a burst of light and radiation. But not soon enough.

"She fired!" Rolan shouted in horror. "We've got a rock incoming!"

Dokan could see the disaster already, the capital city in ruins, the leadership dead, millions of casualties lost in a sudden fireball and shockwave. "Can we shoot it down?"

"No sir, main weapons recharging!" the assigned officer said equally frightened, they were all trapped unable to do anything this atrocity.

"Engines, I want full power." Dokan said evenly.

"Admiral, that will delay our weapon recharge rates, we won't…" Rolan began slapping his hands on the console in frustration, the ship's reactor was still far too weak for a vessel of this size.

"Full power to engines!" Dokan repeated louder. "We're going to stop that rock the hard way." He took a long breath. "Put us between the incoming projectile and the city, quickly."

The Athraskala had been destroyed before it had fully charged its drier, so the Captain launched with what power it had the moment the Corumai's main guns struck home, the final fulfilment of his duty of perhaps a last act of spite. The rock was moving slower than normal but once it was fully caught in the planets gravity it would speed up and gather enough kinetic energy to leave a mile wide crater where the capital used to be. The Corumai in its low and fast orbit was the only thing that could prevent that, but in so doing was probably condemning itself.

As the ship accelerated the Dilgar gunship pressed into its bow shook and vibrated, shedding yet more armour and structure. It's crew were working like hell to try and free themselves but to no effect and the acceleration was increasing the stress and buckling the ships supports. With a screeching tear the rear of the ship folded away, ripping itself apart as the mass of the Corumai exerted more and more pressure on it. The connections split and armour tore splitting the ship in two with a long burst of atmosphere and plasma. The engine block fell away, clipping the Corumai's flank with a glancing hit and leaving a huge dent in its side which caused no concerns for it's crew. The front half of the Dilgar gunship remained attached, its hull twisted and intertwined too closely with the Brakiri vessels bow. Long wires and cables streamed out from the severed portions of hull as the ruined gunship lost the ability to do anything to free itself and left the crew with just emergency power carried at the whim of the Corumai's commander.

"This is going to be close." Remik warned.

"We can do it." Dokan urged them on. "We can do this for homeworld, even if it's the last thing we do, we can do this."

Rolan patted his chair, the ship was shuddering and the normally relaxing ambient rumble of the engines was almost deafeningly loaud. "Come on girl," he whispered. "Just a little more."

Everything on the bridge was bouncing, and on the viewscreen they could still see the distant gunship at the edge of the bombardment fleet now arming regular weapons. Rolan wanted it destroyed but this was moe vital, he'd have to hope another ship could finish the job. It was the last ship standing, and that was amazing enough considering the odds.

"This is it!" Remik called. "We made it, we're going to hit!"

"Well done, you have served your world proud." Admiral Dokan said sincerely. "Perhaps this ship was worth all the money we paid for it after all."

The falling asteroid hit the Corumai on its aft section where the great sail like fins met the main hull, the impact was almost in slow motion, a majestic twisting collision which passed through the ships side structire like a brick through a bag of confetti scattering flittering shards of debris out around it. The effect was like a hammer hitting a steel tube, the ship bent almost completely in two so the bow of the ship and its unwilling Dilgar passengers were almost touching the tail. On the side where the asteroid hit the metal folded and crumpled around it almost like a baseball glove, while the far side split apart in a fireball as metal peeled back or fell away, openining kike long petals of shreds of torn paper. The ship had been moving fast enough that it's momentum proved superior to the asteroids and the mangled wrecks of Brakir dreadnought, Dilgar gunship and asteroid were angled enough to hit the atmosherre at a shallow angle and burn up rather than plunge through to the city.

Inside the ship was finished, the bridge had sealed itself off when the asteroid impacted and just in time, the corridors leading to the compartment were ruptured and opened up to space. The fact the bridge was buried deep in the hull was evidence enough on how badly the hull was compromised. Fires burned out of control consuming the entire left side of the large room, gravity had failed and the flames licked and spun crazily through the rapidly depleting air.

Rolan found himself weightless, floating without a sound in absolute blackness and for a long moment he couldn't tell if this was some sort of transition between life and death or an odd dream like state his body had retreated into. The reality quickly returned as his skin began to heat up, opening his eyes he saw the fires burning nearby and quickly tried to propel himself forward, slowly and painfully progressing to a side station.

"Anyone still with me?" he croaked. There was no answer. "Anyone?"

"Rolan?" a male voice coughed.

"Remik!" he exclaimed. "Are you okay?"

"I don't think so." He said lightly. "These cheap bolts they used to fasten my chair down broke." He coughed a little. "It really hurts."

"I can help, is there a medical kit?"

In the distance Remik gasped, and after getting his bearings Rolan pulled himself along the walls and shattered stations to his friend, passing two dead crew on the way. His fellow officer was indeed in bad shape, pinned up against his console with the chair and a tangle of debris behind him holding him sold. It was going to take a full work team more than an hourto get him out of that, time they didn't have.

"Well we caught the asteroid." Rolan said with false cheerfulness. "We did it."

"Yeah, like that game we picked up from the humans, where the hit a ball then catch it." Remik chuckled. "Damn that's dumb."

"Let me check around, see if I can pry you out of this mess you've gotten into."

"Come on Rolan, don't be a fool." He snapped. "We're minutes away from hitting the atmosphere, get out of here!"

"We got on this death trap together and we're getting off together."

"No we aren't." Remik said in a tone which cut off any arguing. "Even if you got me out of this chair, I don't think I'd get far." He raised a hand to show it was covered in blood. "So why don't you just get lost and leave me in peace?"

There was a beep from the console, a proximity alarm that was still working on the smashed bridge.

"What is that?" Rolan asked.

Remik tapped his controls, wincing and letting out a slight gasp of pain. "A ship." He reported. "Very close by."

"A rescue ship?" Rolan felt his spirits rise a little.

"No, that Dilgar cruiser that was about to hit us." Remik stated. "Probably checking out their friends stuck to our nose."

Rolan suddenly felt a wave of anger, that Dilgar ship was still a threat to homeworld. "Do we have any weapons?"

"Weapons? Look around you!" Remik laughed, wincing in pain as he did. "We've got nothing. Engines, weapons, even life support won't last for long."

Rolan cast his eyes down, this ship had never been perfect to start with, none of it's crews could really claim perfection either, but they had both come through in the end, they had both beaten their faults and fought like heroes to keep Brakir safe. And like the very best of heroes this ship had one last gambit to play before they finally embraced the dark.

"Remik, stay with me for a little longer." He held onto his friend's chair. "The retro thrusters, are they still linked up?"

"The retros?" he grimaced. "Yeah, but the reactor's dead, we've got no power." He took a second look at the control panel. "Plus that wrecked Dilgar ship is blocking the emergency vents."

"Exactly." Rolan grinned. "I'm going to try and power up the reactor, I want you to be ready to engage thrusters."

"The reactor's shot to pieces, coolant systems are half way to the surface by now." Remik was fighting hard to stay conscious. "It'll blow after a few seconds."

"Then we better time it right." The Commander replied. "We're almost finished, we can both see that, so lets do one last job before we go."

"You can take a pod." Remik pointed out again.

"There's a Dilgar gunship off our bow, if I try and escape it'll shoot me down before I get a mile away. I'd rather be doing something useful when the Deathwalker shows up, the real Deathwalker I mean, not that Dilgar wannabe."

"So we power up the reactor," Remik coughed, the fires on the bridge were growing. "But we'll explode before the weapons can arm, and the fire control station is wrecked."

"We're going to show that Dilgar warship outside that they aren't the only ones with a little mass to drive." Rolan grinned despite the appalling situation. "The Admiral never stopped fighting, and neither shall we." Admiral Dokan was nowhere to be seen on the bridge, his central chair was gone, replaced by a clutter of support beams and sparking wires. "Let's do this for the Corumai, give her the send off she deserves."

The Dilgar Tratharti had come to a relative stop in front of the dreadnought, the tangled warship was slowly losing orbit and in a few minutes would hit the atmosphere and begin burning up. The Dilgar Captain was interested in seeing if there were any survivors in his fellow gunship, the forward half of which was still attached to the Corumai despite the massive damage the Brakiri vessel had taken. He was also having his gunnery officers prepare to blast the wreck of course in an attempt to drop the millions of tons of armoured metal down onto a nice target of opportunity such as a city or major defensive installation. Elsewhere the battle was winding down as the Dilgar navy finished off the Brakiri fleet and turned its attention to the satellite defences and ground batteries, taking out the threats to the bombardment ships.

Remik was in incredible pain, there were no medical kits on the bridge and his adrenalin was wearing off allowing his nerves to transmit the pain he felt through his body. "That bastard is right on top of us."

"Alright." Rolan said calmly, he had accepted this fate before the Corumai had even launched, but now he had finally understood it. Death wasn't the end for him, and it wasn't the end for his people, but he wanted to make sure that the Brakiri died a natural death and not at the hands of the Dilgar. His people had a place in the galaxy and the Dilgar wanted to deprive them of it, which was unacceptable. The Brakiri believed everything had a price, and the Dilgar hadn't come even close to paying what it would take to kill his world. "Open the fuel valves, initiate reactor sequence."

The engine room was open to space, its crew lost in the same instant the asteroid was intercepted along with the bulk of the engineering systems. All the main links and fuel lines were severed, but by fate's fickle hand the Corumai's poor state had meant that the reactor had been heavily bypassed with secondary lines and conduits and these extra components, which shouldn't have been on the ship if it had worked first time were still intact. Fuel jetted into the reaction chamber, leaking through numerous cracks in its side and billowing out into space. The fusion based reactor was meant to be a controlled chain reaction held in place by magnetic fields and cooled from out side, unfortunately the coolant system was gone and once the reaction initialised it would be mere seconds before the heat of the reaction melted the reactor, destroyed the magnetic field generators and turned into a giant fusion bomb. Hopefully it would be big enough to shatter the dreadnought into tiny pieces vastly reducing the impact of the wreck as it fell from orbit.

"Fuel is flowing." Remik reported through gritted teeth. "Ready to initialise."

"Stand by." Rolan ordered and readied the retro thrusters. Like most Brakiri ships the Corumai relied on gravitic propulsion it move it through space, it was an efficient technology though still primitive compared to races like the Vree. On the dreadnought the systems had been found wanting and as an emergency measure the warship had been fitted with old fashioned Ion thrusters to be used in case the gravitics failed (which they often did in tests) to bring the ship to a safe halt. Rolan now opened the thrust channels and conduits on the two bow thrusters and held his hand over the activation button.

"I know you never wanted to be here." He whispered to the ruined ship. "And I know you're hurting. But this is going to be over soon. You're the flagship of our people, the living spirit of Brakir. You were our voice roaring in anger and our sword cleaving those who want to kill us. They laughed at all of us, the navy was embarrassed by the failures and problems, but we've showed them different." He smiled. "Today we showed them how a real ship and a real crew fights, and for as long as Brakir lives no one will forget our names. So lets do this one more thing and make sure someone is left at home to remember all of us. Then we can rest, and return to the quiet."

The Dilgar cruiser swung its forward guns into position, ready to deliver the final coup de grace. Rolan shook his head at it, no Dilgar ship was going to finish the Corumai, she died when she chose, not when the Dilgar demanded.

"Ready old friend?" he called over the Remik, the crackling flames covering almost the whole bridge now, the last of the air quickly filling with smoke.

"Ready." He answered. "I'm getting tired of looking at that Dilgar ship anyway, let's do something about it."

Rolan nodded, incredibly he felt totally at peace, and even excited. The Dilgar were going to get a big surprise, and he was sorry he wouldn't be able to see their Warmasters reaction. "Initialise main reactor, let's make a finish nobody will forget."

"Beginning emergency start up." Remik said, he was getting groggy but this one last task wasn't hard. "Reactor coming on line, this is it."

Rolan saw the thruster's power readings go green, then yellow, and then red as they built up an overload surge. The ship rumbled with distant explosions as the reactor began to fall apart and intensely hot plasma was jetted from the ship. The great vessel was tearing itself apart, but she managed to hold on just long enough for Rolan to finish his plan.

"Thanks old girl." He smiled, then flipped the last switch.

The retro thrusters exploded into life with a massive dump of fuel overloading their systems and blasting out their concealed panels and a clutter of debris. The thrusters ports were blocked mainly by the wrecked gunship crumpled into the forward hull and virtually the full power of the engines hit the broken Dilgar hull. It held for a second, and then in a scream of shearing metal the ruin was thrown off the front of the Corumai, the noble green hull disappearing in a storm of fire behind it. The wrecked gunship was propelled with surprising force, a parody of the Dilgar mass drivers with just as little finesse as a falling rock and just as much power.

The Captain of the last Dilgar warship in Brakiri orbit didn't even have time to order evasive action, his widening eyes filled with the image of the tumbling wreck of his comrade hurtling his way before there was nothing but brightness and then cold dark. The ruined ship took the Tratharti head on smashing it's relatively light hull and crushing it beyond recognition. The two ships spun a full three hundred degrees before finally the Corumai detonated with the force of thousands of nuclear weapons, immolating itself and the nearby Dilgar cruiser in a bright pillar of fire.

Conqueror

Warmaster Sha'dur kept a straight face, but he had run out of options.

"Sir," Evenil raised her voice. "There are barely a handful of Brakiri ships left, their defence grid is broken, they are in complete disarray!"

"I am aware of that Captain." He answered flatly.

"Warmaster, we've won!" she tried to convince him. "You have secured victory."

"We both know that isn't entirely true." He fixed her with an even stare. "We lost our bombardment ships."

"Yes sir, but…"

"Without them we can't inflict enough damage to pacify Brakir, all our fighting in orbit has proven futile. If we cannot destroy their population centres enmasse then there is nothing else we can do here."

"A massed fleet bombardment…" Evenil began.

"Would eventually do the job." Sha'dur agreed. "But not for weeks, and not efficiently. This fleet is needed for the campaign and we are already behind schedule. We can't spare the time to bomb Brakir with conventional weapons."

"Can we call more mass driver ships sir?"

"Not in time." Sha'dur sighed. "We almost did it, almost."

"We're giving up sir?" Evenil asked weakly. "After all this we're going to leave?"

The Warmaste nodded. "We can't finish the mission, anything else is just a waste of resources. We'll blockade the planet and let thirst and starvation destroy the Brakiri." He smiled thinly. "It'll just take more time. Issue the recall orders, this battle is over."

"Yes sir." Evenil said with a heavy heart. "Ordering all ships, break off and return to starting positions."

From his cockpit Ari'shan saw it all in wonder, the Corumai's final moments had been the epitome of the warrior's code and despite the propaganda he knew it's crew had not been vermin deserving of extinction, but true hearted soldiers.

"Sir, orders from the fleet." Eri'lor said, her voice betraying her captivation and horror at the sight. "It's a general withdrawal, we are to return to our rally point."

"Acknowledge transmission, then fall back in pairs. Remember to watch for enemies, this is still a battle." He ordered, never once taking his eyes off the falling dreadnought.

He offered the dying ship a salute and etched the scene into his soul as a testament to the true glory of war.

"By the gods, that ship did war proud."