Ronaldo Perez - Athenian
We called it the Second Pause, a period of 6 to 9 months of peace where the enemy licked their wounds and we rebuilt. The UNSC used the time after the battle of Harvest to get as many enemy ships and property as possible back to the inner colonies, to be reverse-engineered. They, of course, had been doing that for a while but Harvest gave them more than enough material to make serious breakthroughs.
It didn't last of course. They came back.
"Even animals learn not to go where it hurts."
Before Harvest the enemy had been more cautious, more careful, more skilled, using infiltrators to try to take out our IF fields and our forcefields. That initial time afterward though? I looked at the report.
"Praise the sun."
Half their attacking fleet was gone, the other half was on the edge of the system and the auto defenses were kicking in.
"It's a straight attack."
"Yep."
They sped forward towards our system.
"Any civilians in this system?"
"There is a single town of refugees, around 2000 people."
"And we built up the system why?"
"It's within our territory. And why give the enemy free real estate?"
The Star Forge continued upgrading systems after the core worlds were saved, we had to. Refugees were moving into the unsettled parts and then claimed Front citizenship. The pause just made the refugee crisis worse as the Outer Systems used the pause to flee to Front space.
"How long until the fleet gets here?"
"At least 3 hours, other systems are being attacked."
I looked up at the star.
"They got through the first layer of defenses."
"Of course."
This system had a significant belt of rocks. They got closer and I winced as their ships were ripped apart as they did.
"We need more people."
"Tell me about it."
The surviving ships made it through the remaining defenses, and kept coming closer.
"Likely targets?"
"We have an entire prefab city, just kind of waiting there to be a decoy."
I sighed.
"Armor up?"
"Yep."
We put on our armor and got into our ships, the decoy city was in the distance. We went in and turned on the city-wide forcefield and waited until I saw flashes of light in the sky.
"They know orbital bombardment doesn't work when you have planetary shields, right?"
I waited, just waited.
"Our fleet's here."
The enemy fleet was caught between a rock and a hard place. A few of them decided to risk going into slip space, it obviously didn't work out. A few decided to flee outside the IF while the rest decided to try to land on the planet.
Which was a mistake, of course. During that moment our fleet attacked from above and we attacked from below, just as described in the academy's textbooks. When it was over their fleet was simply destroyed.
A thousand ships in total, completely wrecked. None of them were that big or that impressive, but it still sent a signal: the enemy was still out there and they were not going to stop... or at least not yet. All of us realized we were in for a very long war.