The fifth fleet included, for the first time, vehicles and landing troops. Thousands of Mobile Infantry, dressed in powered armor, were boarding the carriers. Since the use of fighters was too limited, the big carriers would serve as troop transports. Their impressive shields would be useful to protect the troops while they used the drop capsules. Heavy cruisers and destroyers would establish a head beach, helping to build a base and a landing track to receive cargo and ammunition.

Akagi, Yorktown, Kaga, Ark Royal, and Lexington would carry the troops. The big carriers were more suitable for this purpose than the battleships, even if several marine units were onboard, ready to drop on the planet as reinforcements. Weapon pods, another improvement designed by Maki, the genius child designer from Earth, were ready for this mission. She was honest enough to admit she had taken the idea from an old video game, but it was a fast way to send ammunition and energy packs to the troops on the ground.

Earth. Fleet Headquarters.

For the first time in this unwanted war, the Admiralty, the Supreme Flagship, and the Federation President, Mary Shizuka, were having a meeting.

As a permanent member of the High Council, Gretel decided to be there. She really wanted to test how her charges would answer this threat. For a change, she walked to the meeting room. Her act of teleportation was becoming a bit old, and she knew it was a pain for the humans.

She knew the two Admirals. One of them, Grierson, had been promoted to admiralty's staff after his brave defense of New Europe. He was a steady, courageous man with the mind of a tactician. The other one, Manes, was the classic member from a military family. He is not a bad person, but he considers everybody as his personal servants.

Gretel entered the room, a typical oval table con un podium in one extreme for an orator. She missed Gunzou. The boy, for her he still was it, had a clear and emphatic mind. Sometimes, humans, when enraged they were black or white. It was a characteristic her daughters had incorporated into their base code.

She sat in her own chair, clearly marked with her name tag. The president was approaching the podium, reading her tablet. She coughed a bit, the classic gesture many humans did for asking attention, and she began her speech.

"Esteemed Admiralty Code, Supreme Flagship, Admirals, as you already know the main star system of the Nexus had been obliterated. The attacks of Admiral Chihaya had destroyed three star systems. So far, we have found seventeen star systems occupied by them, and Archangel is still under occupation. We will recover Archangel, and we will rebuild New Europe," she said with conviction, "but this war is just beginning. We know they had a considerable number of ships, and they know where our colonies are located."

She sighed and pinched her nose bridge, "My advisers are too sure we will be attacked here, on Earth, soon and with massive forces as a retaliation. My concern is how are we going to defend our world against thousands of ships?"

Admiral Grierson, the aclaimed survivor of the battle of Atlantea, said with absolute conviction, "I really want they visit us or the inner ring."

Shizuka looked at the admiral like he was suffering some kind of nervous breakdown, "Can you explain?" Her headache was becoming worse, and now this idiot wanted a big, epic space battle around his home planet.

Grierson touched his personal pad, and the main screen on the wall lit up, and he only said, "Mines, Ma'am. Billions of them around every planet in the inner ring, made by the battleships in orbit and hidden in the same way the dimensional submarines do. Each mine has a two gigatons warhead. Let them come."

Gretel was genuinely surprised. Her daughters had been so devious to hide this particular piece of their arsenal from her. She observed the mines. Simple, deadly, and cheap. She waited.

The president still looked worried but not close to a nervous breakdown. She only asked, "Who had this wonderful idea?".The answer didn't surprise her at all. Grierson replied with evident satisfaction, "Maki was quite inspired lately, Ma'am."

Shizuka rested on her chair, thinking about the designer child. She, and many others, were afraid of her. The resonance torpedo, blowing stars, and cloacked mines. She felt she had seen that idea before, maybe an old TV show? It doesn't matter. Kill those stupid machines and finish her presidential term. She really needed a rest.

So, breathing slightly alleviated, she asked, "Do we have any idea about when they could attack us?

Everyone looked at each other, and Grierson admitted, "I'm sorry, Ma'am. We don't know. We must destroy so many ships as we can to lower their numbers and to continue the war against their worlds."

Shizuka looked at Gretel, who was listening. "Can you talk to them, like you did to the Cylons?," she asked. "I talked to them because another branch of mankind was involved, Ma'am. They are not mine," the powerful entity replied easily.

"But they are machines. Is it impossible to make them to see reason?, Shizuka begged this time.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am. You can try talking to them, but so far, they are not talking to us," Gretel explained to the President.

Yamato spoke for the first time. "According to Nagato, they lost a war against organics in their home universe. They haven't any reason to trust us."

Grierson frowned, and looking to Yamato, he said, "We are a bunch of assholes." Everybody smiled since the admiral always was a serious, polite person. "Meaning?" Shizuka said, trying to imagine his reasons.

"The Nexus believes that mankind created you and the mental models, Gretel," he explained. "They can't trust anything from the organics," he added. The Supreme Flagship of the Federation Fleets looked back to the admiral with a mix of surprise and bewilderment. "You are right. We couldn't explain anything to them about us," she said.

"However, we don't know if after so much destruction, there is a place for talking," another admiral, Manes reminded them. "Let keep it as an option if we can talk, admiral," Shizuka said with a bit of hope in her voice.

"I suppose we continue our actual operational plan, right?" Yamato asked.

"Yes, we will terminate them if we can. They are too dangerous, and we couldn't stop the pressure. If they accept to talk, great. If not, the nanoforges would have a lot of free refined metal to process. Something more?" she asked.

Since there was only silence, she declared the meeting adjourned.

Space above Forge. Staging area for the Fifth Fleet.

Lexington, the big fleet carrier, will be in command of this new fleet. Her orders, sent directly by Yamato, were quite simple. To take control of the orbit and release the drop capsules on the nobody land. The destroyers will form a perimeter around the capsules since it is possible to receive a dense curtain of anti-air fire. When the soldiers touched the ground, kill the little tanks. It sounds so easy.

The friendly red-haired girl was exchanging opinions with her bridge's crew. Her carrier sisters were there, too, as holograms. She was displaying on her tactical desk the area around the capital city on Archangel.

"The fact is we don't know if there still are survivors down there," Lex exposed as a matter of fact. Her XO, a new lieutenant from the "Lexington University," as she called her post in the Fleet Academy, said coldly, "The last videos from Salem are clear, Lex. Every city was shot from the orbit. If there are survivors, they must be located very far from the cities. People making excursions, pleasure trips, vacations, etc."

The other officers seemed to share the same opinion. Lex placed her delicate hands on the table and sighed with sadness. "We can find two very different scenarios. They destroyed everything and kept the planet under surveillance, or they were very busy building defenses. And we don't know if we are going to fight a long, costly battle to ensure the orbit."

Akagi, the black-haired Japanese beauty, said, "They had all the time to prepare solid defenses. We must peel off their defenses far from the orbit."

One of the battleships, Pennsy, the facto leader of the Standard Battleships, added her own opinion, "They seemed to have an unlimited number of ships. I can't imagine a good reason for not having a strong presence there."

She took a decision. "True, we can't risk the fleet too close to the planet. Ground based guns can be slow, but they pack a strong punch. We will fight our path to Archangel from the Ort cloud. If they are really entrenched, the battleships will use their heavy guns to level down their defenses. After that, we land troops, and the Mobile Infantry does its job.

Two hours later, the Fifth Fleet arrived at its location before the ships folded to Archangel. When the ships formed to the pre-arranged formation, five smaller fleets of rectangular blocks were formed.

As usual, the carriers will be in the center with the troops, surrounded by a wall of battleships. A dense layer of heavy cruisers will be protecting the battleships, while a cloud of destroyers and light cruisers will be mixed around the heavy cruisers. The kill zones of the capital ships were left opened, avoiding the risk of friendly fire.

In her own bridge, Lex and her staff were satisfied with her preparations. She used the comms array and transmitted the fold order in five minutes. The ships were engulfed in spheres of light, and the fold drives moved the fleet to Archangel's Ort Cloud.

Lex had a combat mission, so she chooses a direct approach. "Sensors engage active arrays. Scan the system," Lex said, fully focused on the sensors. The information was arriving, big chunks of data, enough to keep busy an army of human analysts for months. For her core, five minutes were enough.

She displayed the data on her tactical table and explained, "Unfortunately for us, they were busy. I don't think it is possible to build a space station so fast, and they don't seem to use nanotechnology like us. Maybe it is a warp capable installation. There are a few orbital defenses around the station and at least fifty cubes."

The station, a big romboidal structure with two big crosses at the extremes and three kilometers long along her major axis, was in high orbit around the Archangel colony.

The lookings around the table were becoming more and more worried. They didn't enjoy the large numerical superiority of the other four fleets, but they will fight their way to Archangel. She placed her hands on the table, and she commented, "I can't see any reason to change our formation. We will advance at sublight speed to Archangel. We are going to have to fight for our lives." She observed the grim determination displayed on her officers and crew. Satisfied, she used her command voice, "All ships, ready for heavy combat. All weapons are authorized. Full speed and engage."

Every ship pushed the engines to maximum, reaching 0.6c in minutes. At this speed, they would need twenty-six hours to reach the colony, but Lexington hoped the machines would attack her fleet sooner. If that don't happen, they will use the fold drives.

Ten hours later, the enemy fleet was still close to Archangel, ignoring them.

Lex was completely bored. She tried to understand the reasons for the machines' cautious behavior, and so far, they always attacked without any doubt.

She used her scanners at full power and analyzed the data. Her sensor operator noted the intensive use of the scanners. The man, a veteran from the Cylon War, observed the readings and asked, "You suspect a trap, right?"

Lex was studying the data. She nodded to her trusted officer, and finally, she said, "I think so. We don't understand their motivations, but they have never refused a fight."

Finally, after almost twenty minutes of deep analysis, she opened her eyes, displaying a convincent show of fear. "Mines. The system is plagued by stealth mines. The gravitational trail is small, but it is there."

All her officers flew to the tactical display to watch the new information. Long lines of red dots crossed the orbit of Archangel, with a heavier concentration of mines in the star ecliptic. If they continued their current course, they would cross through several dense mine layers.

"Well, since I don't want to use our hulls as minesweepers, we will remain in this course," she said calmly. The officers looked at the crazy professor of the war college. They knew she was expecting from them a tactical reason for that decision.

One of the young officers said, "Do you want to clean our way to Archangel using the SGSs?

Looking as a happy teacher with a clever student, she said, "Well said, my dear student, since the SGCs don't have a real limit, we will clear our path with them. Sparks - the traditional, old name for the comms officer - call all the ships. Inform them about our finding. Double check my findings and make a consensus map of the mines. Then, we will clear our way."

Many girls and smart sensor officers had detected the anomalies.

Curiously, by chance, all the Standard battleship sisters, a big sisterhood of thirteen batleships, were all present here. Some of them had pending matters with the machines, like Arizona, who had lost many crewmen in the attack on Atlantea. When they were informed about the use of big guns to clear the sky, they were really pleased.

Lex sent the orders to the fleet. They will continue like nothing happened, and twenty light minutes of distance from Archangel, they will release the SGCs in wide focus mode. A cone of one light seconds will be cleared, and the real battle will start.

For hours, the fleet continued, and the two enemies exchanged scans, but no communication intent was tried.

Battleship Arizona.

Ari, the mental model, was feeling a mix of simulated emotions. She had lost many sailors in the attack on Atlantea. For the first time in her long life, she looked at her crew through her internal cameras and noted the new faces. Almost a third of them were replacing the losses. She had asked her captain, and Huchinson explained that the perfect memory of the mental model worked against her. Humans experience the same, but the memory is not perfect and begins to forget. It's the way our mind protects themselves, he explained.

How I can forget, she musited for herself.

Right now, Ari was following Lex's order. They reached the coordinates, and the SGCs prepared to fire. Somehow, the machine's sensors detected the energy surge, and the fleet scattered fast. Around the battleship and carriers, the super graviton cannons opened their muzzles and released their charge. The white streams, with their characteristic nodal propagation, expanded to the targetted area, covering one light second of width.

A succession of tiny explosions covered the area, marking the end of the mines. In fact, they were small only from a large distance. Lex frowned when she measured the explosions in the gigaton range. If a mine exploded close to the little ones, it was quite probable the ship could lose shields, and the hull would suffer severe damage. For a destroyer sized ship, the damage would be catastrophic.

With the planet behind her, the cubes formed into pyramidal groups of four ships. They dispersed fast and accelerated, closing fast to engage the fleet. Every ship aimed their huge turrets, ready to fire on their enemies.

The huge battleships were the first ones to reach the engagement range, and an intense, furious exchange of white plasma lances and blue beams happened. The almost invisible corrosive beams fired later, and pieces of hulls disappeared or were torn off the hulls.

The first firing pass left two cubes leaking gases and leaving a trail of hull fragments behind. Several destroyers had to hide behind the battleships to recover their shields, too weak to cope with the cubes' weapons.

The cubes made a big arc to go back to the planet, avoiding the fleet guns. That was their intention, but the human ships released a swarm of missiles. Guided by the cores, they danced along their trajectories, mostly avoiding the cubes pulsed batteries.This time, eight cubes were torn into pieces, exploding and dying.

The fleet continued on its way, but the cubes seemed to hesitate. They lost one-fifth of their fleet in the first firing pass, and they only damaged one battleship, Alabama and a couple of destroyers. They formed a bit circle around the station and remained there.

Pennsylvania called Lex. "Yes, Pennsy?" Lex asked in her branch of the Tactical Network. "They are imitating our tactics. I'm afraid this station could be like Alex, and you know her weapons are planetary grade."

Her sensors didn't show any evidence, but the weapons could be in standby, waiting for the right moment.

Lex had to admit these beings were becoming a challenge. She sent an order through the battlenet, "All battleships, engage your mass drivers against the station. Fire at will."

From the battleships bows, two large ports opened. The blue light, characteristic from an intense EM field, expulsed one ton projectiles of iron-tungsten alloy. The field added 0.01c to the ship speed, so they were moving at 0.61c. Even with this speed, the slugs will need one hour to reach the station. Enough time to observe the machines answer.

Fifty-six minutes later.

Lex and her officers were glued to the main viewscreen. The projectiles were going to impact against the station in a matter of minutes, and they will know what kind of defenses they have. The answer arrived when the station destroyed the metal chunks with a series of well coordinated and powerful shots. Her armament, as Penssy was afraid of, was comparable to the mankind's battlestations. A direct attack was almost suicide.

Lex spoke calmy to her officers, "Well, it's time to try something new. A direct battle will leave a lot of dead ships. Something has any ideas?"

"Do you think the station can survive all the battleships' SGC shots at the same time?" her XO asked with hope in her voice.

"Maybe if we focus all the shots in the same area, we could. But trying is free," Lex concluded. The same engineer made a few mental calculus and added, "It would be better if we synchronized the mass drivers with the SGC shots."

Lex pondered the situation for a few seconds and said, "I say we try. If it doesn't work, we will need the H-44s and their heavy SGCs to kill the station." The guys thought a bit about the last comment. Her XO said, "I prefer to finish them by ourselves, Lex."

"True, but if I can choose, I prefer the safest maneuver," Lex exclaimed while smiled. She added, more seriously than before, "Send new orders. In five minutes, change our attitude not to destroy our rocks and fire the mass drivers. Reduce speed to 0.08c. Synchronize the arrival time to avoid the station defenses and fire the SGCs, two shots by ship. Proceed now."

Five minutes later, the ships began the breaking maneuver. All the capital ships fired their heaviest solid rounds and let the slugs fly against the station. Five seconds before the projectiles reached the estimated range from the stations' weapons, the heavy cruisers and battleships fired their SGCs. Fifty-four lances of super accelerated gravitons left the ships, and in two minutes, they reached the station. It produced a strong reaction between the shield and the beams, which released a powerful discharge of energy eroding the shield integrity.

Finally, the first discharge finished, and the shield seemed to remain intact. Then the second volley arrived, and while the light show repeated, some residual energy discharges could be seen from the distance. It looked like the station had to choose between sending power to the shield or the rounds. Apparently, the first happened, and the rounds crushed violently against the shield.

The machines were already trying to stabilize the shield, but several projectiles passed through and penetrated the hull. Designed to fragment inside the target, it damaged several sectors of the station. However, the next rounds' volley collided against the shield, which had gained enough strength to stop them.

In the Lex's bridge, a very pissed off mental model cursed like a sailor in liberty. She already knew her own SGC still needed a cold down time, and on the other ships happened the same.

Lex took a decision. Depending on what happened later, she would be in the naval warfare history books. The station's shield was spherical. Too bad for the stupid machines. Lex ordered a massive launch of jumping missiles. All around the ship decks, the launch cells opened, and the jumping missiles left the cells.

Two hundred meters later, the jump drives took energy from the capacitor and jumped inside the shield. The jump drive had a tactical disadvantage since it placed the ship on the new location at zero speed. The missiles accelerated, but many were destroyed. However, more of thirty missiles reached the hull, and two gigatons of nuclear power by missile melted and opened the hull, releasing a powerful EMP inside the station.

Some pieces from the hull flew from the hull and passed through the area where the shield was supposed to be. Lex smiled, noticing how the shield was down, and ordered, "All ships, flank speed, first firing pass on these coordinates."

As one, one hundred ships opened her formation. Each subformation exposed the capital ships closer to the station. It has no sense to place the light cruisers and destroyers to that magnitude of fire.

On Arizona's bridge, the officers and Ari were preparing the ships facing the station. To inflict the major damage, only a few targets were selected. Weapons' emplacements and shield emitters were priority targets, leaving to the light units the sensor arrays. The missiles will be kept in reserve since still forty cubes were waiting for them.

The mauled station, with her external hull opened to space, showed erratic energy readings. It seems a lot of energy conducts were destroyed, and the machines were trying frantically to reroute power through undamaged lines.

The moment of contact approached fast, with only tenths of seconds of real, face to face combat. For the girls and the machines was a long time, but for the sailors, it was just a blurred picture on the screens. Obviously, for this kind of trained maneuver, the mental models took control of maneuvering and weapons. A fast, quite precise exchange of heavy weapons took place, and the fleet left the station behind. Already changing course to make a long arc, they put distance between them a the still dangerous station.

Lex was observing the sensor readings. Several solid impacts on the capital ships, a couple of pissed battleships with shields compromised, but they can go on. The station had suffered hundreds of impacts, and the weapon emplacements were ruined along the hull surface.

This time, the heavy cruisers opened fire with their SGCs version. Lighter, yes, but against an unshielded target, they penetrated the hull and caved long corridors of destruction. Secondary, powerful eruptions of plasma were visible from the holes, and the station could be seen losing altitude control. Her power generation, already compromised, was dedicated only to the engines. It was fighting against gravity, and the result was uncertain.

The cubes attacked the fleet while they were finishing the turn.

Lex observed the attacking cubes. She had assigned control of every subformation to a battleship, and the girls were firing furiously, weakening the cubes' shields, perforating the hulls and leaving pieces behind. The girls were suffering damage, too, and several ships were redlining their shields. Soon or late, a few ships will have hull breaches and shields lost. The powerful shields of the carriers were, however, immune so far to the bombardment.

The battleships and cruisers released a lot of missiles against the cubes. Many cubes exploded, and only twelve damaged cubes survived the battle. They went back to the station and acted as mobile batteries.

The end of this battle was coming fast. Again, they closed distance with the station, but the carriers and escorts remained behind, far from the station. The irreplaceable troops inside were too valuable to risk them too close to the station.

All the ships fired with their beam weapons, and after five minutes, the battlestation was a dead body. Their power generation was running probably on backups, and the weapons ceased to fire. The ships went after the remaining cubes.

Battleship Arizona. Bridge.

A group of tired but determined sailors were keeping so much processing power free for her mental model as they could. A lot of damage control, helm control, life support, and medical attention were being carried out for the human crew. Ari was completely focused on her weapon control. She was looking her target, a cube with a few hull penetrations but still combat capable, through her multiple turrets targeting systems.

In the real world, she was keeping her body balanced with her hands pressed on a desk since the ship trembled with every shot. She aimed her main batteries in the same place, and the hull exploded into pieces around the impacts. She had several shield grids redlined, but she went on.

Her sisters kept firing, too, dispensing more damage than receiving it. After ten minutes of maneuvers and counter maneuvers, the last cube exploded, with a long and powerful cheer onboard each ship.

After a long arc, the fleet, united again, discharged every missile with corrosive warheads against the station. The impotent structure, indefense, was simply a target. Thirty minuter later, the hull broke into big pieces and fell down on the planet surface.

Lex sighed like a human would do. A lot of girls did the same, and many of them had little time to rest. Many ships had damage, and the nanomaterial stocks were being used fast. The fleet orbited Archangel, and what they supposed became true. The cities were leveled down to dust, and many of them were only craters. The planet atmosphere had too much dust, and a brown color tainted the usually blue sky.

One orbit later, the first machine structures were revealed. Almost ten craters, where cities usually had raised, were filled with weird structures inside. The little tanks, numbered in the hundred of thoundsands, were visible from the surface. As someone had said, a few survivors were located in places far from the cities. In time, they will be rescued by the shuttles.

To battle against well armed tanks, one by one, was useless and costly. The big battleships rained solid rounds against the machine cities, making the craters bigger. Of course, the damned things were not going to surrender easily. They did what the fleet didn't want: they dispersed across the planet. In hours, the surface was plagued of tanks.

Carrier Lexington. Bridge.

Lex was experiencing a very machine-like satisfaction after the battle. She was completing her mission, and the liberation of Archangel was near. However, the planet was a wasteland. The weather was close to a nuclear winter, and the sky was polluted with radioactivity.

This poor world will need a lot of work, she thought. But, for now, she will clean this planet from the infestation. The carriers opened their launch tubes on her lower hull. Thounsands of false capsules, designed to explode and fill the sky with false readings, were launched. While they descended into the sky, a few missiles rose from the surface and intercepted the capsules. The false capsules exploded in sequence, and the sky was full of tiny, highly reflective pieces of metal. It was impossible to distinguish anything, and the fire stopped, reserving the missiles for better targets.

Now, the cruisers and battleships fired on the places where the missiles were launched and the activity ceased. It was time for the Mobile Infantry to board the capsules and descend into the ground.

Hundreds and hundreds of capsules left the carriers, and the little destroyers dived with them into the atmosphere. Their hovering capabilities were essential as troops support, and they could protect the fragile capsules while they spent long minutes during the fall.

At a height of fifty meters, the capsules exploded, and the power armor used his own thrusters to slow down. The soldiers began their hunting.

As happened on Atlantea, it was a hard, slow battle on the ground for one month. The little shits were fast, and the soldiers needed time to reach the tanks and destroy them. Fortunately, no mass graves were found. The bodies of the habitants had just disappeared due to the bombs.

Lexington had kept Yamato upgraded with every major development. The Japanese looking girl looked calm, knowing that the end of this conflict was still far in the future.