Gordon’s gaze was transfixed on the monitor, just as everyone else’s.
He was watching a live stream of the battle raging in space above his head, a battle that would decide the fate of all of humanity. A live stream that was played in the homes of everybody not taking part in the fight, on earth and on mars.
Gordon had ensured that no one would be left unknowing of what was happening above them. Today they fight together, and if it came to it, they would die together.
It was a day when Earth stood still.
Angron had not believed it when it had happened. When the first mining vessels showed up, he had thought them mad – or foolish. Civilians taking part in the battle was not something he had ever wanted.
But there they were, and they hadn’t stopped coming.
Mining vessels, transport ships, colonial defense vessels, escort frigates, rescue ships.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians had dropped in, and they had turned the tide.
Every Alliance vessel capable of fighting was here, even several who couldn’t fight were diving through the endless mountains of wreckage, gathering up the millions of life pods that had managed to escape doomed vessels.
Angron watched as a massive laser pulse intended to melt metal asteroids turned a battleship to molten slag within seconds. After all, creating shields against light was near impossible, and they were considered too inefficient to weaponise so there had never been any need to.
But there it was, and it was beautiful.
He could see as a swarm of millions of mining probes cut chunks out of vessels a hundred times their size, and he saw a huge transport ship dumping millions of ground-to-air missiles, previously part of a colony’s air defenses, into space. They soared through the void not in pairs, or even dozens. But by hundreds, even thousands.
Angron was awed by what he saw. His people had a long-standing martial tradition, but he could never have dreamed of the sheer valor of these humans, these untrained civilians and workers, who put their lives on the line.
Then more subspace portals opened, and Ysirian and Huujin crafts came pouring out.
The entire alliance was here, in this desperate battle for the very heart of Humanity.
And despite all their differences, they were all brothers this day.
It was nearly impossible to spot at first, but then it came apparent. The senate ranks were depleting, and it was increasing in pace.
Angron watched how a railgun slug breached the hull of the Gyanni, tearing open a hull that had stood the test of thousands of years.
sir, we’re receiving transfers.
“Reroute them to Earth.”
Understood. Transferring 1242 Demiossian minds to the storage facilities on Earth.
No matter if they were warriors or not, the crew of the Gyanni had no place in the battlefield without bodies. Angron watched as the ship crumbled under a second and a third slug, and he was thankful that no lives had been lost.
After all, no matter how precious, a ship was just a ship, and it could be rebuilt.
A mind, a soul, was so much more precious.
He prayed that the Human losses would not be too dire, but looking out over the battlefield the chance for that felt narrow.
He watched as the emperor’s phasebeam lashed out once more, reducing the battleship that had taken down the Gyanni to metal splinters.
There weren’t many capital ships left in the invading armada, Angron noticed. They had been the target of the combined alliance fire, and had thus been destroyed throughout the battle, and now he could see the enemy falling back.
Why weren’t they escaping with their subspace drives?
Angron looked on in puzzlement as they were hunted down and killed by alliance ships, civilian and military.
But the Alliance forces had been the rock that broke the tide, and the senate ships were crumbling.
The sheer amount of PoW’s that the Alliance had captured in the aftermath of the siege of Sol was staggering, and it had taken them several colonies just to accommodate all of the prisoners.
Though Gordon had done his outmost to ensure the humane conditions of the prison camp, it was a very difficult task to house and feed them.
He knew that it was a matter of time until things would become unsustainable, and they couldn’t drag out this war much further.
But more than half of the Alliance navy had been destroyed in the battle, he was just glad that the number of survivors from the wrecked ships had been substantial.
And he knew that he had the civilian support to thank for that.
He hadn’t expected them to join in the fray, but he thanked god that they had. They had saved the Earth and Mars both. The navy had been extremely proficient in its defense of sol, but the enemy had simply been too large.
Without the timely intervention of the countless civilian ships, and the Ysir as well as the Huujin, all would have been lost.
But he was troubled.
So many had come to their aid, but not the Gammorrans.
He would have to voice these concerns in the meeting he had summoned.
He looked over the representatives gathered before him, including the newly-appointed Huujin representative.
“Fellow representatives – we have gathered after a momentous event. The collected naval power of the Senate has been broken towards out defenses, and we’re still alive.
We have fought an enemy many times our numbers, but we’re still alive.
We’ve won the day.”
He hears a mild applause from the gathered representatives, and he could see that Sven, the representative of Gammorrah, wasn’t present.
He quickly checked his pad. It claimed that he was on his way from Fenris.
“But we’ve suffered dire losses today, and our navy is badly damaged, and we still do not know if we’ve destroyed even half of the enemy fleets. Therefore I suggest we engage operation ‘peace talk’, and activate project Aetherion.”
The representatives grow silent, and he can see that Sasha looks at him with a disapproving glare.
Of course she would oppose the proposal.
She was way too merciful.
“Oh god.”
McCallen stared out the front window of their hijacked corvette, and all he saw was debris.
They were in Sol, but he couldn’t see earth, just an endless cloud of debris.
What had happened here? Where was earth?!
He snapped up the scanners onto the main screen.
Thank god, Earth was still there, just surrounded by this massive cloud of junk.
Or well, a better way to put it was that all this shit was currently in orbit.
He suddenly saw the cloud roil, and as a whale rising out of the waves he could see the Necropolis rise out of the debris, the space-junk bouncing off its’ hull, not even denting it.
The warnings flash out all over the screen.
They were being targeted!
He remembers they’re technically in an enemy vessel.
“Bob! Open a channel to the Necropolis!”
When there is no answer he turns towards their captive, the Gajun pilot that they’ve nicknamed bob, and sees that he stares, frozen, at the Demiossian craft.
McCallen lightly slaps the lizard on the back of the head.
“Dammit, Bob! Now is not the time to ogle! Now open the coms before they blow us up!”