Agent047
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972 - Birth of Stars
🕑 Added 2025-08-28 09:10:55 +0000 UTCThe Conclave fleet started spreading to avoid contact with the missile-like objects, which constantly adjusted their flight path toward their targeted ships. This forced the Conclave fleet to disperse further, but the objects had countermeasures, as they too constantly adjusted their positioning in 3D space. This required the movements made by the Conclave ships to be more aggressive than the oncoming objects in order to continue keeping them at bay, all while continuously firing at them.
This spread had the negative effect of making individual ships easy to single out and target by the imperial pincering fleet, unlike when they were clustered together.
FLASH!!!!!!! A flash of light, followed by a round of explosions, lit the battlefield, announcing the first imperial vessel's casualty, a direct result of the Shadari Torpedo. It was obvious to anyone that the ship was an intentional sacrifice in order to deal with the torpedo and not have it on the back of their minds, a tactic only the empire could employ due to having avatars instead of actual soldiers while still keeping the same effectiveness.
…………………
“A good move,” the admiral said, looking at the information before he added with a smile, “but that is only if you have a good industrial base and the ability for constant reinforcements. What you are doing now is no different than cutting off your hand to save a trapped finger.”
Although he sounded happy that the empire was forced to use that tactic to deal with the Shadari missiles, inwardly it stung him that they could be decisive enough to make that sacrifice despite knowing the limited materials they had on hand for this war. The moment the empire dropped the spatial locks to try and receive reinforcements from Proxima Centauri would also be the moment the war ended in the Conclave's victory, since Conclave fleets would also be entering the solar system along with those reinforcements.
It was also a very costly course of action for the Conclave, as all he got from using a Shadari torpedo was taking out a single ship of the empire's choosing, effectively nullifying nearly half his reason for sending those torpedoes out: psychological warfare.
He knew that neither the empire nor the Conclave had yet found a fast-acting and effective way of dealing with the Shadari torpedoes. So, the moment one was sent out, it was something the enemy would constantly have on their minds and would have to maintain constant, erratic, unpredictable moves in order to keep it at bay until it depleted its energy. This, in turn, would limit what they could do during that fight, as they would be fighting with one hand tied behind their back, trying to avoid the torpedo while also repurposing some of their ship's weapons to constantly fire at it.
However, instead of inflicting the psychological effect he had intended, which would have kept the pincering fleets at bay and very limited in what they could do, he was now on the receiving end of it. The empire seemed to have completely digested the information they received from the Shadari and even managed to replicate one, albeit a crude and very large missile. This was understandable, as they had only had the tech for a few years and had just finished digesting it, yet to reach the level of understanding where they could shrink it. For a missile that relied on phasing through things and expending energy to do so, its large size was a disadvantage, as its large contact surface would now be turned into target practice. His fleet was already firing on them to force them to be continuously using the phasing ability or be destroyed, increasing the missiles' energy expenditure.
It was a time-consuming method, but one of the few easily implementable countermeasures to such missiles: you just force it to exhaustion, then it won’t be able to phase anymore, and you can shoot it down like any other missile or torpedo.
…………………..
The breaching pods, which were considered missiles by the Conclave, continued getting closer and closer to their selected ships, including the mothership, despite being bathed in enough laser and physical munitions to render them nearly invisible from the constant fire.
But while that was happening, if someone had a god’s-eye view of the situation, they would have seen similar breaching pods in active stealth, rendered invisible to sensors, also approaching the same vessels. These were closer than the visible ones that were being bathed in fire and were expending so much energy that, had it not been for the constant energy being provided to them, they would have already run out of their onboard power and been destroyed.
When the invisible pods finally reached the ships that were still focused on dealing with the visible pods while keeping the imperial fleets amidst an active pincer maneuver, they went through the ships' exterior armor as if it were nonexistent.
The stealth breaching pod that entered the largest ship didn’t stop anywhere; it moved toward the reactor before canceling its phasing ability and materializing inside it, destabilizing it and sending it supercritical. In an instant…
The mothership, for a brief moment, became the brightest object in the surroundings, taking with it the fleet admiral and the command structure.
But that was not the end. Twenty more followed within the same second, then another hundred a second later, followed again by fifty-two another second later. Within a five-second period, over two hundred Conclave ships turned into small stars, illuminating the battlefield like fireworks.
…………………..
At the same time.
Inside an infinitely stretching, flat, grass-covered field, more than ten billion imperial citizens were gathered, all looking different. Some had armor, some wore basic clothes, some looked no different from a robot, others wore incredibly plain clothes, and some were floating, but all of them were looking in one direction, a nearly impossible feat to have that many humans in a single area so focused, made possible only because it was VR.
They had just come from a time-accelerated crash course where they were made to practice and experience how to use their selected avatar and its abilities. Unknown to them, the empire assimilated that knowledge to make it feel like second nature, as if they had spent their lives with these bodies and abilities. Now they were ready for deployment and were waiting for the mobilization order as they listened to John's super-short address.
“Although you are powerful individuals, remember that you are still imperial citizens and under the imperial government's law. But make sure to teach them a lesson,” he said in a neutral tone, as speeches weren’t really his thing, before he shouted, “LONG LIVE THE EMPIRE!”
“LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR!” the ten billion-strong crowd of mismatched characters shouted back in unison, as if by instinct.
Comments
Zabulus
TYFTC.
Jade
TYFTC!!!
