Georgaian looked at the entrance that was glowing red from the heavy bombardment, and he knew that it would not be long until the doors would be breached and the enemy would most likely rush through.
He tore his gaze from the command deck screen, towards the farview that was displaying the battlefield map, his forces had formed a circle around the entrance way, and they were ready to pound into oblivion any ships that tried to get through.
Despite that, he was still sweating bullets, not just from the vast disparity in numbers between their fleet and Yemen’s, but also from the fact that they were seriously under staffed and although the ships weapons had an auto fire function for such emergencies, it didn’t compare with having a real sentient being behind the missile launchers, domes and warp cannons.
“Not to mention the fact that, we don’t have any way of repairing damages quickly, we barely have one medical staff and a handful of engineers per ship and not even a full bridge crew! Oh well, at least’s it’s not raining.” he thought to himself as a small smile graced his fanged turtle mouth at the old, overused, but at least to him, still funny joke.
“Main door breached at point G-18! Enemy vessels have begun firing a concentrated volley trough the breach!” the tactical officer ,who was also doubling as the pulsar operator announced, as the mighty barrage from the enemy came through the heavy armored door and a wave of pure energy, from the washed like a tidal wave through the hole, impacting it’s opposite wall.
Georgaian felt as the ship he was on started to shake violently from the sheer amount of indirect particles, the energy beams dispersed as they passed them by only a few miles.
“Everyone hold tight and prepare to move to firing posts once the barrage stops. To the fire ships operators, remember you must not join the battle until you are ordered!” Georgaian broadcasted, as he used his left arm to cling to his chair for dear life, the order he just gave out was meant for ships to form a diameter that was smaller and closer to the breach, this would make them more vulnerable to the particle beams, but would give them a much better shot, and rate of fire when the enemy would rush through.
And just as abruptly the barrage appeared, it suddenly stopped, a moment of absolute silence followed then another, and another, and in those fleeting moments that felt like hours, Georgaian’s mind went through a thousand different thoughts.
But before he could properly think them through, another barrage of energy surged through the breach.
“All units return to shielded positions along the wall!” he ordered.
The barrage stopped after about five minutes, and Georgaian was tempted to order the troops to firing positions once more, but he cautiously waited and a moment latter another barrage came from the enemy.
This one lasted three seconds and was followed by a ten minute break, after that, it was not followed by another barrage, but rather three successive barrages, that where all mere seconds away from each other, that where followed by an about 30 seconds break, and then the random pattern of firing and pauses continued randomly all throughout the hour.
“The taffer’s a clever piece of crud!” Georgaian thought to himself as he now realized he would be forced to keep his fleet in shielded positions and the random rate of fire meant that he had no way of guessing when the enemy would charge.
Tarkan’s fleet, Balisha meteorite walls.
Tarkan could not sense how the walls of the fortress where vibrating, from the constant bombardment the enemy was hitting them with, from all sides while searching for potential breaches, but just the sight of it made him feel the force of the blasts in his stomach, all 300 thousand of them now knew just how serious the enemy attack was.
An average fleet commander would simply order the walls to the pummeled as hard as they could be, but not Yemen, or whichever officer was leading that part of his fleet. The barrage may seem to the average person no different from any other, but to the trained eyes of Tarkan, he could see the subtle genius behind it.
It was a barrage that was just hard enough for the enemy to not only map the surface, by analyzing the kinetic shockwave patterns caused the impacts, but also help confuse the Imperial pulsars, who already had to deal with the enemy’s magical jamming and siege spells. In addition to that, it was not so intense, as to make the dustroof fillings disintegrate, and although that would create a breach, it would also greatly increase the visibility of Tarkan’s fleet and allow them to see and move in time to plug the gap.
“But he’s a too seasoned a campaigner for that, he’ll continue his bombardment until he’s mapped every possible breach area, and after that, he’ll continue the barrage, until they decide to simultaneously open every breach and swarm us!” Tarkan thought to himself, and as he contemplated any potential counter plan, inspiration struck him, which he was thankful for, since it was that and not an enemy beam.
“All right sailors, we need to modify our formation, first I want every potential breach zone highlighted on the map, then we will do little something I call the ‘half-double punch’ ” Tarkan said and after finding out the location of the potential breach zones, he explained the rest of his stratagem to his captains.
Valyria’s Fleet, Balisha Breach.
Ataru, from the moment he had witnessed his first successful military operation and his first military disaster, which in the chaos of war turned out to have happened in the same battle simultaneously, he had know then and there, that each of the four flight types of air force ships had been designed for a specific purpose.
The Impalers where bombers, that would pound both ground units and enemy battleships, they were strong against those, but vulnerable against Pegasy fighters, and skywanderers.
The skywanderer’s main role was that of fighter-bomber, not exceptional in either roles, but it did good enough to hold the lines against both Pegasus and BEGS, and do a decent job against enemy ships.
The pegasus where the strongest armored units of the sky and preyed on both skywanderers and Impalers and well as being able to engage light ships and a skilled horseman/pilot could even attack heavy ships.
Finally there where the BEGS, the so called ‘piranhas of space’, these small bolts of thunder where specifically design for quick attacks, to cut down Impalers, wanderers and even hold their own against the Pegasus fighters.
The skywanderers, BEGS and Pegasus fighters represented the old dilemma between speed, numbers and armor, each with varying degrees of fire power, each design with its own strengths and weaknesses, and victory always depending on the pilots and how they were deployed in combat.
Ataru could see that the defense of the breach was a prime example of not ‘how to do things right’, in the sense that in a fight nothing ever went right or according to plan, rather this was a prime example of how to win by ‘screwing up less than your opponent’.
The Volunians had adopted a tactic of missile bombardment on the diameter of the breach.
The aforementioned weapons would impact the site and half of them would explode and raise a dust cloud, while the other half consisted of earth missiles, that quickly harvested the surrounding rock and shifted into Earthgolems, who would advance on foot through the dust cloud, towards the Imperial ships.
They represented a threat to the fleet, since the golems could easily jump in the almost zero gravity field and board the ships to wreak havoc.
This was a major problem for the Imperials, since they had a hard time shooting them down because of the sheer numbers of golems that where being deployed and the ships couldn’t get to close to the breach, so the flight corps deployed most of its forces there, in order to stem the tide of those that couldn’t be stopped by the fleet.
And as previously stated it was a classic example on how to ‘mess up the least’.
They were in the ideal bomber formation, BEGS in a loose spherical skirmish line along with several wings of Pegasus fighters encompassed the bomber formations, that was composed out of Impalers at the center and on their left and right wings w
here the skywanderes, who acted as escorts and support.
When they came up to a target, the Impalers would drop their heavy pail load of missiles, spears and arrow bundles of the golems, and while the skywanderes would dive down and obliterate any survivors from the Impalers assault.
As the formation turned, the Pegasus and BEGS who were equipped with arrows and crossbows would also fire a few strafing rounds and whatever was still moving, whilst the lancers and swordsmen would continue to guard the flanks from any enemy fighters that got trough, with support of the long range ones, if the need arose.
The Imperial defenders where divided into four formations, that would follow the simply pattern of launch from the carriers, fly to the breach, drop the payload and withdraw for rearmament, thus ensuring a constant bombardment on the breach.
“Things seem to be going well, dare I say it even ‘according to plan’.” Ataru thought to himself as his formation prepared to have their go at the Earthgolems.