Chapter 284: (TerraSol)

Sangbre reached the surface, blinking at the sunlight after spending long minutes? Hours? Days? in the depths of the caverns. Lanaktallan, Tnvaru, and other refugees were being guided to the massive elevators inside the cave. Urged into orderly lines by the smaller cyborgs, they all shuffled nervously. Many of the Lanaktallan mares were quietly crying but putting on a brave face for the colts and calves.

Sangbre rushed out of the cave, following D-Mee3, Captain Manners following her. As soon as he cleared the cave entrance he staggered, one hand going his implant, the other hand dropping to his pistol butt. Sangbre turned around, looking at the Terran as he went down on one knee.

"What?" She asked, rushing back to him.

"It's a Case Omaha. Solarian Civil Defense is ordering everyone into the shelters," Captain Manners said. He shook his head like he was a boxer trying to shake off a hard right hook. "You were right to get these people to the shelters. They only have a short amount of time until the first attacks hit Terra's planetary shields."

"Stand up, Space Force," D-Mee3 urged, holding out his hand.

"How long?" Sangbre asked, looking at the thousands of refugees who had not been able to leave Terra yet for the newest homeworld. Captain Manners looked at Sangbre even as he took the cyborg's hand and was pulled to his feet.

"If they started firing nCv rounds as soon as they got in, the first impacts against the planetary defense shields will be in roughly four and a half hours," Captain Manners said. "It'll get bad before then," he said.

"Define... bad," Sangbre said.

"Guns are already firing," Captain Manners said. "C+ Cannon subspace shockwaves should start being felt within a few minutes."

Sangbre turned to D-Mee3. "Will the refugees reach shelter in time?"

"Only thanks to your timely warning, Matron," the bulky cyborg said. He looked up at the sky. "Like others before them, they think that Terra will be easily taken," he sneered. "The planet will break before we do."

"My daughter?" Sangbre asked, feeling a cold chill. Her daughter was still young, which meant headstrong, and she feared that her daughter would take her ship into combat against the Overseers to attempt to pay them back for thousands of years of indignities.

Captain Manners put his hand to his datalink. "Unknown. The It Tastes Sweet would be a civilian vessel and ordered out of the system," he dropped his hand and touched Sangbre's shoulder. "She survived a Precursor attack in an unarmed vessel, I'm sure she has sense to run."

Sangbre nodded, looking up.

And urged her daughter to run.

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Legion stood on his command deck, deep within the Leviathan Class warship. It was not some ancient relic sporting weapons and defenses long ago made obsolete. It was the warship of an Immortal, upkept and modernized, kept state of the art.

He had already interlinked his war plan with TerraSol Military Command, even as his guns kept thundering at the enemy ships charging into his fire. He was taking return fire now, nCv cannons, plasma cannons, particle cannons, massive missile strikes and runs of multiple torpedoes. Nuclear detonations blossomed against his shields, antimatter fury roared against his battlescreens, and missile payloads wasted themselves against shields thicker than most Lanaktallan planetary defense shields.

Legion knew every detail of his fleet. From the lightest attack craft pilot to the secondary C+ Cannon battery gunnery officer aboard the Leviathans, he was they and they were he.

Lanaktallan ships shattered under his guns but still came forward, their battlescreens pushing aside the debris of their dead fellows as they charged.

"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Legion roared out to his crew and himself aboard the light frigate in the lead as the lead ships started to attempt to sweep around Legions armada like river water around a rock. The ship began to shudder as battlescreen slammed against battlescreen, weapons were fired at point blank range, and aggressive VI's leaped from Legion's ships to the Lanaktallan ships as fast as possible.

Legion's eyebrows raised as he looked at the long range scanners and saw a second wave of millions of ships drop into realspace and immediately move to engage. He reached out to his gunner panels and redirected his C+ batteries even as he updated the targeting solutions on the local control systems in the belly of the ships.

The newcomers started taking fire even as the C+ shells were loaded into the chambers. Legion tightened his grip on the command yoke of his starfighter as he threaded through the Lanaktallan formation, his little ship nothing more than a frame wrapped around a C+ Cannon, two creation engines, and a missile launcher. He recieved the targeting update from himself and oriented, stomping the pedal to fire the C+ cannon.

Legion watched as his carriers launched a second wave of starfighter torchships and ordered the next wave to come out of the massive creation engines to be a 70/30 mixture of interceptors space superiority fighters and heavy bombers.

He knew how to deal with the massive ships of the newcomers, ships that rivaled the size of the massive Goliath class Precursor vessels.

With ammo. Lots of ammo.

And, of course, blood and lives.

But Legion had brought enough.

He grinned from where he stood on the deck of his ship, lightning flickering on his uniform.

It was good to be back.

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The Lanaktallan were taking horrendous casualties. Over half of the Corporate Wave was destroyed and they were barely inside the orbit of the seventh planet and the guns of the furthest out planet were still firing despite the planet itself breaking up. The Military Wave had taken 25% casualties and they were barely inside the orbit of the eighth planet.

The Executor Wave was already taking hits that even their more powerful shields couldn't withstand and were taking casualties even as they moved into the system.

Part of their problem was that, like any good cargo cultist, they had slavishly followed what they thought they should do. Their lack of concern for the first two waves, the fodder waves, was a byproduct of the War Stallion mentality that the more aggressive members of the Herd were there to be sacrificed to wear the enemy down, run them out of ammunition, and clog their guns with the dead.

They weren't concerned with casualties, their minds overlaid with the thought processes of War Stallions, their common Lanaktallan brains misfiring with connections that made no sense.

The other problem the Lanaktallan were having was in design.

Not just the fact that by Terran standards their technology was obsolete, but rather the designs themselves.

Over the millions of years they had been designed, redesigned, rebuilt, retasked, designed by committee, and eventually over-designed.

Rather than the Terran method of dedicated vessels with a few multi-role vessels the Lanaktallan had gone ahead and made sure that every ship could tackle every circumstance.

Their torchcraft space fighters were capable of space superiority fighting, close combat support, bombing runs, strafing runs, carrying missile payloads, operating inside or outside of atmosphere, and anything else someone had thought up.

They were the ultimate multi-role craft.

They just couldn't do any of it well.

Not that the Lanaktallan understood that. Any War Stallion, hell, any Terran, and possibly half the Telkan Marines could have told them that for every mission you design something for it takes away from the original mission.

Not that they would have listened.

The huge clouds of Lanatkallan torchships of the Corporate Wave slammed into the waves of System Defense Light Attack Craft (Space Superiority) of the Terran Confederate Space Force and the Terran System Defense Force.

The Lanaktallans were fighting to get past the Terran craft and make attack runs on the capital ships and then the planets and moons.

The Terrans were just there to kill Lanaktallan torchships.

Space erupted in atomic and antimatter detonations, shattering energy weapons, and flights of missiles.

The Flight Operations Commands of the Lanaktallan Corporate Fleet watched in horror as the casualties mounted and ordered the second flight to launch, ordering them to go to the rescue of the first wave.

He was informed that the second wave was loaded up with intra-atmospheric weapons and weapons designed to strike at planetary targets.

He didn't give a second thought.

He ordered the second wave stripped back to bare weapon mounts and reloaded for light attack craft close combat.

It would take nineteen minutes, even with full automation, to strip the ships. Another twenty-six to load them back up, ten to do all the checks, and five to launch them all.

He was satisfied when his orders were obeyed.

It was an hour he didn't have as the Terran second wave, consisting of heavy 'bombers', went over and under the point blank knife fight melee of the superiority fights and made their attack runs on the Lanaktallan carriers.

He panicked and ordered the ships to be reloaded with space superiority packages.

The Terran craft made their attack runs, ships exploding behind them, until their weapon bays were empty, their creation engines overheated and spilling slush.

The problem was...

...there were still more.

The first troopships made their landings.

On Ganymede.

Ground combat for the Sol System had begun.

With a single word, repeated, shrieked, over and over and over.

"DOKI!"