Chapter 6

n coming hyper drive wake detected. Enemy ship's will break out in 10 minutes!" Said the voice of the ship's new AI.

Captain Colter rolled her eyes at the voice. She was still finding it hard to get used to. The personnel who installed the AI had come on board with the new XO. She just hoped it worked as well as her new XO did. All bridge crew were at their duty stations and in vacuum suits in case of explosive decompression.

"Breakout of incoming ships in 5 minutes captain. I have firm readings of at least 60 ships." The AI's voice stated calmly.

Captain Colter raised her eyebrows at this. To be able to separate out 60 specific ships was a feat that deserved respect. Usually a human crew needed a little more time to get readings enough to extrapolate from.

"Confirmed Captain." responded Commander Alton from Sensors. Captain Colter nodded.

"Diamond pattern attack formation. Stay on track. Original plan still a go. Send to Task force ignore new ships, keep to current attack plan." Captain Colter said calmly.

"What is the ETA of the new ships?" She asked.

"They will come out of hyper approximately 1 hour and 10 minutes normal space drive out from our projected position, Ma'am." Responded tracking control.

"Good. That gives us time to take care of our primary job. What is the status of our current targets?" Colter asked.

"All enemy ships are targeted and accounted for, captain." Responded the AI.

"Then all we can do is wait." Sighed Captain Colter as the Task Force closed on the group of enemy ships which were moving to attack her own force. Both groups were closing on one another at 100 kilometers per second. At the current speed, missile engagement would become viable in another 12 minutes.

The enemy having detected the emperor's task force had gotten a slow but credible start. They were in a good formation, but intelligence suggested that their ship abilities were far less than their own. The largest ship in the enemy formation was 3,750 meters long. Almost as large as an Imperial Battleship. Of the 105 ships headed their way, 65 were at that length. The remainder were divided as follows, 15 ships of 2200 meters in length, and the remaining 25 ships were at a length of 850 meters or less.

"Missile range." Stated the Ships AI.

Admiral Sethon watched as the battle unfolded from the flag bridge. He had already given his instructions to the task force commanders and planned to let all commanders fight their battles as they deemed necessary. He would only interfere if he saw a decided advantage that no one else did. So far, everything was going according to plan, with the exception of the enemy ships that had just entered the system from hyper space.

"Missiles detected behind approaching enemy force. Missiles were masked by approaching force." The voice of the AI said calmly.

Admiral Sethton winced as he looked at the readout on the new missile targets. The enemy had apparently launched 12,000 missiles that had been masked by the enemy drives and the more primitive jamming the enemy had. Well, primitive or not, it had been effective. Who ever was commanding over there was no slouch.

Lord Rashva'ss was puzzled. They outnumbered the enemy 2 to 1, yet still they came. Admittedly they had large ships, but it was still confusing. They had that monster ship he almost drooled over, and he hoped they would capture it. The rest of the enemy ships were all between 1,000 spans long to anywhere from 250 spans longer than his greatest great ships, to 2250 spans longer than his greatest great ship. That was not counting the huge spherical ship they had brought with them. Well, no matter, the missiles were now pulling ahead of him, and he was ready to order broadsides to be fired. Soon, the enemy would come to know who the master was.

Mathew Braxton watched as the enemy missiles approaching deployed multiple warheads. Well, he thought grimly, that was a trick they were well acquainted with. It was going to hurt them though. They had not thought that the enemy had this capability, as none of the captured missiles on the enemy ship had them. However, they had not discounted the possibility.

Mathew watched as their own missiles rushed out to meet and pass the enemy missiles. Explosions were happening on a 500 kilometer front. Missiles died and lived. Of the almost 20,000 missiles fired at the enemy, over a third were destroyed. The enemy believed in over kill apparently. If they hadn't, more of the emperor's missiles would have gotten through that first meeting. More still were fooled by the primitive jamming. Others died from enemy anti missile fire. Point defense finally engaged the remaining missiles.

37 enemy ships were destroyed outright, and almost all the rest had damage of some sort. Only 14 enemy ships were undamaged at all. Mathew watched the readouts grimly as the enemy missiles closed in.