35 The Fires of Hell

By the time of the 45th salvo, all of the dreadnoughts were nothing more than deformed and/or melting mass. Coincidentally, this was the time that the missile craft of the fleet were scheduled to begin their fireworks show.

It meant nothing to him now, but one side of his viewing monitor was essentially a wall of pulsing dots. When it comes time to actually use them, he will have to sort them into different colors by type.

For now, he was content with ripping the still inert ships to shreds, continuing onto the battleships. They might actually prove to be more difficult to break, their more compact size but comparable levels of armor making them less prone to collapse. For what it was worth, they also had a slightly smaller profile.

This quickly proved itself to not matter at all, the 46th salvo having a 100% hit rate and bending one of the battleships into a shape closer to an L than an I. There was no exit wound, meaning almost all of the momentum was transferred to the hull.

"Ouch."

The spectacle had lost all its glamour at this point. This may certainly be interesting, but seeing a dreadnought do the same only an hour earlier made it seem less impressive. Pretty cool that the keel remained intact though.

The 50th, 56th, 61st and 63rd salvos marked the deaths of the next few battleships. The destruction of next on the 69th salvo denoted a decrease in the accuracy thanks to range, so Don shifted fire to the large and heavy cruisers that were starting to wake up.

The Oligarchs, lacking in both manpower, energy, and materiel, disdained using less armored craft such as large cruisers, heavy cruisers, and escort cruisers as they were really only meant to fill holes and were, in their eyes, a waste.

Too easy to kill, too ineffective towards their goals, and too expensive for their results to warrant too many of them existing.

Shame the rest of the fleet just got their shit rocked.

Don chose to split the fire of the fleet about as evenly as possible in order to maximize damage. Full salvos on even large cruisers had proven themselves to be such overkill. No need to see the result to mere heavy cruisers.

These cruisers, not heavily armored and without the characteristic hexagonal prism 'Death Box' armor scheme of the capital ships, they were easy prey for the big guns.

Any that survived would soon be finished off by a literal rain of fire. He would like their point defense computers disabled while it happened though.

As the fleet neared the limits of their range, Don ordered the execution of a few of the dreadnoughts and battleships that showed life.

How dare they try to move after losing their front half! The nerve.

Soon though, the serious bit was over. It was time for him to have fun.

He had free range over the remaining ships, and did not need to set complicated waypoint paths. The distinct lack of debris meant there was no reason to maneuver them around, and could instead direct them straight to their targets.

Some of the light cruisers and destroyers that remained untouched by the strike craft had left in pursuit of the main fleet, removing their point defense from the equation.

In their defense, how were they supposed to know that a missile strike on the level of volume of a Katyusha bombardment was on its way? The ships firing at them were at the extreme ranges of their BASE's sensors. They couldn't image being accurately locked from that range.

As a result, all of the remaining uncrewed or damaged ships would be doomed to death in a way reminiscent of the fires of hell.

It only took him a few minutes for him to assign all of the missiles to targets, and then there was nothing for him to do.

He broke out the bucket of ice cream he had received, and got in position to watch the show. As the engines on the missiles roared to life for a second time, they left a white cloud in their wake that was eerily beautiful.

It reminded him of a wave, as abstract as that may be in space.

There was no sound in space, but if there was he could be sure that the ensuing firestorm sounds like the end of the world. He imagined the roar of supersonic warheads and the subsequent tremors as the detonated. Many of the ships were not ruptured by explosions or the kinetic force, but had holes melted into them or were quite literally shaken in half.

He saw a heavy cruiser that had large thermonuclear warhead torpedoes detonate simultaneously around it snap in half. Two of them on one side, close to the bow and stern respectively, with the third detonating in the middle of the other side acted as if it had been chopped by an axe.

He saw a few of the small corvettes that were attempting escape evaporate as they made inadvertent contact with some of the larger missiles.

This lasted for ten minutes.

Ten minutes of hell.

By the end, the only ships left operational were a few of the ignored battleships and heavy cruisers, as well as a group of corvettes and frigates that had been in the sensor shadow of a dreadnought's corpse. Overkill was an apt description.

He had permission to fire his railguns, but he honestly found it to be unneeded. Everything as dead already. Everything that wasn't was not going to survive contact with an actual fleet. A general charge would fuck them over.

Still he stayed put for an hour to assess damage.

Tally of kills or those rendered unoperational 60 minutes after combat are as follows -

3/3 Carriers.

10/10 Dreadnoughts.

12/22 Battleships.

7/7 Large Cruisers.

20/25 Heavy Cruisers. 2 Damaged to the point of questionable combat efficacy. 3 remained unscathed at the end.

56/84 Light Cruisers. 9 Damaged to the point of questionable combat efficacy. 19 exited combat zone to pursue fleet.

4/4 Escort Cruisers.

103/184 Destroyers. 23 Damaged to the point of questionable combat efficacy. 34 exited combat zone to pursue fleet. 24 unaccounted for, whether or not they fled, were obscured by debris, or were broken up beyond recognition is unknown.

258/312 Frigates. 10 damaged to the point of questionable combat efficacy. 14 exited combat zone to pursue fleet. 10 left unscathed, seen escorting the remaining capital ships. 30 unaccounted for, whether or not they fled, were obscured by debris, or were broken up beyond recognition.

421/635 Corvettes. Estimated 100 damaged to the point of questionable combat efficacy, margin of error 12. 56 exited combat zone in pursuit of fleet. 20 confirmed unscathed and guarding the remainder of the fleet. The rest remain unaccounted for.