Calling All Colors

"This is Beacon, calling all colors. I repeat, this is Beacon, calling all colors. Your exfil route is clear. Proceed to haul ass to the rendezvous point after striking your targets. Tell me which targets were missed and require a death blow."

They had only just begun their attack runs and already the enemy was suffering huge amounts of damage.

The Heavy fighters focus their Slam Rifles and Kinetic Piercing Inertial Delay Missiles on their natural prey, corvettes.

The Missile strikers, making their first jump to close the range were equipped with many smaller munitions that only ravished the corvettes, but tore through frigates with equal ferocity.

The Multi-Role fighters, loaded in large part with high velocity, high payload, Ripper Rockets directed their attention on the destroyers. These missiles could be carried by the Missile strikers, but it was more efficient for them to be equipped with many smaller missiles. The opposite was true for the Multi-roles, their neutral design favoring fewer large additions to many small ones.

The Dominoes also made their first jump in close to an enemy escort cruiser and destroyer formation, releasing their dumb munitions at the incredible velocities that their ships had reached with the addition of some solid fuel boosts and energy field assistance.

Even the fighters got in on the action, having stumbled upon the thinly armored ammo and fuel replenishment ships.

The result could only be described as a scene from a nightmare.

Bodies of metal burning with the last of the escaping atmosphere, secondary explosions popping small ships apart like grapes, human shaped debris leaving the area to never be seen again, all on the background of a beautifully pale blue-green planet.

To think this was the result of only two minutes of combat, if what had transpired could be called that.

"This is Blue Leader, calling Beacon. Is that hunk of metal one of your machinations?"

"Unfortunately, that information is classified. Please be mindful of debris on your way out."

"Tch, always the secrecy with your involvement. You heard him boys, mind the metal."

Their exit was just as fast as their entrance, zooming past the wallowing corpse and disappearing from the Noah's sensors behind the ring. Just in time too, because three minutes were just about up and the capital ships above were more than eager to make themselves a few tons lighter again.

Don decided that the next few targets would be the carriers. They were the only threats at the moment, their craft capable of pursuing the fleet to report their position. He HAD considering eliminating that abomination of a disc battleship, but that might be doing the enemy a favor.

"Target ready?"

"Clear to fire, my wait staff have left the building."

A few moments passed before the carrier he had been focused on was 'cored'. The rods making impact with the weak hangar armor and ripping through it. Along with whatever remained of the deployable craft was what Don took to be the primary reactor core, nothing more than a mangled mass of heavy metals leaking radiation like a motherfucker.

A similar phenomena happened with the NEXT carrier, except this one was split in half lengthwise from the shot spread hitting the connecting parts on either end.

The final carrier exploded fantastically, one of the shots evidently setting off the ordinance for the strike craft onboard. He wondered how that might have happened, most explosive ordinances being detonated electronically as opposed to chemical reaction. He suspected some fuckery with mass traveling at relativistic speeds.

There weren't any light carriers that he could see, the oligarchs viewing them as a waste of resources.

Next were the dreadnoughts then. There were ten that fit the dreadnought standard by mass and volume readings, but their classification may be different for the Oligarchies.

Still, a sunk battleship was eight years of dockyard production and a few thousand trained crewmembers in damage.

The dreadnoughts were the epitome of toughness. Even after four consecutive concentrated salvos, it required a fifth before Donovan could be REALLY sure that it was rendered inoperable. That was only because the top half of ship was caved in. Meters of armor meant to stop extreme velocity rods did so at every angle it would appear.

It was at this point that the point defense systems of the remaining ships spooled up and started firing at incoming debris in a bid to ward it off. Did not do much, but it showed Don which ships were left alive.

Nine salvos in and already a dreadnought, a large cruiser, and a trio of carriers had been totaled. The raid could end here and the damage would already be considered catastrophic.

The next dreadnought did not hold up to damage nearly as well as the first. Only two salvos and some sort of safety snapped on the second salvo, the two halves folded in on themselves like a hot dog. The dorsal armor was evidently not up to the task of redirecting the kinetic impact on the level of a small moon.

One of the large cruisers on the periphery was starting to move, can't have that. Don ordered it executed after three minutes of down time. "Poor thing was probably preparing to go out on patrol when the attack started."

"Are you feeling sympathy for the enemy?" ARC was curious about what Donovan was talking about. He had only ever shown malice towards the enemy.

"Not for the people aboard the ship, but for the ship itself. Not its fault that it got stuck serving under crappy people."

ARC took note of Don's tendency to consider ships as entities, not objects. Not unusual, but ARC was under the impression that most would cheer over the destruction of an enemy craft.

With the second large cruiser submitting to a fate similar the first, Don continued directing his divine fury towards the dreadnoughts. They may not be the fast enough to pursue his fleet, but they posed the biggest threat to whatever main fleet would come through to clean up afterward.

They would be deprived of both the advantage of surprise and recon that he was providing. Precious time would be lost taking them out.