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The Alexanderov Federation
Book 1 The Grendarl War
Part Eight - The Battle for Tamarian
(II)
As the main Rrk'g'kreglin fleet approached Tamarian
I, they completely failed to note the human's scout vessels
that had been placed in position to 'paint' them for the planetary
defenses. As a result, they still didn't have a clue what
was out there, and the humans had a pretty accurate count
of their ships, and even had a pretty good idea which ships
did what, though without active scanners they did not know
all the details just yet. But that wasn't necessary at this
point either. As the Grendarl approached the position as which
they would launch their waves of fighters, their sensor crews
got a rather rude awakening. The information was reported
to tR'c'N'S immediately.
"Sir! A massive wave of missiles has just been detected!
They'll reach their targets in 15 seconds!"
"Launch all fighters immediately. Have all PD destroyers
move forward and engage."
As the missiles approached, the PD destroyers began firing
laser beams and a few fusion beams at the missiles. Most of
the missiles just shrugged off these pitiful weapons, but
about 50 succumbed. Meanwhile, fighters spilled out of their
carriers at a rate of one per five seconds. Over 9,000 fighters
were launched before the missiles reached their targets, which
unsurprisingly were the carrier frigates. But since each frigate
only carried 5 fighters, the vast majority of the fighters
got out in one piece. The fighters also fired on the missiles,
but killed even less missiles than the PD destroyers. Many
of them, on seeing their weapons were not causing sufficient
damage, decided to hurl their ships into the missiles to detonate
them early. Another hundred or so missiles fell. The remaining
482 missiles scored direct hits, and every last one was a
kill. But that was not a particularly devastating loss, as
the remaining fighters launched, bringing their total remaining
fighters to 14,281. They immediately moved in, both to scout
for enemy ships and, if they found any, to overwhelm them
by sheer numbers.
At the same time the humans, by no means content with scoring
first blood, were busily prepping their next round of fire,
and launching their own fighters. But since they had no need
of scouting data, they choose to keep those close to defend
against the hordes of Grendarl fighters. It was well known
to human strategists that Grendarl preferred close combat,
to swarm and conquer by numbers at very close range. The hordes
of fighters had caught them off guard the first few times.
This time, however, they had a counter. Instead of trying
to achieve numerical superiority, or wasting all their firepower
on PD beam weapons, the escort ships for this battle were
actually more like chaff or flak guns. The Sharktooth and
her sister ships were PD ships, but they fired literal clouds
of heavily miniaturized, MIRV-ed but fairly weak missiles
designed to target fighter craft. And instead of armor, which
took space, these missiles were heavily ECM-ed, in the hopes
that the Grendarl would not even realize they were being fired
on until they started blowing up.
There were two down sides to this strategy. One, it only
left room for a rather small PD beam cluster on each ship,
and Two, it had never been tried before. Nobody knew if it
would work. Well, time to find out.
Admiral Stockert ordered the Sharktooth and all other screen
ships near the planet to fire a full burst of missiles. After
they split into their 5 sub-warheads, over 3000 of the small
missiles were in the first wave. Each found a target, and
though not every single one resulted in a kill, the vast majority
did. But now it would be almost 2 minutes before another round
could be fired, and it would require all the skill of the
PD gun crews to keep the Grendarl's remaining 11,500 or so
fighters at a distance while they reloaded.
The Grendarl were surprised by the unexpected destruction
of so many of their fighters and the heavy damage to another
200 or so, but they gamely pressed on. Entering the far edge
of weapon range they began to pick out destroyers to target
and firing their laser cannons. While 8,500 of them worked
on the destroyers, the remaining 3,000 pressed on in search
of the rest of the human fleet. They had even worse sensors
than their main ships, but surely the big human ships wouldn't
be far away. And they proved correct. Knowing his escorts
couldn't handle the full fighter wave on their own, Stockert
had his beam weapon light cruisers open up on the fighters
that were approaching, destroying another 500. But now their
position had been given away. In order to keep the Grendarl
from getting too close, the human fighters closed and began
to dogfight with the Grendarl.
So far, all casualties had been Grendarl. This rapidly began
to change. 32 of the PD destroyers were destroyed and another
10 were heavily damaged within a minute, while only accounting
for about another 500 fighters. And, though technologically
superior, the human fighter pilots were not able to handle
the centrifugal forces nearly as well as the Grendarl. The
losses in fighters were severe to both sides. At this point,
with the humans distracted and the Grendarl ships informed
to their location, the Grendarl missile cruisers opened up
with a full barrage. These were targeted primarily on the
human picket ships since the carrier segment's location was
still unknown, and the beam ships were not (yet) a serious
threat. And though the humans immediately shifted fire to
the larger threat, 20 still got through and destroyed several
ships. The Sharktooth, though not destroyed, found itself
with heavily weakened shields and engines that no longer performed
at full specifications.
The human scout ships noted the location of the launches
and passed the information on. Time for Stockert to show one
of his aces in the hole. With the Grendarl thinking they knew
where all his ships were, it was time to distract them. He
ordered his secondary missile destroyer group to launch at
the enemy missile cruisers and the now empty carriers. At
the same time, he also had the planetary missile bases fire
their next salvo.
Faced with missiles approaching from two directions, all
but one of the Grendarl missile cruisers were completely destroyed,
along with another 400 carriers. With the loss of so much
of his IF force, tR'c'N'S decided to call in his own secret
weapon.
The Sharktooth and the other ships of her class opened up
with the second of their four rounds of missiles. With the
losses and combat dammage, this time they could only field
about 2,500 shots. And at the closer range, many of the exploding
fighters took destroyers with them. Over 2000 fighters were
destroyed, but another 57 destroyers fell as well. Fortunately
for the humans, almost all of the ship losses so far had been
system ships, which were much more easily replaced, and would
not be needed in future battles to invade the Grendarl systems.
Assuming, of course, that they won this round.
But while the human's second small missile wave was devastating
the Grendarl fighter groups, a fleet of 175 previously undetected
troop transports showed up on the scanners at Tamarian III,
with 56 escorting missile frigates. The escorts immediately
opened up on the planetary defenses, which had gone to stand-by
alert, thinking themselves not the primary target. Though
52 frigates were destroyed along with 68 troop transports
before the last missile base fell, the operation was a success.
Thousands of Grendarl ground troops poured out onto the world
below, and as before began targeting civilians first, this
time in the hopes of distracting the humans at the main fight.
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