Inofficial alternate version of The Defence of Kailos

Two Cruisers with Ammunition

We were first confronted with the human approach to war during the defense of Solaik. Another Xen’thic hive swarms was marauding through the local galaxy arm and Solaik stood in their way. So far out the Galactic Council was spread thin and we had to call for help from all sentient beings in the region.

Most local powers responded with everything they could spare. The Weaponthanes send two of their largest dreadnoughts and several battleships, the Retsbol brought six carriers on the field with nearly one thousand fighters and bombers, the artificial super mind send its most advanced phazor FTL artillery and the Ganlin projected several shield bubbles over the whole fleet. Over a dozen species gathered this fleet numbering in the hundreds of capital ships to defend the world of Solaik. The fleet spread for tens of thousand klicks around the councils city ship, the core of the defenders fleet.

Shortly before the hive came into firing range we received a message from the human union, an uprising power from the neighbouring spiral arm. They announced their support and would join us with “two cruisers and ammunition”. This is the literal wording they used.

We accepted their support with warm words but didn’t expect that two cruisers would do much. We simply delegated them to join our left flank upon arrival. We didn’t put much thought into their support as the battle was about to begin.

When the enemy showed up our blood froze! By tonnage they easily outweighted us five to one, every single of their battleships and carriers out weighted ours twice or thrice. But the worst was the world ship in the centre – a ship as huge as a moon, hundreds of klicks wide and its first deed was firing a rail gun at the council city ship, a projectile nearly as large as a shuttle at 7.000km/s, obliterating the city ship with one single shot!

The fleet command fell upon me, with my Narleth Assault Dreadnought, the Bringer of Swift Death, taking the lead! We charged into battle just as the human returned into real space close to its designated position.

My XO noted that the human fleet was larger than announced and I gave him freedom to place them as needed while I took responsibility to stop the Xen’thic hive swarm. While barking commands I heard my XO evaluating the unexpected reinforcements.

Two light missile cruisers, lots of sensors but only point defence and a decent amount of medium sized anti-ship missiles, good enough to pummel an enemy battleship or two at most.

Then 24 featureless ships. Twice as large than the cruisers but without any visible weapons. No hangar doors, no docking clamps. Just huge tubes in space with huge engines at their back. Most likely freighters. It was a foolishness to bring them so close to the fight but at the very least they could absorb some shots that would otherwise damage our ships. Then I chose to ignore them.

The fight was going bad. After nine minutes the world ship fired again and vaporized a Weaponthane dreadnought while our combined fleet had only been able to scratch its massive shielding!

I was already planning an ordered retread when suddenly 24 ships left formation and charged at the enemy! It were the human freighters!

Riding on bright nuclear fire they rode into sure death, the radiation of this brutal propulsion alone should easily kill every microbe aboard these suicidal ship! And if anything would survive the radiation then the acceleration of well above 100g would crush every living being into a wet puddle on the back wall!

After less then a minute they were moving 80km/s, still accelerating madly. They passed through the enemies fighters, just ignoring the fighters fire, the human ships didn’t return fire and continued accelerating at such a breathtaking speed the enemies fighters couldn’t even think about following them!

Passing 200km/s they crossed the enemy destroyer echelon, taking multiple hits from point defence and smaller anti-ship missiles. The larger anti-ship-missiles couldn’t even turn around fast enough, none the less follow. Again the human ships didn’t even try to fight and soaked all the damage inflicted up in an insane amount of armour – like the whole ship was one single block of steel???

With deep craters and glowing marks from lasers all over the hull the engines of these ships burned finally out at 450km/s. Lasers and light weapons started to focus on these ships, melting some of them partially but not stopping a single one. They drifted at 450km/s in space for a couple of seconds. Unstoppable.

Then the first ship smashed into the world ship! At 450km/s their kinetic energy was absurd! It smashed at 10 Exajoule into the city ships shields, creating an explosion equal to two billion tons of TNT, partially vaporized while doing so but still thousands of fragments smashed into the superstructure, creating explosions in the Petajoule range, every single one equal to a city killer nuclear weapon!

The whole front of the world ship glowed hotter than the surface of a star but that was just the beginning! Another of these strange ship smashed into the hellish inferno – and smashed a hole straight through the moon sized construct, blowing out billions of tons of inner structure outwards on the back side! Like someone shot a bullet through an apple the rest of the world ship simply exploded away from the flight path of the projectile! And even though some debris was still larger than our largest ships it was obvious it was as good as dead…

But it didn’t stop there. Over the next minute the enemy lost 18 of its 20 largest ships. Every single ship getting rammed by these insane constructs was a total loss for the enemy, their formation fell apart and with their backbone broken the tide of the battle turned to our favour!

It was then when my XO told me the human captains of the Zeus and Apollo had asked to fall back and replenish their ammunition. Their cruisers though hadn’t fired a single shot and it finally dawned on me…

By the gods, the humans shot cruiser sized ships as ammunition at their enemies!

I just hope that they accept excuses if we ever anger them by accident.

…

This was inspired by one of the first true HFY stories ever, “The Defence of Kailos”, and decided to put it upside down for just more of MOAR. Actually I put in several cameos but those are VERY well hidden so I can safely promise to eat my own story printed on paper if someone finds all of them.