They Answered The Call

Eleani Home System, Earth year 2172 A.D.

As we watched the Insectoids speed up towards the Republic fleet, Sirefather expanded the holo wave projection so that it took up almost the entire wall of the den. He entered his retired government credentials into the satellite and drone network, and more projections popped up, showing multiple angles of the battlespace.

I watched as the Republic fleet held its ground, with its battleship formations blasting towards the sides and the frigates and destroyers assuming positions in front of the fleet. The sensor network provided information as it listed and categorized the ship classes and functions, and I saw that the unknown ships that had just flashed out were now listed as nullships. I tapped the floating icon and read aloud as the information provided by the Republic fleet scrolled by.

“These nullships have no crew aboard, are controlled by battle AIs, and the hulls are fabricated with null space particles. They are antimatter-powered with four reactors and categorized as stealth battlecruisers.” Sirefather grunted and looked at me. “I told you; these humans are far more capable than the Commonwealth gave them credit for.”

I held my tongue, still not believing fully that the humans could win. I closed out the info screen and watched as the Insectoids charged towards the Republic fleet, closing the gap. The frigates started falling back, while the destroyer squadrons used their thrusters and headed both above and below the plane of the ecliptic.

The center of the Republic lines seemed to explode outward as the double stacked line of heavy cruisers that anchored that section pivoted 90 degrees with their thrusters and pointed their bows above and below the positions they just held.

They blasted their engines at full power as they fled from their positions, leaving a large gap in the center of the Republic's battlelines. I saw the Insectoid formation slowly change its course and head towards the opening the fleeing cowards left behind as they abandoned their positions.

I knew it. We are dead, I thought to myself. I saw birthmother put her head in her hands and start crying, while sirefather still had a stupid grin on his face. The Insectoids adjusted their course slightly once more before their bow thrusters and engines started burning to decelerate the massive formation.

"Why are they slowing down?" I asked out loud. Sirefather answered, his eyes still on the screen. "They are decelerating to increase the amount of time they will have in combat before passing through the Republic fleet. It is difficult to shed momentum in battle, and they will blast right past them if they don't decelerate."

I returned my gaze to the screen. The fleeing ships stopped burning their engines, and I watched in confusion as they suddenly executed pinpoint flips with their positional thrusters again. They were now cruising backwards at 30,000 kilometers per hour as all the bows of their ships pointed at the gap that the insectoid fleet was just about to enter.

“What is happening?” I yelled out. Sirefather shushed me, and the once fleeing Republic ships all fired at the same time. The holo wave screen flared brightly before it compensated, and I stared in stunned shock as the sheer volume of weapons fire that came from the Republic fleet smashed right into the gap now occupied by the insectoid fleet.

The hundreds of cruisers screening the front of the formation just simply vanished under the onslaught, leaving the front of the formation wide open. The drifting Republic ships fired again, and I saw two Hive ships explode while others suffered serious damage as the second volley of weapons fire penetrated inside the formation.

The Republic frigates that had pulled back now surged forward, intercepting the tremendous missile volley that was fired by the Insectoid formation with particle beams and plasma turrets that lit up the battle space with terawatts of raw energy, swatting down thousands of missiles.

The remaining missiles that survived the first layer of defense continued on towards a solid wall of millions of ball bearings as the frigates shot hundreds of canisters of grapeshot per second. The grapeshot shredded through the now depleted missile volley and continued onward, smashing into the formation and tearing apart many cruisers.

Meanwhile, the destroyer squadrons that had gone above and below the ecliptic were now in those positions relative to the Insectoid formation. They opened fire with their respective ventral and dorsal plasma turrets, railguns, and 30mm high explosive rounds as they strafed the formation, slicing through the upper and lower screening force of cruisers like a buzzsaw.

Hundreds of Insectoid cruisers sloughed off the formation as they were destroyed by weapons fire, leaving gaps in the coverage as the destroyers continued firing and started hitting the Hive ships inside the formation. The destroyers finished their strafing run and headed out to open space, leaving behind over one hundred and fifty broken and exploding hulls.

The Insectoid formation counterattacked, and they fired particle beams and another volley of thousands of missiles that chased after the destroyers. The screening frigates then leapt forward and activated their advanced countermeasure suites and point defense systems. They destroyed or jammed a large percentage of the volley, though dozens more destroyers fell to the onslaught.

Sirefather hung his head down and quietly prayed to the Maker to preserve their souls as we watched thousands of human lives being extinguished before our very eyes. I started crying in shame and asked for forgiveness for thinking they were cowards as I watched them throw themselves into the battle with wild abandon.

Abruptly, hundreds of null space flashes appeared inside the Fist formation itself, and the nullships appeared, rapidly firing triple shots of plasma bolts and slicing through the Hive ship hulls with extremely powerful war beams that had been classified as particle accelerators by the Eleani military experts.

Their acceleration seemed impossible, and the evasive maneuvers they employed easily broke the few target locks that tracked them, as the Insectoid beams could not seem to lock onto the null particle hulls. Thousands of beams speared the battle space, vainly searching for targets and hitting nothing.

Working in groups of four, the nullships targeted specific Hive ships with exquisite fire control, and all their war beams hit the same sections of the hulls at the same time. As they passed one target, another group of four ships would come from another direction and hit the same area of the Hive ship hulls, blasting open great rents that ejected bodies and frozen fluids.

The nullships continued moving on through the formation, leaving an apocalyptic scene of destruction behind them as they flashed out, with a few of them finally being destroyed as they failed to enter null space. As soon as the nullships flashed out, thousands of starfighters entered the fray and hit the reeling formation with fury.

The starfighters flew wild evasion courses as they fired penetrator missiles that dug deep into their targets before tearing out huge sections of the hulls with antimatter explosions. Sirefather yelled out and pumped his fists in solidarity with the starfighter pilots, as he himself was a planetary defense pilot before he went into government service.

As we watched the Hive ships being mobbed by the starfighters, we saw dozens of them blinking out every minute as they fell to the flak cannons and laser arrays targeting them. They seemed undeterred by their losses as they stubbornly continued their attack runs.

They were devastating the formation as Hive ships started listing, wracked with massive internal explosions, while cruisers were being obliterated as the starfighters targeted their hull breaches with plasma turrets.

The starfighters finished their assault and fled towards open space, having lost over a thousand fighters in their ferocious assault that lasted just under ten solar minutes. The Insectoid ships fired massive volleys of flak at the retreating fighters, claiming more victims as they continued to exit the battle space.

The nullships returned, flashing out of null space already at full acceleration and ripping right through the bleeding formation. There seemed to have been a change in tactics by the insectoids as their weapons fire was now much more effective and individual nullships started exploding under an onslaught of hundreds of beams that they could not evade.

As they weaved through the formation, wreaking havoc and destroying heavily damaged Hive ships, dozens of nullships were targeted and destroyed before they flashed back into null space as they were bracketed on all sides by Insectoid particle beams.

The insectoid formation then contracted in size as it continued onward, leaving wreckage and exploding ships that stretched like a trail of fire, marking its passage deeper into the system. Entire wings of Republic heavy cruisers took advantage of the Insectoid repositioning and strafed the sides of the formation with heavy broadsides of 16-cm-diameter railguns and secondary plasma turrets, smashing through the cruiser screening force.

Damaged insectoid cruisers fell out of formation, creating gaps that the heavy cruisers then fired plasma bolts and missiles through as they sailed past, damaging and destroying several more Hive ships. The formation counterattacked with thousands of missiles and particle beams, destroying a hundred and twelve heavy cruisers and damaging dozens more before they got safely out of weapons range.

Birthmother loudly gasped, and I looked at the infographic that suddenly popped up on the side of the holo wave screen as the number of Republic ships destroyed and damaged rose rapidly, and the killed and wounded tally was already over 200,000 casualties and trending upwards.

Birthmother turned her head away from the rapidly rising numbers and buried her face onto my sirefather's chest, crying and murmuring, “All those people. When will it end?” Sirefather just sat there with a grim expression and tear-filled eyes, his shaking hands tightly balled into fists. I felt myself wracked with emotions and fled outside to the deck to stem the tide.

I took shuddering gasps as I looked up into the sky, grateful to see only blackness and stars unmarred by the sight of exploding ships and the drifting corpses of our protectors. I took a few deep breaths to calm myself and then urinated into the forest canopy, relieving my poor bladder that had been screaming at me for over three hours since the start of the battle.

I ran back inside to find only sirefather sitting there. “Where is Birthmother?" I asked. "She has had enough; her heart can’t take anymore death. Leave her be,” he replied, sounding like he was reaching the end of his own limit. I sat down quietly and watched as a heavily damaged Republic light cruiser altered course, blasting towards a lagging Hive ship and ramming right into it, sinking almost halfway into the hull.

There was an eerie moment as the two ships drifted together in a grisly dance before the Republic cruiser overloaded their core and blanked out the holo wave screen. It adjusted, and there was nothing left of those two ships, just a rapidly expanding cloud of gases. The core breach of the Republic ship caused the Hive ship to suffer its own core breach that destroyed another nearby Hive ship and dozens of cruisers.

Completing their enveloping maneuvers, the battleship wings suddenly smashed through the flanks and the rear of Insectoid formation. The sheer violence of their passage seemed impossible considering how small the battleships and their escorting heavy cruisers seemed in relation to the Hive ships.

As the battleship wings completed their attack runs and headed towards the safety of open space, the nullships flashed back in and quickly destroyed any damaged Hive ships that were still functional before flashing back into null space with no losses.

The remnants of the insectoid formation started contracting in size and rearranging the disordered formation until it was again a perfect sphere, now greatly reduced in size. They sped towards the inner system while the scattered Republic formations were flashing in and out of null space and decelerating, trying to reorganize and pursue.

As the insectoid formation got near the fourth planet, I started getting scared as they seemed to head directly towards our planet, which was the second from our sun.

A new countdown appeared in the screen's corner, showing the time before the Insectoid arrival at Eleania. The Republic fleet had left a carrier task force, two battleship wings, and several hundred frigates and destroyers to supplement the less than two dozen Eleani warships we had left in the system as a last line of defense.

A diagram popped up, showing the main Republic fleet icons and their position relative to the advancing formation. It clearly showed that they could not intercept them in time since their null space capacitors were only half charged and their relative velocity was not enough to close the gap in time.

“That’s not enough to stop them!” I yelled out, panicking. Sirefather just raised a hand, silencing me as he leaned closer to the holo wave screen with a terrifyingly feral expression, and simply said,

“Wait.”

I felt the sudden urge to urinate again as the seconds ticked by and the formation passed the fourth planet, heading closer to Eleania. All the sudden there were thousands of pinpoint explosions all throughout the formation, and Insectoid cruisers and Hive ships started exploding while others careened out of control and suffered massive decompressions.

The sensor drones suddenly zoomed in, and we could see tiny objects seem to shimmer into existence and suddenly speed up towards the remaining ships, latching on the hulls and then exploding. Now the Insectoid formation numbered less than fifty ships, and it seemed to suddenly lose all control and break cohesion as they drifted apart.

Ships collided with each other as they lumbered deeper into the minefield, making no attempt to change course or even save themselves. It was as if they were no longer being controlled.

Suddenly, the last two remaining Hive ships and thirty odd cruisers flashed into null space, and it was over. Sirefather and I sat in stunned silence, and he suddenly leapt up and screamed, “TAKE THAT, YOU KERLEKKI ISHKATUK!!"

I heard Birthmother loudly gasp from the other room, and she came into the den and yelled, "Nimto, language!” as I turned my head and blushed at his words. He laughed at the admonishment from Birthmother, grabbing me and hugging me tightly. Birthmother came over and added her arms, and we all just quietly wept in relief, shaking and exhausted.

A little while later, I was sitting in my chair and trying to keep my eyes open as we waited to hear official confirmation that the Insectoid menace was over and that Eleania was finally safe when a “Please stand by” message appeared on the holo wave screen.

An image came up showing a menacing bird of prey with its wings spread out, with one foot clutching a type of branch in its talons while the other was clutching a bundle of pointed sticks or spears. Underneath was a stylized banner with human words across it: “Libertas oppressis, Mors oppressoribus,” which our translator rendered into Commonwealth standard as “Freedom to the oppressed, Death to the oppressors.”

A few seconds later, Admiral Thompson appeared on the screen, looking haggard and as if he had aged 10 cycles since he spoke to us just eight hours ago. Behind him on the bridge, we could see damaged consoles and ruptured conduits, and there were significantly fewer humans at their data screens than before. He gazed into the holo camera and started speaking.

“The insectoid fleet in this system is now eliminated, and our long-ranged scouts report that there are no signs of insectoid ships within 100 light years. I declare Eleania and the other colonies in the system to be secure. We have won a great victory, at a great cost. We will remain here for the time being as we repair our battle damage and send out search and rescue craft to recover survivors and our honored dead from the void."

He paused as his expression changed and his voice became emotional.

"Any civilian ships that wish to help may do so. Your assistance is appreciated, as time is of the essence to reach survivors before their air runs out. There is a need for medical personnel, as we have far more wounded than we can treat. Please coordinate any rescue efforts through your government, which is now setting up a link system portal to streamline the process and get you to where you can be most effective.”

He then took a deep breath, reached into a pocket on his chest, and took out a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it and said, “President Lopez wrote this, and it is a message to the Eleani that I was to read to you if we emerged victorious and saved your world.”

He started reading.

“If Admiral Thompson is reading this letter, then that means we have achieved victory and saved you from extinction. I want you to know that no matter the cost in lives, ships, and treasure, the Republic will always be by your side until the bitter end.

You once reached out your hand to us in friendship and goodwill when we were just another young species taking our first steps into the unknown. You helped us to grow and learn, and most important of all, you were steadfast friends who accepted us for who we are and helped to guide us."

The admiral's voice faltered a little bit before continuing to read the letter.

“You have shown us you are a good, decent people, and you have earned our trust, our loyalty, and our love. Any hand raised against you is raised against us, now and always. We will never forget your friendship and kindness, and now we are forever bonded by blood. You will never be alone again.”

The admiral stopped reading, his eyes brimming with tears. He carefully folded the paper back up and placed it in his chest pocket. He looked back into the holo camera and simply stated, “That is all for now; let’s get to work, people!” and the transmission ended.

All three of us were openly weeping and continued to do so for a long time afterwards.