The first volley came as a total surprise.
First Fleet had engaged as best it could with its own targeting systems, but you'd kept its fire limited to attempted interdiction and opportunity fire. That had been within the expected profile according to Project Insight, and you couldn't afford breaking from it far enough to focus all of the fleet's power on defensive action. The War Fleet needed to be held in place, and if you'd not presented a threat, they'd have ignored you until you did.
Perhaps that had fooled them enough that they'd become overconfident, certain in their belief that the War Fleets remained a weapon which no Tributary could match. They weren't wrong about that, even now. But you didn't have to match a War Fleet to kill it, all you had to do was know what it was. Humanity did, and your species had had more than a decade to prepare your countermeasures.
The Pacifier class was a marvel of engineering, equipped with an FTL drive so advanced that it would beggar entire minor polities to construct just one and a primary armament more suited to the largest of Regular Fleet vessels. But for all that, they were small, heavily coated in stealth composites instead of armour, and lacking all but the most basic shielding.
The Shiplords did lose them occasionally, though only to the blindest chance. Despite all of its advanced technology, a hit from a capital class disruptor could disrupt a Pacifier's jump cycle, leaving it open to destruction. Given the volume of space that a War Fleet could operate within, these occasions came so rarely as to be negligible. But it was a weakness, and First Fleet had paid in blood to give humanity the chance to exploit it.
The designated Fleets for response slashed out to the edge of the SEZ, and vanished into jump in a flurry of translations. Two of them were targeted on the Lumen, and were going to be needed to break the craft's frankly obscene shield capacity before it would be able to jump again. The Sixth and Second Fleets had different priorities. As your weapons shifted to fire based on the Orrery's targeting data, those ships jumped to the edge of a two light-second radius sphere centred on First Fleet. It was the closest thing to a deep space ambush that you'd been able to come up with in your planning sessions.
And then there were the Two-Twenty Three.
A veritable sheet of grav disruptor fire lashed out and in at the dancing War Fleet craft, thickened by the fury of the Unisonbound, and the tactical holo polarised as space in every direction erupted into a solid curtain of detonating starships. Perhaps five percent of them were yours.
You'd known from the beginning that you were only going to get one chance to do this, and you'd had to prove that the Orrery could work. So you'd stacked the deck, then stacked it again, and as the universe blew apart around you, you felt nothing but furious exaltation. It had worked!
Exactly how many War Fleet craft were destroyed in that initial clash, you could never say. But it shattered the contingent of Pacifiers dispatched to handle First Fleet, and your drives were almost recharged.
"Lantern." You snapped over the tac-net. The Two Twenty Three complied with the ease of endless training, streaming back to their couriers buried deep in the centre of your fleet, their drives fully charged. The sudden lack of incoming fire came as a shock, and a welcome one, but you were alone in enjoying it. Your outer shell, scattered as they were, now raced inwards, trying to close into mutual support range before the other War Fleet contingents could react.
Most succeeded, but most is only more than half. The Shiplords had been shocked by the sudden eruption of targeted fire against their ships, but they weren't stupid. The assignments shifted, and lances of grav fire carved through the rear echelons of Second and Sixth, wreaking a terrible price on ships too far from each other to effectively combine their shielding or firepower. That was the trade-off you'd had to make for your hammer blow.
It was worth it, you told yourself, trying not to feel the sudden flood of casualties. There'd be time enough for that if you won. The Orrery gave you a fighting chance, but at the percentages Vision had given you, it didn't guarantee victory. For that, you had to destroy the Lumen pointing at Sol, and it had weathered the initial attack on it far too capably for your liking. But that was what Lantern was for. First, Second and Sixth would hold here until you could move to reinforce Fourth and Third Fleet, but the Two Twenty Three could move now. And that was exactly what they did.
You wished, not for the first time, that Kalilah had stayed for this fight. The Adamant hadn't needed her for its mission, but she'd not been chosen for her particular Focus. Amanda had chosen to put her faith in the bonds of friendship and harmony that she'd helped create, and you'd seen the power of those enough before. Unfortunately, it left you without the only person in the entire star system who you were confident could have dropped the Lumen's shields barring Amanda herself. And without Vega to act as a nexus for the power around you - you shook the thought away.
The two Unison couriers blinked out of existence, and the two hundred seventeen Unisonbound of the remaining Two Twenty Three hurled themselves into the maelstrom of dying starships wreathing the Shiplord starkiller like a ghastly corona.
"How long?" You snapped. It was a needless question, but you needed something to take your mind away from that, even for a moment.
"Three minutes for us." Alex replied, watching the Fleet's power focus skew towards its drives. He glanced at the readouts for the Lumen, and his lips thinned. "The Second and Sixth won't get there in time, Lina. Either we kill it before they're recharged, or we've lost."
"At least the Two Twenty Three are in there." You said, trying to reassure your subordinates, and yourself. "Even without the First, they should be enough."
"It will be closer than you think." Vision reported, still moving faster than your intelligence officer. It was rather unfair, honestly. "I am detecting new ship profiles, with the same weapon signatures as those used against the Two Twenty Three in the Third Battle of Sol."
"Get them back in!" Your gaze snapped around, to where the Two Twenty three had already spread out around the Third and Fourth Fleets, raising barriers to protect them. Their own heavy hitters slammed fire inwards, hurling energy at the Lumen that threatened everything humanity had ever called its own. "Get them into the globe!"
Alex was already calling the codeword, and the world around you slowed to a crawl, heat building at the back of your neck as your enhancements pushed themselves to their limits. And there, in that crucial moment, a Shiplord EWAR tech found the right frequency. Comms slashed off from your detached ships around Saturn, slicing through the call to withdraw before it could be spoken. Alex's hand flashed in the light, in time with your own. Shiplords could jam lagless, but they'd yet to succeed at jamming the Unisonbound's connections, and the Auxilia had those too.
But not even those reactions were perfect, and despite all the training and preparation in the world, it took a moment for the message to be passed and authenticated. Just one moment, out of so many. But it was enough.
The reconfigured Pacifiers slashed out of jump perfectly positioned around one of the roaming Heartcircles of the Two Twenty Three, and the Unisonbound staggered in space as the next best thing to jamming of the soul ripped through them. They'd had some practice since the Third, those Unisonbound, and they'd managed something approaching a countermeasure. But it took time, and that was the one thing that the Shiplords' stroke of good fortune had robbed them of.
Shields and veils burned away, and the Heartcircle was still moving to reestablish its evasive pattern when another group of Pacifiers blinked into being around them. These didn't have the old, ancient weapons that had struck Potentials so harshly. They were more mundane, but no less lethal for it.
The Aegis' of the Two Twenty Three protected their Potentials in ways that went beyond human understanding, and you'd seen them tested under capital bombardment before. But even those impossible creations had limits. Grav disruption tore out, and there was no miracle waiting to stop it this time. One of the Unisonbound, an Insight Focused with their wits more about them than the rest, hurled himself between the incoming barrage. He interdicted almost sixty percent of the incoming fire, enough for the rest of his Heartcircle to survive.
Across the breadth of the formation, the scene repeated itself. Most survived, though dreadfully wounded. But that first, the swiftest, was gone when distortion of criss-crossing grav fire faded, and he wasn't alone. In a single, dreadful moment, the Shiplords took four of the Two Twenty Three from humanity, and there was no sign of the first's Platform. The rest of the ranging Heartcircles fell back, scooping up their wounded comrades, and you shuddered to imagine the pain in those places as they did so. It tore at your own soul, the screaming pain all the sharper when it was those you knew dying.
The Two Twenty Three had been the symbol of an undaunted humanity, but without their leaders, they'd been lessened. You'd known that. But it hadn't been a choice you could afford to make any other way. But what came from it, as the heat close to your spine faded, and your perceptions decelerated, proved that you'd not been wrong when you'd chosen them.
No miracle had saved those four, maybe no miracle could have. You'd try to convince yourself of that, in dark nights still to come. But Kalilah hadn't been the only First Awoken among that force, just the most obvious. And Vega hadn't been the only Harmonial. Were they late? You didn't think that was a fair assessment, or a fair question. What mattered was that humanity still breathed, and it did.
Down where the Lumen's shield still held against the torrent of grav disruptor fire and more Practiced attacks, a spark of white light erupted. A spark of pure destruction, unleashed by five souls brought together in concert, that cared not a whit for the reality of that shield before it. The jamming fell, your own techs fighting back the encroachment of the Shiplords on the lagless, and the words of those five came across the net.
"Be Undone"
The light reached out for the Lumen, as it stood undaunted, still charging, hanging over your star like a headsman's axe. And smote it from creation.
The battle didn't end there, but the Shiplords appeared unwilling to commit a second Lumen, if they'd even brought one. The War Fleet retreated from Sol's heliopause several minutes later, unwilling to trade more of their number for lesser, human craft. Victory, for you, and for something far more important too. For the Orrery had performed exactly as you'd needed it to. It had been horribly, terribly bloody, and you couldn't imagine it would get any better as the Shiplords adapted to the new reality. But the defence against their most feared weapon had worked.
That lit a fire in you, in all of your staff, and more. Despite the losses, so much more terrible than any of the battles before it, you had proof that War Fleets could be fought. That they could, if not beaten, at least driven back. The threat of Lumens or similar special weapon designs would have to be taken into account for the other races, as they lacked the edge of Practice. But they had larger fleets, and weapons that were still more than a match to your own.
Already, as First Fleet returned to the dockyards for further upgrades, courier ships were being loaded with the core components of the Orrery designs you'd created. Hermes II, humanity's new interstellar lagless station, was unfolding swiftly from its prefabbed components. It would be online within the day, and then you'd be able to tell your prospective allies that you'd lived, and that they could too. The war, as horrible as you knew it was going to be, was on. And unless the Adamant found something truly remarkable out there, there'd be no turning back.
Stars were going to burn, yours and theirs, before this was done and the weight of that reality was almost enough to crush you. If it had been just you, it probably would have, but you weren't alone. You had comrades, and friends, and more than that too. Humanity was united, as the Elder First had begun, and Amanda had finished. Together, you believed, you could do this.
There was just one, last, thing.
"What do you mean, not what we think?" You asked Vision's avatar blearily, tiredly directing your Prologue enhancements to scrub the alcohol from your system. It was several days after the Fourth Battle of Sol now, and you'd thought it reasonable to celebrate a little. You'd succeeded too, and you could feel the flush of life in you that came from those rare moments, where you could be just Lina. You knew you should allow yourself more, but there'd just been no time since the Third.
That said, Vision wouldn't have woken you without good reason. At least she'd waited until your normal waking time, and you shifted one of the bodies in between you and the edge of the bed to let you slide out of it.
"I have only recently been able to recover the full telemetry from the Lux satellites." Vision explained. "And dedicating the requisite processing power was impossible until early this morning. The results, however, speak for themselves."
"One second," you slid your feet into your uniform, and it flowed up your body quickly. "Let me get to the secure unit." That was the work of a few moments, thankfully. One of the perks of being Minister of War, you had a secure interface in your quarters.
"Alright," you continued, flopping down on the reactive couch with a heavy sigh. "What did you find, Vision?"
"Understand that you will need to contact the President after seeing this." She replied. "I am bringing this to you due to your position in the chain of command."
"Understood." You flicked a few connections, checking Adri's schedule. It was still night where she was, but she'd wake up for a priority call. "But I need to know what I'm going to be reporting first."
"Of course." Vision bobbed once in place, then imagery filled your display. You blinked your eyes again, making sure you were awake, then examined it. It was a frame-by-frame of that...you swallowed hard and told yourself to use his name. Savino Lindholm, the Insight Focused who'd been the first of the Two Twenty Three's casualties in history. And the only one who'd been lost with his Platform. But the imagery on your screen looked...you jerked upright in your seat as it ended.
"Is this right?" You demanded, rewinding and playing it back through. Vision's avatar bobbed again.
"All projections support this conclusion." She told you, in the time it took for you your third repetition of the footage completed.
"What about the others?" You asked, squelching the hope. "Anything like this with Sharon, Ishael or Nyera?"
"I am afraid not." Vision said. You started repeat number five. "I would request that Project Insight be consulted to be sure, however."
"Yes." You swallowed again, to wet a throat gone dry. "I can understand that. Get me President Thera. Priority override."
Before you, caught by one of the Lux Sagum platforms established so many years ago now, was a very different fate. Savino's Aegis was ripped and torn, but he was still intact, still alive, reaching for his Platform to cast it away. And frozen, in a cage of gravity, as a Shiplord craft scooped him out of the black into a bay that the glimpse your sensor had gotten of it was saturated in the same jamming that had been used against the Two Twenty Three as weapons.
And then it was gone.
The Shiplords had indeed taken four of humanity's greatest weapons from you. But not all of them were dead, and you couldn't help but think that maybe it would have been a mercy for Sav to have died.
