Three Square Meals Ch. 078

"It's also in our interest to help the Ashanath," Jade said, emerald eyes gazing at John intently. "I'm certain they know much more about the Progenitors than they revealed to us before. If we want to find out exactly what that is, we must help them."

"I agree with Jade," Calara said with a firm nod. "All those Planetary Defence Lasers built into the planet weren't there to just protect a bunch of stone monoliths. It seems clear they were hiding something significant."

John turned to look at Sakura and when she saw he was waiting for her opinion, she said earnestly, "I'll follow you anywhere to fight by your side! Even if that wasn't the case, from everything I've seen and heard about the Drakkar, they're vicious, evil monsters - stopping them is the right thing to do."

Irillith nodded and said, "I'm with Sakura. We can't stand by and let the Ashanath be wiped out, but the Drakkar are disgusting beasts - the galaxy would be a better place without them!"

Tashana felt a strange pang of uncertainty as she listened to her sister, but she put her arm around her and said, "I've never met the Ashanath or the Drakkar, so I'll follow Irillith's lead on this." She glanced at Jade and added, "Besides, we can't afford to lose any sources of information on the Progenitors, not with one posing such an imminent threat to the Maliri."

Finally John looked at Faye, who was listening avidly to proceedings and asked, "What's your view, Faye? Are you willing to put yourself in danger to help the Ashanath?"

She blinked at him in surprise, before a smile crept onto her face, touched that he valued her opinion as much as the rest of the crew. "I've seen the video footage of the Drakkar attacking the Invictus," she replied, gazing at the group with big eyes. "More than anything, I don't want to see any of you get hurt. If all of you think we should fight, then of course you can count on me to help!"

"We're decided then, we fight," John said nodding solemnly. Looking at the Nymph and then his auburn-haired engineer, he continued, "Jade, I want you in the Raptor. Dana, you'll be in the Mech." He turned to meet the Latina's intense gaze, adding, "Calara and I will assign you targets when the Drakkar jump in and we can see exactly what we're dealing with. The rest of you will be with me on the Invictus' Combat Bridge."

Jade nodded solemnly and replied, "Of course, John. I won't let you down."

"The Drakkar won't know what's hit them!" Dana exclaimed, a huge grin on her face.

Her wild enthusiasm almost made him change his mind, suddenly filled with doubts about letting her loose on her own in the unproven mech. He gave her a stern look and said, "I want you to be extremely careful out there, Dana. If you get in trouble, call for help immediately; no playing the hero."

"I'll be fine!" she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, smiling at him as she rolled her eyes at his over-protectiveness. His answering frown made her pause, calming her down. Meeting his probing gaze, she added quietly, "I'll be careful, I promise."

He rose to his feet and the girls followed his cue, standing with him and moving closer for a group hug. No one said anything for that long moment, but they could feel the shared connection between them all. It was filled with a sense of raw, untapped power begging to be unleashed.

"Stay safe and look after each other," he told the girls, gazing at each of them in turn.

"We will," they intoned together, brave expressions on their beautiful faces.

***

Leader Linnaeus glanced around the Bridge of his cruiser, looking at each of his officers in turn. His ship was in formation with another five Ashanath cruisers, holding position until the invading fleet of Drakkar arrived. Waiting for those dreadful foes to arrive was weighing heavily on all of his crew and the sense of fear amongst the officers on the Bridge was palpable. Having run into Drakkar Raiders more than once before, they all knew exactly what those monsters were capable of in a single cruiser, but an entire fleet of them was a terrifying prospect.

*They will be here imminently,* Navigator Cadimus stated, activating the sector map.

The onrushing horde of Drakkar swarming towards the Ashana system were all highlighted in red, their numbers so large that it looked like a red tide rushing in. Linnaeus had never seen an armada like it and he felt a shiver of fear run up his spine.

*Steady, my friends,* he said to his crew, trying to sound as calm as possible to settle their nerves.

Tactical Officer Pallari sounded tense as he asked, *Is it really true that we are not to fire on any Drakkar ships with black armour?*

Engineer Batiri turned from her station, her thoughts troubled as she added, *The Onyxium alloy they use to armour their hulls was analysed at the Academy. It is possible to overload the capacitors with sufficient levels of energy weapon damage, making them vulnerable to attack with Beam Lasers. We could hurt them with high enough concentrations of firepower.*

*We will have more than enough targets to shoot at,* Leader Linnaeus said placatingly. *As discussed in the briefing, we have been ordered by the High Council to leave those black-hulled vessels to JohnBlake.*

***

Senior Councillor Ularean led the rest of the High Council along the black corridor, the dark feel of the place sending chills up his spine. Echoes of pain and suffering flickered through the gloom, the psychic imprints which had been left behind filling him with a dark sense of foreboding.

The door to the Command Chamber parted before him, the jagged, angular join of the opening portal reminding him of the fanged maw of some vicious predator. The High Council filed inside in silence, taking their places within the black chamber and sitting at the seats arrayed in an oval. He could sense the trepidation from his colleagues and the feelings of dread that they were experiencing mirrored his own. One by one his white-robed colleagues closed their eyes, merging their minds into the collective thought-cluster.

Here, inside the Legacy, they couldn't help but be swayed by the darkness that pervaded the place and the Astral Conclave they formed was filled with forbidding shadows. Looking around at the Astral Projections of each of the Councillors, he could see the fear they felt written across every inch of their frightened faces. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked that way there was nothing to be seen. Still, he couldn't help feeling like he was being stalked like prey, as though a ferocious predator was lurking in the shadows, waiting for the opportune moment to strike.

Doing his best to suppress his jitters, Ularean announced firmly, *It is time.* His thoughts surged out to embrace the rest of the High Council, filling them with a renewed sense of purpose and helping them to focus. *We have committed to our decision, we must not let fear sway us from our course.*

The other eight Ashanath Councillors nodded, submerging themselves more completely into their convergence of consciousness.

*Linking to the Command network,* Talari declared, reaching out to the telepathic web that had been established between the Ashanath Fleet Commanders.

Ularean felt that widening sense of perspective as their thought-cluster was connected with the light touch of the Ashanath Command network. Every Captain within their fleet was telepathically linked to that group consciousness, allowing them instant communication with the entire defensive fleet.

*Initiating activation sequences,* Councillor Rathus intoned, his fortified voice reverberating eerily.

***

On the surface of Ashana, not far from the secret facility that housed the Progenitor monoliths, a small rodent known locally as a Savrit dug in the orange dirt, foraging for Reworb grubs. It felt a slight vibration and dug faster, thinking the grub it had sniffed out was trying to escape by burying itself deeper into the sandy ground. The trembling intensified and the Savrit lurched out of the hole it was digging, looking around in fear in case a predator approached. Its short ears twitched and its orange fur bristled, not able to sense anything beyond the violently shaking ground. Thoroughly spooked, it bolted for its nest, all thoughts of dinner swept from its tiny mind by an instinct for self-preservation.

Buried within the Ashanath homeworld, enormous generators surged with power, activating for the first time in millennia. With a throbbing bass hum, ancient machinery came to life, white lightning arcing around the huge apparatus. An enormous split lanced across the ground, the opening crack over two kilometres in length and only an inch across to start with, but quickly widening with every second.

Fierce rays from the bright yellow sun blazed through that broadening gap, shafts of light reflecting off the vast bulk of the silver and black object hidden within. Fine dust poured off the colossal doors as they slowly drew back, cascading down like an amber waterfall that formed piles of orange dirt on the upper body of the gigantic craft. The Legacy was finally exposed to the sun's harsh glare, after being buried there by the Ashanath's distant ancestors thousands of years ago.

As the doors eventually shuddered to a halt, the two-kilometre-long leviathan arose from the depths of its crimson tomb, revealed in all its terrible majesty.

***

Grand Overlord Vekrok's bulging eyes narrowed intently as his dreadnought exited hyper-warp, the arrival of the immense warship in this system heralding the doom of the Ashanath. All around the Defiler, the rest of the Drakkar horde dropped out of hyper-warp, gathering into the distinct collections of clan groups that had rallied to Vekrok's bloody banner. Together, they represented the might of the Drakkar, a rampaging interstellar beast capable of inflicting terrible damage to any galactic empire that dared face it.

The clans would form the claws of this monstrous assault, with the Defiler providing the terrible bite. His personal retinue of six battleships would add more teeth to that savage mauling and Vekrok nodded with satisfaction to see all his forces surging forward to attack. Although the losses against that despicable minefield had been horrific, he still had more than enough ships to crush the pitiful silver-hulled discs that dared to finally face him.

He watched as the clans roared towards the Ashanath, engines glowing a bright orange as the Drakkar Captains ordered their ships forward at full power. He counted forty-eight battleships still intact amongst them, although a quarter of that figure had sustained battle damage from the minefield. There were over triple that amount in grey-hulled cruisers, which were now spearheading the charge towards the Ashanath lines.

The precious black armour plating had been given to the most aggressive ship commanders, ones who would be most likely to lead the charge and take the brunt of the Grey's laser fire. Of course, those commanders had also been the most eager to rush after the interdicting Ashanath cruisers, so the conflagration in the minefield had reaped a terrible toll through their numbers. The sneaky little Grey bastards had obliterated all but a dozen of the cruisers that had been given armour from the Dark One, although the bigger, slower ships had fared much better. The clan leaders in their black-hulled battleships had largely been spared such an ignominious end, as had his personal guard of six more battleships, which had been on close-escort duty for the Defiler when the mines had been activated.

"Your orders, Mighty One?" Grukig asked, standing by the Command Table and squinting at the orderly lines of silver-hulled ships. His jaw turned up into a toothy grin as he grunted, "Who do you want to kill first?"

Pointing with an enormous black gauntlet towards a cluster of huge circular Ashanath spacecraft, Vekrok snarled, "Slaughter the biggest ships they've got! We'll crush their battleships and fill the rest of their feeble hearts with terror! They'll be begging us for mercy and running for their pitiful lives!"

Grukig chortled with glee, saliva spraying wildly as his jaw snapped up and down, savouring the anticipation of the destruction they were about to unleash on the Ashanath and the glorious feasting that would follow.

***

John stepped clear of the armour equipping frame, grabbing his sword, a Punisher rifle, and some magazines from the adjacent weapon rack. All around him the girls were quickly gearing up, the Combat Bridge filled with the sounds of robotic arms moving armoured plates into position and the rippling series of clicks as they were sealed into place.

Alyssa and Calara were just ahead of him and the first to get to the ramp, jogging down to their stations on the Bridge. He sheathed his Crystal Alyssium blade on the back of his chair, the magnetic fields holding the bands on the hilt firmly in position. After that, it only took a couple of seconds to slide his rifle home into the slot at the end of his console and he took his seat at the Command Chair as the railgun was locked into place.

All around him the rest of the girls were taking their positions, with Rachel, Sakura, Irillith, and Tashana each taking their chairs after slotting their weapons into place. Tashana was the one exception, but she had twin holsters for the Punisher pistols she carried, each heavy pistol nestled under an armoured breast.

"Eight minutes until we jump in-system," Alyssa warned everyone from where she sat at the Pilot's Chair, placing her hands on the flight controls. "From our approach vector, we'll be arriving behind the Ashanath lines."

Calara tapped a couple of buttons on her Tactical Console and a glowing holographic map sprang into place in the centre of the Bridge. They were all familiar enough with the Ashanath's home system now to recognise the orange-red world of Ashana, but even if they hadn't been, the orderly formations of row-upon-row of silver saucer-shaped spacecraft would have made it clear what they were looking at.

Tashana frowned as she studied the map and asked, "John, I thought the Ashanath were outnumbered by the Drakkar? I can see several hundred Ashanath ships there!"

He gave her a grim smile and replied, "I was just referring to the big vessels - cruiser class and above. You're right though, the Drakkar lost almost all their smaller, faster picket ships in the minefield, while the Ashanath still have a sizeable number of destroyers and corvettes. Unfortunately, they're most effective at providing point-defence cover and while the Drakkar do use missiles and dropships, they don't use strikecraft. Those picket screens won't be as valuable against cruisers and battleships."

Calara nodded and interjected, "The Drakkar still have one-hundred-and-forty-two cruisers, forty-eight battleships, and what I can only class as a dreadnought. They're facing the Ashanath's one-hundred-and-sixty cruisers, along with forty battleships, and ten carriers." Her expression was bleak as she added, "We're going to have to pray we can make a big difference - without the Invictus involved, it's going to be a massacre."

"That dreadnought must be their flagship," Irillith speculated, a thoughtful look on her face. "If you can get me close enough, I'll start hacking it and turn it against the rest of the Drakkar. That should have a devastating effect on their morale."

John glanced at Calara then smiled at Irillith as he said, "We were hoping you were going to say that. The Drakkar flagship seems to be protected by six battleships though, so you'll have to work fast. We'll be dealing with a huge amount of incoming fire from its escort vessels."

The Maliri girl nodded her understanding, then asked Calara, "What's our strategy here? When I hack that ship, do I just start unloading on those battleship escorts?"

The Latina nodded as she replied, "The Ashanath ships use laser weapons exclusively, so they'll be helpless against the Onyxium-armoured Drakkar. Our job will be destroying all the black-hulled Drakkar ships, because we can hurt them with our ballistic weapons."

"That makes sense," Irillith agreed. "I'll hit the escorts first, then move on to any other black-hulled ships in range."

"Patching in Dana and Jade," Rachel said, hitting a button and bringing two holographic images of the girls into focus.

"This is the Raptor, reporting in," the Nymph replied, smiling at them as she flicked switches, powering up the gunship.

"This is UWS-01 Strike Valkyrie Ultra, reporting in," Dana stated, the fierce expression on her face undermined by a nervous glance at John.

Alyssa simply laughed and rolled her eyes, while John smiled at the redhead and replied, "You can't seriously expect us to call the mech that. The battle will be over by the time we've memorised it!"

"Ah c'mon! It sounds awesome! Besides, names like that are a tradition for space-mecha!" Dana bargained, while giving him her most endearing smile.

Calara gave Dana a conciliatory smile and suggested, "Perhaps just shorten it a bit? We'll need a quick designation during combat."

"I do like the Valkyrie part!" Tashana said, grinning at Irillith. "It'll be like we're fighting alongside Titanium Jake!"

"Who?" Rachel asked, glancing at her in confusion.

"He was an Asphalt Arena champion. His car was called the Valkyrie," Irillith explained. She returned Tashana's grin and continued, "He won it year after year when we started watching; we were both big fans."

John shrugged and said, "Alright, that'll do. The Valkyrie it is then."

"Ugh, it sounds boring without all the rest," Dana complained, pouting at him. "Fine, but I think you guys suck."

Smiling at her, John said, "Honey, we can discuss it at length after the battle; we're a bit pressed for time at the moment." Turning to the Latina next, he continued, "Commander, did you fully brief the Ashanath on the tactics you want them to employ."

Calara nodded and replied, "I've provided them with my analysis of the Drakkar's likely tactics and how best to respond to them. They know to focus on the grey-hulled Drakkar ships and leave the Onxyium-armoured ships for us to take down."

After glancing at her console to check their progress along her flightpath, Alyssa warned them, "We'll be jumping into the system in just over four minutes!"

Sakura was staring intently at the two forces as they clashed and said in a hushed voice, "The Battle for Ashana has begun..."

***

The Ashanath had arrayed their forces in several spinning ring formations, with their biggest vessels anchoring the centre. They didn't have enough spare ships to form any sizable reserve, other than ten carriers which hung back on the port flank, intended to help plug any gaps in the line with strike-craft counter-attacks.

John and the girls all gazed intently at the holographic System Map, watching as the three-dimensional images of the two sides started the fight with long-range salvos of Beam Laser fire. Unlike the Battle of Regulus, the Drakkar didn't bother to stop at long range to exchange barrages with the formations of Ashanath. The vicious-looking Drakkar vessels simply charged straight at the silver ships, apparently intent on barrelling headlong towards the closest enemy.

The Ashanath began to take evasive manoeuvres as the horde approached, making their ships much harder to hit, while still finding it relatively easy to strike at the opposing armada of malevolent ships. A scorching wave of red beams lanced out to slash into the incoming Drakkar and the initial cascade of laser fire took a heavy toll on the lead elements of the Drakkar's haphazard formation.

A group of three black-hulled Drakkar cruisers led the charge and they raced ahead, completely ignored by the Ashanath. However, the same couldn't be said for the grey steel-armoured ships following in their wake. The next ships in that vangaurd were a formation of five cruisers equipped with regular armour and they were struck by a dazzling crimson rain of beams. Shields winked-out in a split-second before that deadly fusillade, the red columns of energy then slashed through armour plating, leaving glowing holes as the beams carved through the stricken vessels. The Ashanath were well-coordinated and split their fire evenly between their targets, striking the grey and purple Drakkar ships in a score of different locations. One by one they exploded, skewered by the deadly incoming laser beams.