After the initial attempt to enter Andromeda, the Terrans had been quiet. Patrols in The Pocket had been greatly increased - but not one have ventured through the wormhole. Blade and Casene had both forbid it. The Prylak were far too dangerous. It was assumed that their battlecruiser could tear a Supernova apart, quite possible several dozen.
It was obvious that the Prylak would soon enter through the wormhole. Even if they did not have on record the sighting of a mysterious alien vessel, they would quickly find that the wormhole had been opened at the other side.
No-one could have known that they would attack so soon, or in so much force. The Terrans simply weren't prepared - they had not even drawn up the secondary designs for the Apostle Battleship by the time the attack came.
There was only one certainty.
This wasn't going to be fun.
- - -
The Pocket was being patrolled by a group of twenty Supernovas, more than usual, but it was right in between the shifting of two patrol fleets. Two Darkwings lay near the wormhole, taking advanced scans of activity beyond.
For some strange reason, they reported no energy buildups, no stress in the wormhole, absolutely nothing.
And then, the Devil was upon them.
Five vessels cleared the wormhole, and one Darkwing was sucked straight into the gravitional fields of the vessels. The other was ripped apart by five seperate gravitational forces.
The vessels were dark grey, almost black, with indigo patterns. They were still very sober vessels, made for war, and nothing else.
Even the infinity of space and the trick of perspective could not make an illusion of their size. Four of the ships were over two kilometres from front to back, and the head ship, almost as large as the Equinox, was almost ten kilometres in length. Four Prylak battlecruisers and a Prylak dreadnought had come to The Pocket.
The Supernova captains had no delusions. They turned their ships to flee the very second the Prylak strike force entered, outgunned and outmatched over a hundred to one. But there was no chance for them. The dreadnought opened up with a barrage of hundreds of coloured spheres, some red, some blue. Supernovas were vaporised from just a handful of them. The resistance was absolutely none. Four AM lances were fired before the Supernovas went down, and all four promptly exploded as a barrage of spheres reacted around them.
The short battle was over so quickly that the Terrans had not even had chance to send word to headquarters on Terra.
Deep space scanners from New Sol picked up the presence of the ships, however, due to the immensity of their energy output. The Terrans went onto high alert, for all it meant.
Two days later, the Prylak were in New Sol.
New Sol, however, was considerably better defended.
The moment the Prylak strike force entered New Sol, antimatter gun traps opened fire on the ships. The gun traps' cloaks, however, were ineffective, and they were soon swallowed by an immense display of of particle beam turrets, thirty from each battlecruiser and sixty from the dreadnought.
Then, the Prylak were swarmed upon by a hundred Terran vessels, ranging from Thunderhawks to Supernovas. Fighters were launched, and the battle began.
...and promptly ended. There was, unfortunately, absolutely no competition.
A barrage of AM lances from the Terran fleet was overwhelmed by a combination of particle beams and the antimatter and quantum pods the Prylak ships fired. That impressive array of firepower swallowed the first rank of the Terrans, Thunderhawks. Light enclosed those ships, but didn't subside. Energy readings were off the roof - no-one could tell that the Thunderhawks had ever existed.
Hundreds of antimatter and quantum pods cut through shielding, and vaporised anything smaller than a Supernova in one. More Thunderhawks were thrown into the artificial and natural gravity of the dreadnought, and were crushed against it's shielding.
In half a minute, dozens of Terran ships were simply gone , with no trace of them left. The battle ended decisively when the dreadnought charged and fired it's quantum modulator beam cannon, clearing the battlefield of opponents. And then, the weapon's fire stopped, and all was silent once more.
The planet of Terra sat in a perfectly serene star system, with five ships, neither damaged below 95% shields, slowly made their way towards the system, none firing their long range weapons, instead building up the tension, slowly...
Terra looked back at the Prylak, and feared. Lonely, the planet sat, awaiting it's certain doom. How could it be, one might ask, that the Prylak had managed to break into the heart of the Terrans in only two days, with the Prylak equivalent of a "small strike force"? How could it be?
And then, the silence was broken by the appearance of a large hyperspace exit from the direction the Prylak had come. A ship that made even the Prylak dreadnought look small appeared from the exit - the Equinox had finally arrived.
The Equinox, the most powerful ship in the Terran fleet, a match for the Terran fleet, went up against the Prylak, and it wouldn't be the last time.
The Prylak were taken off guard, and as a storm of AM lances broke through the shield matrix of one of the battlecruisers, finally causing some damage at all to the Prylak ships, the Prylak, shocked, attempted to turn and fend off the great BASE ship.
However, they had met their true match. Hundreds of antimatter bursts smashed into one of the battlecruisers, it's shields raining down constantly. The Equinox took heavy damage also, the equivalent of 50,000 shield damage in ten seconds. But even that could hardly scratch the Equinox.
The charged stasis generator on the Equinox encompassed two of the battlecruisers completely, blocking them out of the fight. The shield bubble around them blinked for a moment as the battlecruisers attacked it fiercely, before stabilising.
Meanwhile, one battlecruiser went down under the Equinox's fire, and another was disabled after a few minutes. And then, it was one on one, the Equinox against the dreadnought.
Such a battle had not been witnessed before. Antimatter bursts met beams of energy, seemingly in one huge mass between the two ships. It was almos as if nothing was actually happening.
The two ships just sat there, locked in combat, the distance between them too incredibly active for any munitions to be fired into it, until the dreadnought's fire stopped. After a minute, so did the Equinox's.
The dreadnought went out with a terrific explosion, and the Equinox was left to wait for the battlecruisers to escape stasis, and destroy them also.
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Word.
