Chapter 385: Success... Return!
At this command, thousands of automated combat drones, including the heavy Leviathan gunships and the agile Space Swallow interceptors housed within the Deep Space mothership’s hangar bays, poured out into the void to provide frantic tactical support to the two Titans holding the vanguard.
The massive ion engines of the Deep Space were burning at maximum output, executing a synchronized orbital climb.
The heavy transport ship suspended below on the carbon nanotube tether was being reeled in inch by inch. The entire extraction sequence resembled a terrifying high-altitude stunt.
The transport ship fired its auxiliary thrusters to match the mothership’s lateral velocity, preventing the tether from swinging wildly under the aerodynamic sheer.
Jason’s heart hammered against his ribs. His eyes were glued to the tactical displays showing the distant, silent universe.
The Special Forces operators in the cabin were rigid with tension... they could literally feel the deck vibrating beneath their boots, as if the transport itself was screaming to escape the planet’s gravity well.
The cold tactical logic was undeniable: whatever strategies the Federation had realized, the enemy commander had already calculated!
Humanity was fielding automated, fearless Titan warships on suicide missions. Did the enemy armada not possess similar automated assets?
They absolutely did. And they were undoubtedly burning toward the system at all costs!
According to the Senior Scientists’ deductions, the enemy’s manned capital ships were likely cruising at high sub-light velocities for over ninety percent of their transit.
This was necessary to maintain continuous, real-time sensor telemetry of realspace and ensure the survival of their biological crew.
This strategic doctrine was fundamentally sound.
Any civilization that survived the Great Filter and matured into an interstellar empire had to possess a highly evolved logistical framework.
From the Federation’s own perspective, ever since the perfection of combat AI, all high-casualty tactical operations had been delegated to automated systems.
The adversary undoubtedly operated under the same doctrine. Automated attack craft felt no fear, required no life support, never hesitated, and... could sustain G-forces that would liquefy organic pilots!
So, was it really impossible for a mature alien armada to throw away heavily armed, automated cruisers like the Titan?
No. They would absolutely send their drones screaming toward the system at superluminal speeds!
These automated vanguards were true suicide squads. They didn’t care about sensory blindness inside a warp bubble, the catastrophic risks of spatial impacts, or the likelihood of being intercepted.
As long as their internal clocks were synchronized, they could execute extreme deceleration burns right at the perimeter of the engagement zone.
Even if ninety-nine percent of the drone swarm was obliterated by planetary debris or blind intercepts, what did it matter?
They were expendable assets specifically engineered for war of attrition!
If even a single drone survived to disable the Federation’s engines, it would secure an absolute tactical victory for the enemy fleet!
"If the enemy was willing to expend warp-capable antimatter missiles just to crack a moon, would they hesitate to deploy automated drone swarms? We have to assume a swarm of relativistic interceptors is burning toward us right now!"
"Of course, while their drones are capable of FTL speeds, their tactical arrival will technically be slower than a pure missile strike..." a tactical analyst frantically explained over the communication channel.
For an attack drone to actually engage in precision combat, it must execute a massive deceleration burn to collapse its warp bubble.
Otherwise, it remains blind to realspace, unable to acquire targets or fire its weapons.
If they didn’t decelerate, they would simply crash headfirst into the star system’s debris fields.
However, dropping out of faster-than-light travel isn’t instantaneous. It requires immense distances and significant time to bleed off velocity.
Because of this mandatory deceleration curve, the drones would inevitably arrive on the battlefield much later than the unguided antimatter missiles.
Therefore, the enemy admiral’s opening move was to utilize superluminal missiles for a rapid, decapitation strike.
Ideally, the missiles would have vaporized the Deep Space on the second moon. Since that strike failed, the admiral would rely on the follow-up wave of automated interceptors to finish the job.
The tactical doctrine was flawless.
In that moment, Jason felt the oppressive, suffocating killing intent radiating from deep space. Cold sweat poured down his spine.
Relativistic interceptor drones... were vastly more lethal than blind FTL missiles...
But now, the engagement had shifted into a pure battle of military attrition!
For humanity, the variables were overwhelming. This was their first true interstellar engagement.
Their combat experience was purely theoretical, their industrial base was fragile, and their technology was outclassed. Everything had to be solved through desperate, real-time improvisation...
Fortunately, the Federation had war-gamed worst-case scenarios and possessed the necessary countermeasures to hold the line.
Inside the transport, the tension was unbearable. If the enemy drone swarm dropped out of warp while they were still dangling from a tether in the upper atmosphere, they would be sitting ducks.
It was like watching the butcher raise the cleaver while strapped to the cutting block.
Time bled away, second by agonizing second. An hour later, the Federation’s defensive screen was set. 13,000 high-speed Space Swallow interceptors and 120 heavy Leviathan gunships had established a massive defensive perimeter one million kilometers from Planet Dige.
The two Titan warships were anchored further back, providing heavy artillery support.
The dim void of space was illuminated by the brilliant blue glare of thousands of ion engines as the Federation fleet locked into a massive, interlocking tactical array.
In deep-space combat, precision is the absolute law; raw firepower is secondary.
Without pinpoint targeting, even the most devastating broadside is completely useless.
The Space Swallow drones possessed limited energy reserves and lacked heavy laser batteries. Their primary armaments were twin-linked electromagnetic railguns.
Theoretically, in the vacuum of space, a railgun’s kinetic yield rivaled directed-energy weapons.
The sheer destructive force of relativistic kinetic impactors was staggering, especially since the Federation had engineered the slugs to carry micro-yield thermonuclear warheads.
𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚
These railguns could accelerate a projectile to 10,000 kilometers per second, roughly one-thirtieth the speed of light.
Furthermore, the drones could conserve energy by simply ejecting the munitions without accelerating them, relying on the drone’s own immense sub-light inertia to turn the slugs into lethal kinetic missiles.
The munition’s architecture was brutally simple, mimicking a standard armor-piercing sabot. Driven by immense kinetic velocity, the slug would penetrate the enemy’s armor before detonating a volatile red-mercury nuclear core, causing catastrophic secondary internal damage.
Telemetry confirmed the deployment: 13,000 Space Swallows had woven an overlapping kinetic kill-box spanning approximately twenty thousand square kilometers.
Decades of simulated war games on Mars had finally paid off. The precision synchronization executed by the combat AI was flawless, far beyond human reaction times.
Twenty thousand square kilometers. It was a formidable defensive net.
Of course, the initial salvos were purely suppressive fire—blind barrages fired into the projected approach vector...
Quickly shifting formation, the drone swarms accelerated toward the enemy’s anticipated drop-out coordinates.
These high-speed interceptors were attempting to push the engagement line as far away from the Deep Space as physically possible to buy the mothership critical seconds!
Initially, deploying sub-light interceptors and railguns against an unknown alien armada was deemed useless; kinetic weapons were far too slow compared to light-speed lasers to hit capital ships several AU away.
But the tactical paradigm had shifted. The drone screen was no longer hunting capital ships; they were deployed as a literal wall of shrapnel to shred the incoming wave of enemy suicide drones!
The Space Swallow swarms served as the frontline meat grinder. The Leviathans, armed with high-yield nuclear torpedoes, formed the secondary suppression line.
The massive Titans, anchored in the rear, provided the ultimate heavy-hitting capability.
The Deep Space kept two thousand Space Swallows docked in reserve for close-point defense, while the internal industrial forges ran red-hot, desperately churning out specialized kinetic munitions. It was a chaotic, last-minute mobilization, but no one complained... every extra slug fired was another chance at survival!
Every ticking second felt like an eternity. Amidst the suffocating dread, Jason’s transport ship... finally crested the atmosphere and locked into the docking bay!
The retrieval of the final transport meant... every single living soul was now secured aboard the Deep Space!
Furthermore, the Gaia extraction operation was an unprecedented success. Humanity could finally run!
"Haha... we beat the clock!"
Stepping onto the solid, heavily armored deck of the Deep Space, the crushing anxiety in Jason’s chest evaporated. An overwhelming sense of security washed over him. He was finally home, and a wide, genuine grin broke across his face.
"I’m back!"
"Helm, push the main drives past the redline! Get us out of here!"
He shouted the orders over the command channel. Glancing up at the bridge viewport, he saw Lily smiling back at him, her eyes filled with profound relief.
"We made it! We’re home!"
Several of the Special Forces operators laughed out loud, their legs shaking slightly from the adrenaline crash. The sheer joy of survival was indescribable. If they weren’t encumbered by heavy power armor, they would have literally jumped for joy on the hangar deck.
Dangling helplessly in the atmosphere, knowing an FTL drone could vaporize them at any second... that was a flavor of primal terror none of them ever wished to taste again.
However, the crew quickly suppressed their jubilation. The crisis was far from over, and celebrating was premature.
Theoretically, enemy relativistic drones wouldn’t breach the system for at least another three hours following the initial missile strike; they still needed time to execute their deceleration burns...
But the moment those drones dropped below the speed of light, the Gravitational Wave Arrays would detect them!