The Yad System comprised seven planets orbiting a yellow star. The homeworld of the Toooi Clan was located in the Yad System. Interestingly, the homeworld was none of the four rocky worlds nor was it any of the three gas giants. Rather, the homeworld was actually a verdant moon that revolved around the largest of the gas giants. It was not from its distant star that the homeword received its nurturing warmth and light. Its illumination radiated from the massive iridescence of its parent gas giant. Thermal vents beneath the surface bathed the moon in just enough heat to generate a clime that never ventured far outside of temperate bounds.
Two of the gas giants were surrounded by rings. A ring of sorts circumvented the Toooi homeworld. Orbiting dockyards, defense satellites, massive fighter craft/missile platforms and industrial plants. Similar facilities existed on or above the other planets, making the Yad System the most fortified expanse in the Toooi domain. An enemy armada would have been torn to pieces by a formidable variety of weapons long before it breached the system perimeter.
Of course, the ships that appeared less than ten thousand miles out from the homeworld were not part of an armada. They were Serpentine fighters and Broadstroke bombers. Fifty of the craft arrived in-system by means of warp booster fields. Council fighters and bombers possessed no intrinsic warp capabilities. A pod affixed to non-warp capable vessel generated a supraluminal bubble that surrounded the craft, propelling it to warp velocities.
Each Serpentine and Broadstroke arrived over the homeworld encased in booster fields. A broad chain of orbital constructs filled Fight Colonel Sabrina Kudjo’s display when her fighter materialized from warp. She deactivated her booster field and her squadron fell into escort position around one of the Broadstrokes.
Superior stealth shielded the attack force from enemy early warning systems. Kudjo targeted a massive docking frame shaped like a spoked wheel. Her hand gripped the fire control, unleashing a fusion-release missile. The missile joined a dozen others to strike the section of the framework where the spokes joined. A ream of light interspersed with disintegrating debris shot out like spewing vomit from the framework’s central assembly. Disk-shaped fusion-release bombs poured out of the Broadstroke’s bomb bay and zeroed in on their target like a flock of ravenous blood bats. The disks scattered across the framework and affixed themselves to sections of its cold metal. Multiple detonations where the disks were attached spread nearly full circle around the outer rim of the framework. Pieces of the construct broke off to hurtle either into space or toward the planet’s surface. The explosions channeled through the framework, converting its vast interior into a seething furnace. The two hundred ships docked inside the framework were consumed in the rippling tumult. Their reactors went critical and a wave of secondary blasts punched outward ravaging what was left of the framework’s dissolving hull, even as fusion-release bombs and missiles continued to rain down upon the doomed construct. A convulsion of stupendous blasts proceeded to rip enormous chunks out of the framework. The structure heaved violently, ending its death throes in the embrace of an emerging sun that shattered it to an infinite number of pieces.
Broadstrokes and Sepentines plowed a ruinous path through the orbital network. The defensive ring encircling the homeworld was fast becoming a ring of fire as roiling balls of hot gas bloomed where constructs once existed.
A missile platform was among the last intact structures hovering in orbit. The triangular vessel flashed like a choice cut of meat across the flight colonel’s target grid. Her wingmates, Rockwall and Devo spread out along the flanks, widening the squadron’s formation. The Serpentines fired their missiles. At that second, defensive batteries lit up along the periphery of the platform. Dense metal spikes flew at the fighters and bombers. Kudjo triggered the turret chain gun on the nose of her craft, sending a cascade of micrilles that swept a half million spikes out of existence. No more would be forthcoming. The Serpentines’ fusion-release missiles had slagged most of the platform’s defense batteries. The Broadstroke soared over the platform to deliver its coup de gras in the form of a hundred bombs. A mile of platform died with the impact of each bomb until the entire structure shriveled like a strip of metal subjected to the heat of a wielding torch.
Kudjo’s alert display buzzed. The Protips were responding. Admirably faster than Kudjo anticipated, but still too late to forestall the destruction of their network. Plus, the annihilation the Council attack force meted out above the homeworld was being duplicated with stunning success across the system. Serpentines and Broadstrokes were attacking enemy bases and installations all over the Tad System. So far, eighty eight percent of all system-range missile facilities located on or above planets had been wiped out, thus severely crippling the homeworld’s strategic reach.
Of course, Kudjo did not have the breathing space to appreciate that percentage and its implications. At this moment, the Protips had scrambled over twenty thousand Fangbolts. Twice that number of surface-to-space missiles preceded the Fangbolts’ thrust into upper orbit.
Devo fired a cluster of micrilles that ripped apart a small armed satellite, before turning his guns on a wave of SS missiles in his path. Micrilles destroyed sixty plus missiles. But a shock wave issuing from the blast of the closet missile he knocked out tossed his fighter end over end. Devo’s Serpentine collided with an enemy missile he could not target in time. A single, brilliant explosion was born of the calamitous meeting of missile and fighter.
Kudjo would mourn her wingmate later. Right now it was getting way too thick out there. Much thicker than anything the defenses on Joak threw at them. Two more Serpentines and a Broadstroke broke apart in an unremitting hail of missiles.
“Dammit, time to bug out!” Kudjo exclaimed on the squadron net. “Activate your booster fields. We’ll reemerge on the edge of the system!”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Rockwall remarked with a smidgeon of urgency in his drawl.
Kudjo and the remainder of her squadron veered away from the planet’s gravity well. Thousands of Fangbolts fell on their six, their tactical cannons spitting out swarms of brackets.
Transluscent booster fields shimmered to life around the Serpentines and Broadstrokes. Fortunately, the fields offered added protection from the metal projectiles that impacted their near impenetrable energized epidermis. One by one, the field-enclosed Council vessels vanished into a glaring void of hyperspace.
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