The first phase of battle
Angron’s First; flagship of the united Nur’Xal fleet
Grand-Warmaster Sif sat in her command chair watching the many hundreds of dots on the map display before her.
The massive battlefleet she had assembled had just finished rallying in the Seraphian system and was now advancing in force on the birdmen’s homeworld.
The very moment the first Nur’Xal ships had entered the system, they came under attack from Kimo frigates, Karilac corvettes and swarms of fighters from both races. Additionally, the defending Kimo and Karilac fleets were arrayed in a defensive pattern just waiting to give any attacker a run for their money. They presented a good challenge and this combined with the constant harassment from the lighter ships would have surely made any Angron commander give the order for an all-out assault.
In her earlier days, Sif would have done just that, but now she was no longer a simple warlord of Angron… she was the grand-warmaster of all the Nur’Xal and had four radically different fighting styles to consider a well as many more skilled tacticians to advise her.
Calls were coming in from all over the fleet now that the raids were taking their toll, not so much in the losses of ships but more as a weight on the morale of their crews. Sif ignored all of them and opened just a single channel.
“Sorcerer Palargos… begin your manoeuvres!”
She now sat back and watched the dreadnaughts and combat cruisers of the Magus fleet break off from the others and make for the defensive perimeter. Alanna also seemed rather pleased with that.
“If he is successful in his little feint perhaps you should consider supporting his claim for arch-sorcerer of Magus.” She said, almost purring like she always did when she got excited.
“If he survives my love… if he survives…” Sif just mumbled before ordering the rest of the fleet into motion. They were to link up with the small Angron warband still in orbit before they would deploy their landingcraft.
Dreadnaught Empress Delatti, flagship Kimo first fleet
Admiral Kil Kratha bit her nails a bit after seeing the size of the Nur’Xal fleet for herself but soon grew very suspicious when only five dreadnaughts and about two dozen cruisers broke off to engage their massive defensive fleet.
Before she could ask herself why though, the Nur’Xal battlegroup suddenly tripled in number on her sensors.
“What the…!” she exclaimed.
“It’s a trick!” it quickly dawned on her the Nur’Xal must be using some sort of signature mimicking to give the impression that they had more ships than they actually did.
“Which one do we shoot!?” her chief gunner now asked, confused and a little frightened.
“All ships fire at will!” the admiral quickly ordered, hoping to get a little more time to think.
The guns of all her dreadnaughts now flared to life, as did those of the Karilac but they seemed to do little actual damage to the Nur’Xal phantom fleet.
The enemy only had five dreadnaughts with which to return fire but they did so with a great fury.
*”Dreadnaught Prince Vatho here! Kinetic barrier failure! Taking heavy damage!”* echoed across the comm system.
“Don’t risk your ship captain! Retreat! Now! … Cruisers, support the Prince Vatho!” the admiral quickly ordered.
*”We’re not hitting anything!”* another panicked broadcast came in, followed immediately by another.
*”This is the Vicount Messanti! Barriers failing! Requesting permission to disengage!”*
“Granted! Get out of here captain!” the admiral responded, now thoroughly panicking at least until she remembered a scene from a bad movie she once saw.
“Lieutenant! Order elements of our drone wings to ram those dreadnaughts!”
“Ram them!?” the officer could scarcely believe what he was hearing.
“Yes! Ram them now!” she sat back in her chair now and carefully watched how her drones make their approach.
“Open comms to all ships! Both Kimo and Karilac!” she now ordered and relayed a message.
“All dreadnaughts, focus fire on my target!”
A grin now appeared on her face as she marked a target. As she expected, the false signatures could be identified by the drones being able to pass through it and the actual targets by how the fighters were destroyed.
On her order, the Empress Delatti opened fire and nearly all of the Kimo and Karilac ships followed her example. The volley they unleashed was so powerful that a clear explosion was visible for the people on board the ships of the coalition fleet.
“One of the Nur’xal Dreadnaughts has been destroyed! Target confirmed killed!” the Delatti’s chief gunner cheered now.
The Nur’Xal phantom fleet was suddenly a lot smaller and they now all seemed to be retreating.
“Yes! Good work everyone! Rounds on me! That also counts for you Karilac gunners out there!” The admiral sent out a very cheerful general broadcast but she would quickly have to get serious again a there now was a horde of thousands of fighters and other smaller craft inbound.
Doubtless most of them were fake signatures as well but ramming all of these to identify which ones were actual threats was simply impossible.
Wisdom of the elder sister, light cruiser of the Karilac fleet
“Shipmaster! They have boarding craft inbound!” the sensor monitor called out as the Nur’Xal swarm approached.
“Power to cannons! Swat them from the skies!” the shipmaster ordered and so it was done but for the massive volumes of fire poured into them from both them and the other ships nearby, the Nur’xal numbers barely dwindled.
Karilac fighters and Kimo drones now mingled with the swarm and managed to get some better results though a massive wave still crashed across the combined Kimo and Karilac cruisers, including the Wisdom of the elder sister.
“Five breachpoints shipmaster!” the sensor operator called out.
“Repel boarders!” she ordered, pointing to the armed guards standing by her side.
They quickly rushed out and gathered as many soldiers as they could.
A squad quickly deployed itself to one of the breachpoints and readied both their weapons and their Ventri swarms. Suddenly, a biotic shockwave swept through the hallway and knocked everyone and everything back.
Next thing anyone knew, the Nur’Xal were all over them. These were not the warriors of Angron they had read intel reports on, but rather the vanguard of Magus, the biotic commandos of the Nur’Xal force.
Screams echoed through the halls now as troops were flung all over by biotic charges, pushes and pulls. Shockwaves swatted Ventri against the walls and stasis fields kept blast doors from closing properly.
*“They’re heading for the bridge! Stop them at all… whaaaaaaah!!!”*
The shipmaster now heard the screams draw closer to her location and quickly drew her sidearm while letting her Ventri buzz around angrily.
“All of you! Ready yourselves!” she called out and opened all the arms lockers nearby.
The bridge crew had just distributed the weapons when the doors burst open and blue flashes jumped in. The slaughter that had occurred throughout the ship now repeated itself here.
Within moments, the room was silent and all Karilac lie either dead or incapacitated.
The shipmaster herself had been thrown back against her command console and could only look up at the Nur’Xal soldier standing over her.
He wiped the blood from his nose as the strain of the powerful biotics had caused a nosebleed before crushing a wounded Ventri under his foot.
“You have lost captain… yield your ship and no more of your crew need die!” he then spoke with a very smug grin.
“We know your face now… you cannot escape judgement…” the shipmaster coughed and gently tapped her communications device.
The Nur’Xal leaned over to pick it up and now saw what she had done. She had streamed a live report of the fight aboard her ship directly to the flagship of her fleet.
“Well I’ll be… we probably shouldn’t use this tactic again, seeing as your people now have a very detailed report on it… well played of you captain… a small victory in your greater defeat.” The Nur’Xal now smiled, failing to hide his admiration for the act. Then he turned to the device itself and looked into it.
“Hey, ‘prelate’… come take your ship back.” He said with a wink before crushing the device.
Dreadnaught Empress Delatti, flagship Kimo first fleet
In the end, the Nur’Xal manoeuvre was only partially successful and only managed to actually capture three Karilac ships of the eight coalition cruisers it targeted. The rest has either managed to destroy the incoming boarding craft or repel the boarders after they entered. Surprisingly, the Kimo proved to be quite skilled at this, though largely because the corridors of their ships are so small the Nur’xal had to crawl through and so could not use their shock tactics while at the same time allowing the Kimo marines very clear lines of fire on the Nur’Xal that had to come through one or at most two at a time.
Admiral Kil Kratha breathed a sigh of relief and made a mental note to personally congratulate the captains of all the ships that had managed to successfully repel boarders be they Kimo or Karilac once the battle was over.
It was not over however. The great majority of the Krall fleet was now moving towards the planet and had almost reached it in the time it took the coalition fleet to fight off the phantom fleet.
“regroup the fleet… have three dreadnaughts stay behind to hold the line… ask the Karilac to provide some ships as well… the rest of them need to arrange behind us. We’re engaging the Nur’Xal main fleet!”
She now turned on a direct line to the Karilac flagship.
“Honoured Prelate… this is Admiral Kil Kratha… are your ships ready to engage? If so, lead the way. You have our drones at your disposal for the planned pincer movement…”
Seraphian Mine Fortress
The garrison commander looked up at the sky which was now being filled with all manner of anti-aircraft projectiles. A single black Nur’Xal ship was diving straight towards them and showed no signs of stopping.
The Seraphian gun crews worked frantically to reload their guns and adjust their aim as the vessel kept coming closer. Its barriers had long since given way and the armour on its hull kept taking a beating but didn’t seem to break.
“Take cover!” the commander now just screamed since it was clear that no matter how much fire they poured into the damn ship, it was still going to impact with the fortress.
And so it did. With a thunderous, earth-shaking crash, it smashed through the outer walls and embedded itself in the ground of the courtyard.
The commander now spread his wings and gathered what men he could find to storm the wreckage but it seemed this ‘crash’ was part of the Nur’Xal plan all along. The vessel now came alive with activity as heavily armoured Nur’Xal warriors came pouring out.
The followers of Mortarion quickly lived up to their name. Clad in the heaviest armour and many of them wearing strength enhancing exoskeletons they easily endured the first bursts of Seraphian fire before returning fire of their own.
Vapor grenades now flew but the Nur’Xal were completely unaffected, protected by their airtight suits. The Mortarion vanguard now returned fire with gas grenades of their own, tailored especially to Seraphian physiology from information gathered by their agents in the field.
Luckily for the defenders, this gas missed its effectiveness greatly and only caused minor casualties because the Seraphians were quick to either don their vapour masks or fly out above the noxious clouds.
More fire was exchanged and The Nur’Xal now began to suffer extensive casualties. It seemed for a moment that the garrison might even repel this invasion until the sound of warhorns smashed that hope.
Angron warriors of the warbands already on the planet had managed to approach the fortress in secret and now poured in through the broken walls while the defenders were too busy fighting the threat already inside.
“There’s too many of them!” the garrison commander exclaimed and pulled up one of his subordinates.
“Gather everyone you can and retreat! Now! Hurry or we’ll be overrun!” he ordered before taking five volunteers himself to embark on an important mission.
He quickly flew around and began disabling the fortress’ guns, so the Nur’Xal could not use them against his own people.
It as a difficult and dangerous task that quickly claimed the lives of three of the volunteers when the Nur’xal realised what they were up to.
The fire directed at them became so heavy that he and the two men remaining to him were forced to bunker down after having only managed to disable half of the guns.
The scene that unfolded after that was one worthy of song since these three Seraphian soldiers held out for a good ten minutes against such odds that would have instantly vanquished lesser warriors.
By the time the last of them fell, the remainder of the garrison had safely withdrawn and was well on their way to rejoin other forces for a possible counterattack against the fort that had now fallen to the first wave of Nur’Xal attack.
The Nur’Xal themselves still celebrated their victory even though they had suffered many more casualties than they had expected to and now only commanded only the bones of a fortress with less than half its capacity of guns and a rather large hole in the walls. They had secured the Seraphians vapor mines, a target that would surely draw their enemy’s attention.