Forward the Light Brigade

Sams fleet emerged from hyper with his two flag captains at his side, the Ivan class ships were already deploying its mini-SAPLs. A call patched through from the Anne and Etrius appeared on the screen with the three other flag admirals that Sam had brought with him, altogether, the ONA fleet numbered about 4000 ships not including special ships. Some of the Privateer fleet had been drafted into this and displayed the ONA insignia on the sides. Altogether, there was the Anne, Sams ship, and three other Flagships each measuring just over a kilometer in length. The SAPL carrying ship was already to rock and all ships in the fleet were at full combat alert. "Sam, where were you man, i thought you would have attacked already." said Etrius with a laugh. "Oh, nowhere, just doing some stuff, you know." he had the camera pan out to show his sisters at the control panels, they waved and continued working. "i decided that instead of attacking, the Entente could use a fallback point in case things went to hell. Those evos have no idea that there is an orbital fortress to the east of here so its a great place to set an ambush point"
"well, you sure made everyone rush the meeting, everyone is mobilizing already"
"oh, quit your whining, at least we got something done"
"good point on that"
"sirs" one of the Flag admirals said "i think we need to begin preparing for the attack, the rest of the Entente has yet to arrive so i think it would be best to be in top fighting shape."
"good point, Etrius, i need a full detail on the attack plan so i can fill myself in, in the meantime, everyone bring weapons and shields up to full capacity. I'll get the tunnel blocker ready"
"Hoo-rah to that Chronicler, Reaper out!" said Etrius, referring to call-signs now and his screen blinked out while everyone else signed out.
"Jenova out!"
"Orleans out!"
"Normandy out!"

Sam sat back and began reading up on full details of the attack. It was a bit rushed but all they had to do was get rid of the Evos right here and the tunnel blocker would keep them from doing anything till some defenses got set up. Still, this was going to get hectic real fast, he just hoped he wasn't making a mistake or something, a lot of people were going to die here and this was gonna be hell. "Mia, bring up our shields and weapons, prepare the weapons. Lia, send a hyper-signal to Lan, we are in position, we need orders now." The rushed to obey and Sam held the plan up to the light, the Entente was going to cut it really close on this one.

Lan flipped a switch in her tiny cockpit. "Roger, ONA. From here on out, RAVEN's space fleet is hereby under command of General Akesson. Light 'em up but watch your fire..."

Akesson nodded as if Lan could see him. He watched as her squad left The Revenant and flew toward the Evoknight blockade. When the enemy ships started to move, he instructed everyone to open fire. "I hope you're all hungry. Today we'll be having Evoknight, with a side order of shell and laser." He watched several lieutenants keying in coordinates for weapons, then watched with glee as Evoknight ships were exploding apart. This wasn't so bad at all.

As the strike team drew planetside, several million other Evoknight ships jumped around. The easy part was over, but at least the other humans from Varsia could get through at the equator. Things were unfoiling perfectly. Now, all they had to do was survive.

He watched some thin, bright pink lasers fire from an Evoknight ship and tear a RAVEN vessel neatly in half with one hit. Damn.

Blips were appearing everywhere on the display as evos got targeting solutions on the fleet and sent a couple lasers into the fleet. Most of the lasers hit shields but there was one ship that did not have it up in time, that one was killed outright while the other ship captains returned fire. "honor guard break off and approach the planet and drop your payloads, Orleans, Normandy go with Etrius and assault the command ship at the south pole. Jenova, you come with me. Keep this evoknight bastards off our backs while my doctors take the jump." orders flew out of SAMs mouth machine gun style as he got his gear together and stepped into a specially designed pod to load him into one of the ships cannons. "Michael, you ready?"
"ready as I'll ever be sir" replied the fleet strike major.
"your going first, clear out some breathing room for the engineers, I'll follow in the support wave" he said and he immediately yelled to the screen "jenova, your in charge till we get a base up on the ground, good luck" he said as the doors closed on him and he got shipped downto the gun magazines. Speaking of magazines, there was also on of those old magazines in the pod, sam picked that up and began reading. The ship fired it's first salvo planetside and turned it's other guns toward the evoknights.

On the other ship, commander jenova now had command of two thousand ships, tasked with holding off the evoknights and making sure the evos were too busy attacking him to send some shells planetside. He watched the results of the first barrage and watched the shields on more than a thousand flicker and die with the terrawatt lasers and then get engulfed in multiple mini stars as the nukes hit. about 800 dots flicked out and about 40 more started flashing critical. "yes, taste that ya sons a bitches. How do you like that?" he screamed at the monitor while one of his bridge crew went to fetch the commanders meds.

Meanwhile, etrius began his assault on the command ship. The Ivan class ship had been in range ever since they had entered the system but they had not wanted anything to happen to it so they kept quiet. This time though, there was no need to keep it secret and the sphereoid bagan focussing all of the suns terrible solar energy at the command ship, slowly whittling away at the shields on the massive thing.

Akesson grabbed a radio. "Commence Tamaran barrage ASAP. I want that city gone." An acknowledgement light flashed. From a large siege cruiser, a huge ballistic missile flared from its hull and began a short journey to Sigma. Several gunners blasted a suicide Evoknight ship to smithereens, trying to save their large city fortress. But it was hopeless for them.

He saw the large blast from space. Tamaran City was completely leveled. That was one big problem out of the way. Now he could concentrate on the main objective at hand: surviving.

The Evoknight fleet seemed to grow bigger and bigger. A large portion of them had all weapons trained on the Revanant. Damn. They were all doing the most sensible thing; trying to kill the enemy flagship. But dying was exactly on Akesson's to-do list.

"Release all squadrons of fighters and bombers. If they want war, we'll give 'em war!" A loud battle cry reverberated along the Rev's command bridge, as if the Evo's could hear. Gold particles splintered from several Evo ships, inevitably awaiting destruction. Yet he kept his eyes on the Rev's shield gauge. He knew the tremendous amount of protection it provided, and even still, it was weakening at an alarming rate. But more importantly, more Evoknights were being slaughtered every second.

Suddenly an alarm flashed. Twelve Evoknight ships suddenly jumped in- behind them. "Where the hell did those bastards come from?" Akesson demanded. "The reinforcements weren't supposed to make it this far, dammit!" He quickly tried to make some sort of makeshift plan.

A lieutenant spoke up. "Well sir, those ships most likely just came back from a routine patrol. Since there's only twelve, it's doubtful they're reinforcements from the rift..." Akesson quickly nodded. "Yes...we'll go with that assumption. I want fighter and bomber squadrons Avid through Jaspe to destroy the fleet. Everyone else, concentrate fire forward."

A large Evoknight squadron of fighters from the planet's defense quickly met Akesson's fleet. A firefight quickly broke out, blazing the sky with fiery plasma. The Rev fired several waves of lasers and even more volleys of nuclear missiles. The Evoknight fleet grew smaller, but was still all in all massive. Some Evoknight ships launched tiny drones by the millions, using the same tactic displayed at Varsia. Others launched actual piloted fighters, like the attack on Earth. They were mixing up their tactics, but it would save them. The Revanant fired another Gauss shell at a battleship. It tore through the shields and armor, and cut the whole ship in half lengthwise before continuing into another ship.

Akesson almost cracked a grin. He liked those shells. It was quite unfortunate he only had six more.

Etrius was not a happy camper: not only was the command ship's destruction taking longer than expected, there was also not much happening in his relative area. His fleet had backed off to about 4 light minutes and was firing constantly. The only problem was that at this range, Evoknight anti-missile defenses were wiping out most of the missiles before they managed to reach the ships, although at this range, the only thing getting to the fleet was a couple of lucky stray shots. so far they had lost a relatively unimportant missile tug that was ferrying missile magazines from the logistics train to the front line, although the only losses the Evoknights had suffered was a few relatively weak frigates. "Engineering, report!" said Etrius in a monotone, usually he would let his implants run diagnostics with the computer but in the meanwhile he would have to suffer from boredom, so it was better to listen to his bridge officer speak "sir! the tunnel blocker is just about ready for activation, Ghost Riders are on their way to the missile magazines as we speak. So far, the hull and the fleet have sustained much damage, 190387 has sustained a bit of damage from a graze but its shields are already back up and running." Etrius perked up at the thought of actually doing something and he called General Akensson "general, the command ship should be down shortly, in the meantime, we can engage the tunnel blocker on your mark."

Meanwhile, the fleet at the equator was not having the luck its companions had at the south pole. Sparks were flying everywhere as the fleet flags were pounded by the Evoknights and various sensors went overload, Jenova was having a tough time holding everything together. "All units, spread out and give us some breathing room, fleet flags move to the back of the formation and get shields back to full operational status" the fleet commander Lotus yelled. Lotus was just given to him as a nickname because he had suffered head trauma as a little kid and had forgotten his real name. "sir! Evoknight forces seem to be redirecting their attacks to the Rev right now, their shields are holding just fine but i have my doubts under this hailstorm" said his first mate, still calculating fleet movements. "alright, move some breacher classes in front of the Revenant, get those double shields in between RAVEN and those lasers but be sure to leave a gap for that big gauss cannon." "aye sir! yelled the Tactical officer and he relayed instructions to the rest of the fleet.

The Breacher class frigates began repositioning themselves near the Revenant and near the front so as to soak up the lasers on their double shields, cycling between themselves to allow their shields to refresh. The rest of the fleet spread out and allowed counter-missiles more time to home in on their targets, although with more attention being focused on the fighters, kills among the Evoknight ships began to drop quickly. The death toll among ONA ships were still rising but with the shield wall in place, they were not rising as fast as before, although it was still pretty fast.

The Honor Guard assigned to the Jenova fleet headed downward and dropped into the planet's atmosphere, the shields holding off the terrible atmospheric rise in preasure and heat. Launching more drop pods along the way and launching both jets and strikecraft into the atmosphere while the Fleet Flags of the ONMC began launching their own compliments of fighters and bombers at the incoming Evoknight squadrons.

A couple of the Reliable-class ships began dropping into the atmosphere and firing plasma and shells at various targets, attempting to lend aid to the ground forces, 9 headed for the place where their CEO was at. Their thick headed crazy leader was not about to die on their watch because of something as trivial as an Evoknight army, which of course was a contradiction in itself because any Evoknight army was almost never trivial.