Unexpected I

- Year 2941 CE, High Lunar Orbit, Bridge of the Spaceship Shield of Humanity, Luminary-Class Super-Dreadnought -

"Report!" I command to the officers on the bridge.

"Sir, remnants of Battlefleet Sol, with 41% of its original warships are converging in our position, remaining ships are either disabled or destroyed" 

"Sir, alien vessels are glassing mars, 2 hours before the surface melts. Their next target will be earth"

"Sir, we have completed repairs on the ship and the main cannon modifications are operational. However, it will only be able to fire once, and the cost will be significant."

"Sir, the government of earth is giving us full hope on this mission. All technical and scientific data accessible was transferred to the ship"

I hummed at that. We only have two hours before they jump to earth and glass the surface, and if that happens, they will destroy the heart of humanity. We must prevent it. I opened all channels and spoke for all crewmembers of the fleet to hear.

"Prepare for battle, for this will be the last battle for humanity's future, we will be victorious on this alien menace that has invaded our worlds, glassed our planets and destroyed our federation, there will be no surrender and there will be no defeat, Glory to Humanity!"

"Glory to Humanity!"

"And Glory to the Federation!"

"Glory to the Federation!"

It is critical to increase morale at a time like this. Hopefully, more capital ships have survived the Battle of Mars and the subsequent retreat in all directions that scattered the fleet.

Who could have expected the aliens to use spatial collapse weapons on their own ships to decimate the center of our formation? The Convention of 2765 prohibited those weapons and considered their use a war crime because of the effects it has on space-time.

- 104 minutes later -

A window opened up on reality, spewing out a massive rectangular ship that came to stop beside 2 other equally massive ships of the same size and shape, all three of them being the last Luminary-Class Super-Dreadnoughts of humanity, a multitude of smaller ships surrounded these three, from the smallest frigates and destroyers to the sleek and deadly light and heavy cruisers, and the majestic battlecruisers and dreadnoughts that remain, as well as the variety of carriers that survived until now.

"Sir, the Super-Dreadnought Spear of the Federation has arrived, all remaining ships of Battlefleet Sol are here"

I looked at the screens showing the majesty of the ship. It still amazes me how humanity has managed to build such massive vessels, and it enrages me to see it all destroyed by aliens.

"Call for a conference between Admiral Ross and Admiral Smith. We don't have much time"

The assistant nods and calls a quick 'Yes, sir' before running to make calls. I move to the conference room behind the bridge.

Moments later, 2 holograms appear. To my left there is a man with the most average look one can have, the so called John Smith, Admiral of the 2nd Fleet. He has always had this mysterious air about him.

To my right is Samuel Ross, Admiral of the 1st Fleet, a bald old man, which is strange considering humanity already discovered biological immortality. He has the same black and gold admiral uniform John and I have. But with as many medals as both combined.

Not that he actually wears those medals everywhere. This is a hologram and its military protocol to show all medals when using one.

I begin without wasting time.

"Greetings, Admiral Ross, Admiral Smith." I nod at them, receiving a nod in return.

"I will now explain how we will ensure a future for humanity"

I presented 'Operation Chronos' to them, and they listened attentively. Being the youngest to achieve the rank of Grand Admiral in federation history commands attention from even the oldest of admirals.

"First..."

- Some time later -

"Begin preparations to jump to low earth orbit, on top of the alien fleet," I ordered to the officer in command of navigation. After that, I turned to another officer, this one in command of communications. "Contact the rest of the fleet and signal to begin jump on these coordinates on my mark"

The two officers both acknowledged me and began their tasks. Meanwhile, I thought of the best way to destroy the alien fleet on earth. Earth's design philosophy for ships differs from theirs, as they prioritize numerous small and quick vessels, with a few large motherships, While we use a variety of ships with their own specific roles.

The aliens that are invading us are a race of green bug like creatures that resemble giant cockroaches that walk on two legs. Their fundamental traits are insane reproductive abilities and adaptability to almost any environment with oxygen. They are not as physically strong as a human but they can spit acid and love to ambush on corners and ceilings.

The reason they glass planets is that they can terraform them later to at least have an oxygen atmosphere and then they can build extensive nests below the surface to survive the radiation from space. This way it is much cheaper than completely terraforming a planet.

The reason they have not invaded the whole galaxy yet is because, objectively speaking, they are incredibly stupid, 99.9% of them are as intelligent as a 5-year-old, and they are only useful when commanded by the 0.1% that is moderately intelligent, they also have a short lifespan of a few decades, that is extremely difficult to increase do to the strange biology of their bodies.

from the 0.1% there is a 0.001% that are as intelligent if not more than humans, one in every million basically, this great disparity of intelligence has meant that these aliens have a cast based society based on intelligence, with the most intelligent ruling the others like they were gods; and from the point of view of the masses, they might as well be.

This alien society basically has a huge workforce of low-skilled workers that they can use to strip mine planets for resources, much of these resources they sell to other aliens as they don't have enough skilled workers to put them to use, but with the remaining resources they can build a large amount of low quality ships if they want.

And that is the reason no other alien helped us, because they bribed them with huge amounts of resources, and even then, humanity has expanded extremely slowly due to stupid policies from the federation government that only cares about looking good and not about the true advancement of humanity.

Humanity's weakness lies in its small population, which allows our adversaries to outnumber us, even with superior technology. They can build seven ships for every one of ours, and even if we destroy five of theirs for every one of ours, they can still overwhelm us.

This war was unsustainable from the beginning.

Before the war, there were 18 self sustaining colonies and 47 more that were still being developed, as well as starbases on 214 star systems that represented our territory. There were plans about terraforming planets that were close to earth like mars but they became blocked in the politics of the federation. Some parties in the federation cared very much about the species on these planets and their extinction was a very important problem for them.

More important that the funding for the navy, as you can see, as we only have 3 supercapitals, the only ones ever built, at my insistence.

"Preparations complete, all ships are ready to jump," an officer informed me.

I stopped thinking about useless stuff and focused my mind on the current conflict.

"Begin jump," I said, and a few seconds later a hyperspace window opened itself in front of the ship, its massive engines pushing it to enter into hyperspace.

The hundreds of other spaceships surrounding us also jumped in formation, a hyperspace window opening before every vessel in the fleet.

The way to destroy the aliens is relatively simple, really. Use their tactics against them. They use enormous masses of frigates and corvettes to overwhelm larger ships? then fire volleys of antimatter missiles against them so that they can not join in formation to surround us. They separate and envelop the fleet? Join the shields of every ship in the fleet and become an impenetrable fortress at the cost of mobility and firepower.

And if they use spatial collapse weapons again, then all bets are off and we will use them, too. There is nothing better than going off with a bang and opening a hole to the void, attracting a void beast into reality. This is probably gonna happen as the weapons have already been used in the system, and using even more of them can only lead to catastrophe.

And if what I have in plan works, then it won't even matter if they use spatial collapse weapons.

As I was thinking, the ship entered into hyperspace, and suddenly we found ourselves in a dimension where every color of the rainbow was visible outside the ship. However, the reason that a ship can accelerate to faster than light velocities in this dimension is still not completely understood, using a simple Alcubierre drive a ship can go close to the speed of light, that is extremely slow in the totality of space, only useful inside a star system, but using an Alcubierre drive in hyperspace lets you infinitely increase your speed, only needing to stop to let the drive cool down.

That lets you go incredibly fast. Hyperspace is incredibly hot too, so ships can't cool down in hyperspace. They have to leave or they will eventually melt as the passive energy of space increases indefinitely for no apparent reason.

How do I know this? Well, I was the Admiral in charge of the R&D division of the Federal Navy. I have a mastery over most subjects relating to technology present on spaceships, one of them being Hyperspace mechanics. I was one of the best scientists in the Federation before being enlisted in the navy at the start of the war.

I was the one that designed the ship I am on right now. The Luminary-Class of Super-Dreadnoughts was my brainchild, a massive ship that dwarfs any other in the navy, bigger than the latest dreadnoughts by a large amount, being just over 11km long, they hold a main gun that goes from one end of the ship to the other that can vaporize anything smaller than a dreadnought in one hit, and seriously damage anything bigger, among other things are 2 smaller main guns on the sides mounted on turrets with reduced firepower but with increased fire rate, being as powerful as the main weapons of a regular dreadnought, and a dozen linked large frigates that are connected by a quantum tunnel to the reactor of the super-dreadnought, these dozen frigates have insane durability and massive point defense arrays to defend the supercapital against any swarms of missiles or other small craft.

Of course, that is not all. The ship also has hundreds of other weapons all over the ship, from Condensed Plasma Rifles, to Fusion Lances, to Photon Torpedo launchers and huge lines of point defense small missile launchers, among many others.

"10 seconds left for exit into real-space!" called an officer on the bridge.

"9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4..."

- On board of one of the Alien Motherships -

"Shipmaster!" cried a disgusting bug to its superior.

"What!?" roared the master of the ship.

The lowly bug yelled panicked "Hyperspace windows are opening all around us!"

The master bug was about to smash its head in before it remembered this bug was its younger brother and, thus, of its genetics, being valuable to the supreme leaders.

"Push the red button!" Screamed the master bug to its brother, but being absolutely stupid the bug pressed instead the green button, before realizing and pressing the yellow button, the master bug was not very amused at the situation and he himself went over to press the Big Red Button.

"..." Nothing needed to be said.

A couple of guards grabbed the younger brother and left the bridge. Another bug appeared and went to the commands the previous bug was using without saying anything.

 - Low earth orbit, alien fleet -

One moment there were only a few hundred alien ships, among them 5 massive donut shaped ships that had even more ships inside them. The alien ships were truly ugly, green and with a texture akin to some kind of crystalized, putrid sewage.

The next moment there were 363 ships coming out of hyperspace windows surrounding the alien fleet from three distinct groups, each having a supercapital. 30 frigates, 5 dreadnoughts, 10 battlecruisers, and the 75 remaining being a mix of light and heavy cruisers mixed with some destroyers, the difference between a light a heavy cruiser being that heavy cruisers focus on anti-ship warfare and light cruisers focus on point defense, with destroyers being smaller heavy cruisers to the frigates.

Totaling at 121 ships per group, they advanced on the alien ships that were caught surprised by the sudden attack.

The dreadnoughts fired their long range main weapons, being a similar but smaller version of that of the super-dreadnought, but because of the long range, missed most of their shots.

Cruisers, both heavy and light, advanced like an unstoppable wall, firing on the few alien craft that approached; frigates and destroyers danced between the cruisers, providing support when needed thanks to their high speed and mobility.

The battlecruisers moved to the flanks to surprise the enemies with their rapid fire main weapons before hiding behind the core of the fleet, as is their role of being 'Glass Cannons', although only called that relative to a dreadnought, a battlecruiser is much more durable than any smaller ship.

As the last fleet of humanity approached its invaders, it became clear why they had lost so far. Dozens of frigate or smaller sized ships came out of the massive motherships every second, with two replacing any alien vessel destroyed before.

The battle truly began when the alien fleet sent its first wave of ships against the human fleet, despite the aliens being surrounded it was not really relevant for them, as when the aliens moved their hundreds of ships it looked like a tsunami of green sludge was approaching each group of human ships.

Before the aliens reached the ships of humanity, they were bombarded with antimatter missiles that blasted apart the alien formations, with hundreds of ships being blasted to pieces or simply being pushed away. In a moment, there was debris everywhere.

The alien ships were more resilient that they appeared to be though. Their design and construction might be mediocre at best, but they were made with redundancy in mind, so a lot of these ships survived, barely functional and the crew was stunned as the inertial dampers could not disperse the energy enough, but they at least could move and fire their weapons after a few minutes.

They were being blasted apart by the human frigates and destroyers before they could do that though, with incredible swiftness, destroyers passed by damaged and stunned alien vessels and deposited barrage after barrage of Photon Torpedoes at them, before retreating to the fleet when being pursued.

The frigates did similar things, but them being mainly point defense oriented, they did not have heavier weapons, so they focused instead on disabling the engines of all the alien ships they could find, not that they couldn't destroy them outright, but it is more efficient to only decomision them for the battle instead and not waste time.

This lasted for a while. The 5 donut ships in the center of the alien formation spew a few hundred ships, and the human fleets destroy them. This could not last forever, though. The destroyers and frigates were sustaining losses, and every wave there were less and less of them.

That is the opening for the next phase of the plan. Now instead of using the small ships for cleanup, the formation is closed and all ships connect their shields, forming an impenetrable defense, unless there is an attack that could destroy all the shields of the entire fleet at the same time they are indestructible.

It comes with some disadvantages though, the ships must keep their formation and can't use the full power of their weapons because of the high consumption of energy the maneuver uses. They also have to use advanced navigation Virtual intelligences, or VIs for short, to coordinate the fleet when moving.

At this point, the fleets are close enough for the alien motherships to engage the human ships, firing their arrays of Plasma Throwers and many guided munitions. The point defense of the fleet successfully intercepts most of the enemy missiles and torpedoes before they reach the shield, but there is no way to prevent the plasma bombardment.

The human fleet responds by firing their own weapons. Hundreds of Condensed Plasma Rifles and Fusion Lances launch their payloads at the alien motherships and their escorts.

With the volume of fire that is being used right now, it is no surprise that one of the alien motherships fractures in half as its shields shatter and its armor can't hold the dozens of impacts on its hull.

The aliens know that if nothing changes; they are going to lose this battle, so they use the unique technology on their motherships, opening a wormhole in the center of their donut shaped ships.

- Bridge of the Shield of Humanity -

I narrow my eyes at the actions of the aliens, but can't take action fast enough to stop them. I didn't expect them to resort to this so soon, we only destroyed one of their motherships and they are already doing this? The commander of this alien fleet must be a coward, that or he is incredibly stupid, probably both knowing of his species.

These fucking bugs would unleash spatial collapse weapons once. Why would they not use them twice? At this rate, they will destroy the system entirely.

"Order the super-dreadnoughts, Spear of the Federation and Sword of Liberty, to fire their main weapons at the motherships. We must not allow any more WMDs to be used in the system, also order the dreadnoughts to focus their fire on the motherships"

Moments after giving these orders, I saw on the holographic screens the two super-dreadnoughts firing their main weapons, also called SOL cannons, which are Super-condensed Hyper-heated Magnetoplasmadynamic Arrays that fire a Jet of condensed absurdly hot plasma at close to the speed of light, melting everything in its path and causing massive explosions on impact due to the ludicrous amount of energy the plasma carries.

In a second, two jets of plasma burst forth from the two super-dreadnoughts and hit a mothership each. A titanic explosion blasted the two motherships apart, causing heavy damage and leaving them dead in space.

The smaller dreadnoughts fired at the two remaining motherships, destroying one of them in a burst of explosions that blasted the ship apart. 

It was too late, though. A long dark obelisk of arcane material passes thorough the wormhole before a barrage of plasma obliterates the last mothership.

Before the destruction of the mothership, the aliens must have done something because the strange obelisk begins to warp space around it, I can only despair at what the aliens have unleashed upon us.

"Brace for impact!" I shout over all channels.

A second later, all electronics in the ship turn off and the artificial gravity of the ship fails and I begin to float upwards before grabbing edge of the console.

I don't have time to say anything as an enormous force blasts the ship backwards and sends anyone not grabbing something flying into the walls. The only reason I don't is because the enhancements I have made to my body.

I have a bad feeling about this.

- Outside the ship -

Where there was an obelisk before there is an enormous crack in the fabric of spacetime now, the aliens have used space collapse weapons again, and while the weapon failed to collapse space, it did something much worse.

The crack gets larger and larger, going dozens of kilometers in every direction, before suddenly space breaks apart entirely. 

A vortex in space-time opens in the middle of hundreds of disabled ships, leaking the ominous energies of the void into realspace, and a light, growing larger every second, shines in the middle of the vortex.

- Bridge of the Shield of Humanity -

"Reactivate the primary reactor, we need power NOW!" Something is very wrong outside the ship. I can feel it in my very soul.

Power comes back after a moment and I can only feel dismay at what the aliens have done.

In the holographic screen on the main bridge I can see a titanic eye, several times the size of this very ship, trying and succeeding to enter into this reality, shit.

They have done it now, the aliens have actually done it, they have summoned a void beast to realspace, WHY!?

WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS!?

ARE THEY INSANE!?

They have killed us all, there is no hope...

I narrowed my eyes at the beast. Something isn't right, the hole is too small for the beast to pass through, the idiots didn't even build the weapon correctly, we have a chance against it then...

The main cannon might work, but not at once, the beast has to be weakened before it has any effect, there is a chance, small it might be, to survive this.

It seems that the final piece of Operation Chronos might need to be used.

'System, are you sure this is going to work?' I ask in my head.

[69.69...% probability of success] answers a monotone voice in my head.

This is my greatest secret, the system that has helped me all this time. It doesn't have many functions, but this is one of the most useful.

The system, known as the Humanity Supremacy System, has the main goal of making humanity the greatest species possible. It has advised me many times before, but I am unable to access its main functions because the system itself is locked.

Every time I answer I get no response, so I have stopped caring about it long ago.

The functions of the system I have access to are, designing technology and testing if it works in a virtual space, seeing my status, seeing the status of other people, and giving probabilities on the success of things, although the system doesn't always answer the last one.

'Status' I think in my head.

[

Name: Alexander Phoenix Gray

Age: 140 (stopped aging at 37 due to immortality serum)

Species: Human (Enhanced)

Cultivation level: Mortal (Enhanced)

Vitality: 8

Mind: 61

Soul: 0

Affinity: Energy

Observations: Absurd mind for a common human, even enhanced, no soul and above average vitality for the species, unique affinity but no soul to use it.

]

Nothing has changed since the last time I saw the status. When I was enhanced, my vitality and mind went up by 2 points each, but it hasn't increased since then.

Whoever invented the immortality serum was a genius, it integrates nanites into the body that recover cells and destroy old ones while maintaining vitality, the only downside being the absurd cost of obtaining the serum, due to having to be customized for each person it's made for, in the entire federation there are maybe 10.000 people or fewer that have the immortality serum, not counting the worse version of the serum that is given to the general population but that has to be taken regularly.

While I was thinking, the rest of the fleet had recovered and were returning to formation.

"Call for the two admirals. We will coordinate the strike against the void beast," I order my aid, who goes to accomplish his orders immediately.

- Outside -

The battle started with the two super-dreadnoughts firing their main weapons against the titanic eye. twin jets of plasma piercing the skin and exploding inside, blowing blood and gore everywhere.

The beast screeched, a maw of bloody teeth opening on the eye, spewing tentacles dozens of kilometers long, seeking the ones who damaged it.

The dreadnoughts fired against these tentacles, destroying many, but not all, and ships in their path were decimated, gigantic tentacles grabbed cruisers and ripped them apart, battlecruisers, with their rapid fire main weapons were key here, they cut down the tentacles that got close to the dreadnoughts.

The smaller ships, knowing that they were only going to be destroyed by staying close together, dispersed, surrounding the eye on all sides and commencing bombardment with all their weapons.

While the beast remained distracted by the rest of the fleet, the super-dreadnought Shield of Humanity charged its main weapon, and the other dreadnoughts and super-dreadnoughts took potshots at the eye, the weaker it gets, the higher the probability of the plan to succeed.

What are the modifications to the main cannon? well, spacetime is a dangerous weapon, and when fired at a creature from outside realspace, it does some exotic things. I have no idea what actually will happen, but with assistance from the system I have arrived at the conclusion that I must fire the weapon today or the probability of the human race to face extinction is infinitely close to 100%.

The actual modifications can not be explained with simple words, but basically I put one of those obelisks in the main gun and engineered something so that it can actually work and not blow up the ship on firing.

It still can only fire once, but that is enough for a void beast which is stuck, and this is probably what the system wanted me to shoot in the first place.

after a few minutes and many lost ships, with at least a quarter of the screen of sub-capitals (anything smaller than a battlecruiser) destroyed or disabled and half of the battlecruisers receiving some kind of damage we must take action before we lose more ships.

I order all ships to fire their full complement of antimatter missiles, and call for the ships that were not here yet. Maybe you have not realized it yet, but the carriers were left behind.

Massive explosions surround the titanic void beast as antimatter ravages its body from all sides, before the stunned beast can recover a dozen fleet carriers and more than 50 smaller escort and patrol carriers appear on top of the beast, in a moment space is filled with hundred of small remote controlled drone interceptors and fighter-bombers.

Interceptors are just to annoy the beast and keep it distracted while the fighter-bombers use their swift speed to come close to the beast and unleash antimatter torpedoes and run away to their carriers.

The two super-dreadnoughts fire their main weapons in conjunction with the smaller dreadnoughts and the battlecruisers, combining all the firepower to create a truly devastating explosion, decimating the soft tissue of the beast.

After the debris clears, the core of the beast becomes visible, revealing a pulsing purple crystal of void cracked from the many attacks.

I don't abandon this opportunity.

"Fire the main weapon now!"

The screens on the bridge dim as the power draw from the main weapon takes its toll.

The main weapon fires, a beam of pure destruction, spacetime collapses where it goes as it seeks the void beast.

With instincts befitting a beast of the void, it launches all remaining tentacles to try and stop the beam, but it is meaningless as the beam passes through them, leaving them burning with a purple fire that doesn't go out.

With a terrible screech, the beam hits its target and a blinding light explodes outwards, destroying everything close and disabling every ship in the battlefleet.

When the light-show stops, all that can be seen is the vortex that was before the beast appeared, but unexpectedly, the vortex has inverted, it is absorbing realspace instead.

Nothing can be done as the vortex attracts all the ships of humanity and the debris from the battle, the explosion from before fried all the electronics and reactivating the reactor from zero now is not possible, at least not fast enough to stop us from falling into the vortex.

I look around me, at the fear etched on the faces of every officer on the bridge. I open a channel to every receiver that could connect, civilian TVs, radios, everything.

"We have won the battle. It may have come at a significant cost. The fleet may be lost, but we have won the battle" 

I see them looking at me with their full attention.

"We have not only won the battle but the war, the species of the Council will not tolerate these bugs using WMDs, so help is coming to earth, the federation may have lost much, but we will rebuild and this will not happen again as long as we remember this moment"

I look at the resolute faces of every person on the bridge.

"LONG LIVE THE FEDERATION!"

I roar along with everyone on the bridge.

"LONG LIVE HUMANITY!"

With a face made of stone and a spirit of steel, Grand Admiral Alexander P. Gray, the Super-Dreadnought Shield of Humanity and the rest of Battlefleet Sol fall into the spacetime vortex.

- Years later -

"Papa, Papa!" shouts a child, seeking the attention of his father.

"Yes, son?" answers a middle-aged man with a scar traveling from the left side of his face to the right.

"Who is that on the statue?" asks the child as he points at a large statue in the middle of the square, people occasionally paying their respects to it.

The father looks at the statue. The statue is of a middle-aged man, handsome and muscular, with the clothes of an officer from the star navy, a bunch of medals at his breast, an amount of stars on his shoulder representing his high rank.

"That, my son, is Grand Admiral Alexander P. Grey, Hero of the Federation," says the father.

He looks solemnly at his son. "He saved humanity from the bugs at the Battle of Earth and killed a Void Beast, resulting in his death. His actions made the Star Council intervene and save humanity from the bug menace"

The child looks at the statue with stars in his eyes.

"So cool!" He looks at his father. "I want to be a hero like him!"

"I'm sure you will be, son." The father pats the child's head affectionately.

The child embraces his father with a hug and they both laugh.

***

End of first chapter.

5145 words in total.