The moment Kaiser the Second had finished speaking, he ordered the call cut, and his command was cold and absolute: "Destroy that ship."
Within seconds, the void ignited. Plasma fire streaked across space and rained down on the Tartarusios in a relentless barrage that lit the darkness like a thousand suns bursting at once. And still, as fate would have it, the whole firepower of the Baraken fleet was no match for her plasma shield.
In the control room, the tension gripped every soul. The ship had been through hell over the past few weeks, battered and half repaired, her hull still scarred from the last fight and some of her systems barely holding together. But if any vessel in the galaxy could weather this storm, it was the Tartarusios.
Bjorn leaned toward Oscar and shouted over the alarms. "Are we going to fire back, Captain?"
For a moment Oscar said nothing, and unease flickered in his eyes. He knew exactly what was at stake. There was no outrunning this and no negotiating it. The only way out was through. He clenched his jaw. "Fire the cannon."
The order rang across the deck. A deep hum shook the ship as energy surged through her core and into the main cannon. Then, with a deafening roar, the first shot tore through the void — a blinding beam of plasma that split the front ranks of the Baraken fleet in two. Enemy ships erupted in waves of light and debris. For a moment the crew cheered, but the relief did not last long.
"Can we get the Titans out?" Oscar asked, glancing at the tactical display. "Can you handle all of them?"
Tom was standing by the hangar interface, and he smirked. "Those ancient scraps? Leave them to us."
The hangar bay cracked open. One after another the Titans came awake — massive humanoid machines with streaks of blue plasma gleaming across their armor and engines roaring like beasts ready to hunt. "Orbitons, deploy," Tom ordered. The Tartarusios shuddered as the first wave launched into the void and cut through the dark like gods of war.
The Baraken fleet had never seen anything like them. On the Imperial flagship, the tactical officers froze at their stations, unable to understand what they were looking at. "Sir, multiple contacts — unknown class!" one of the lieutenants shouted. "They're… flying?"
Kaiser the Second's eyes narrowed. "What in the stars are those?"
The Orbitons closed in with their engines burning bright, plasma blades flickering to life. They carved through the enemy frigates as though they were made of paper. The Baraken formations faltered and their ships began to break ranks as chaos spread through them, while the Tartarusios' cannons kept firing in rhythm with the Titans' assault. One Titan seized a cruiser and hurled it into another, and both ships detonated in a spectacular bloom of light. Another ripped open a dreadnought's hull and drove its blade straight into the reactor. The Baraken fleet tried to regroup, launching fighter swarms and rail fire in every direction, but the Orbitons danced between them, agile, precise, devastating, like a storm given form. What had begun as a siege had become a massacre.
Bjorn stared at the display in awe. "I've never seen dominance like this."
Oscar's eyes did not leave the screen. "Neither have they," he said quietly. "Let's make sure they never forget it."
In a matter of minutes, much of the fleet had already been lost. Then a clean, hellish line of white-blue plasma found a seam in the Imperial formation and punched straight through the flagship's forward shields. For a heartbeat everyone believed the flagship was invulnerable — and then its hull split open like paper.
The beam tore a corridor through armor and bulkheads and threw cascades of molten metal and sparks out into the void. Secondary detonations rippled inward one after another: a reactor venting, a hangar collapsing into flame, life support rupturing in a chorus of shrieks and alarms. On every screen in the fleet, the Emperor's image hung for a breathless second — distorted and flickering. Then it went dark as the main comm array burned out. Inside the flagship, the corridors filled with smoke and the orange flashes of failing systems. Officers were flung from their consoles by the shockwaves, a senior admiral vanished behind a wall of fire, and cries for damage control choked into raw panic while automated extinguishers fought a losing battle against buckling hull plates.
On the Tartarusios' bridge, the lights dimmed as the tactical feed updated. Everyone watched the flagship's outline collapse in on itself — its forward superstructure caving in, its prow shearing away, and whole wings of destroyers around it spinning dead into the void as fragments tore them apart. The orbital formation staggered. Coordinated fire faltered, and dozens of targeting locks collapsed in a single catastrophic moment.
Then the Emperor's voice came through the static on an emergency channel, raw and ragged — no longer the calm monolith they had seen before, but a man with fire in his ribs. "You will pay for this," he rasped. "This is not over."
The near-destruction of the flagship sent a shock through the entire Baraken fleet. Its pride cracked, its command fractured, and its morale began to bleed away. It was not the end of the Armada, but it was the first honest wound the Empire had taken in a very long time. It would change both the course of the battle and everything that came after it.
Oscar keyed the comm and composed the message himself — short, measured, meant to cut through the fury. "Emperor Kaiser, we mean you no further harm. We don't want this conflict any more than you do. Hear our terms and we will stand down. Grant us safe passage out of Baraka's orbit, and I swear we will never return. You have my word. If you refuse, I'm sorry, but we will be forced to take more drastic measures, and I would rather not. For your sake and your Empire's, comply."
But the Emperor had already escaped his burning flagship and fled toward the Consul, sheltering behind the last Armada line drawn up over the capital. In the chaos of damage reports and emergency reroutes, the Tartarusios' transmission never reached him. It was a negligence that would prove costly.
Oscar sent it and waited. The whole bridge held its breath with him. Outside, the Titans still cast their long shadows across the void, and behind them the Imperial formation tightened like a noose. Whether that single message was heard or missed would tilt the day toward surrender or toward blood.