Kick the Sphere 31 (Patreon)

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 31

-VB-

The Outbreak

The failure of the two Inner Sphere fleets to subjugate Dansur came to bite the entire Inner Sphere as their aggression would lead to Dansur’s residents to leave their system in a frenzy of conquest across rimward Inner Sphere. In a slew of violence that hadn’t been seen since the Second Succession War, the Free Worlds League and then the Capellan Confederation would be struck in a devastating series of losses that the Inner Sphere would soon call “The Outbreak,” a devastation that would make the Clan Invasions in the future look weak and feeble in comparison…

…

The Red Fleet

Though no one outside of Dansur knew it at the time, the Red Fleet was neither the entire military might or the strength of Dansur. It was, in fact, one of four separate military organizations within Dansur but certainly the most powerful of the four. 

Instead of smooth shaped warships that launched fighters that showed up on Betelgeuse, the Red Fleet fielded titanic monsters of angular and sharp surfaces and corners. Their name was given not for their general color but the color of their eyes and visual receptors because most of the fleet’s warships was dark gray with subtle hints of aubergine purple. Their appearance was alien as the civilization stripping machines that spewed out from their hulls. Or rather were the warships themselves because each Red Fleet warship was composed of millions of “replicators,” the insectoid war machines that stripped Betelgeuse’s cities and factories to the ground.

Led by “Apollo,” a machine intelligence whose tactical and strategical understanding outshined any human commander on and off the battlefield, the Red Fleet attacked the Free Worlds League, starting with the system of Ryerson.

-VB-

Ryerson System, Free Worlds League

2992

The Red Fleet crashed out of hyperdrive at full speed. 

Nineteen spires covered in metallic spikes and hooks silently roared across space from the outer rim of the Ryerson System. 

At 1 kilometers long each, these spires each held millions of base replicator spiders. Nineteen spires were more than enough to overrun any heavily defended world, so why did he bring so many of them.

Because, in Apollo’s well-reasoned opinion, fighting the Inner Sphere could not be done at a sedate pace where he and the rest of his father’s children and allies can take the time to integrate everyone as father wished. Such policies would allow the humans of the Inner Sphere to consolidate and fight back until an equilibrium was achieved for their eternal war.

Father did not an eternal war for himself or his family. 

This was why everyone was rushing out of the Dansur System to continue the shock the two Successor States will be feeling, even if they didn’t know it yet.

The lack of an HPG within Dansur System and the total destruction of all FWL and Confederation ships that jumped in, including the jumpships, meant that no one would be receiving any news for a good week at the very least and more before they responded. 

So Apollo and his siblings all unanimously decided to strike out and burn everything to the ground to sow as much chaos as possible. 

Hermes would lead the Swarm into the Confederation. Apollo himself would lead the Red Fleet across the Free Worlds League. 

This division of “labor” was not chosen on a whim. They sent the Swarm into the Capellan Confederation to nullify the Confederation’s greatest asset: their high speed reaction due to their small size. The Swarm would cut a swath across the entire Capellan Confederation and cut it in half, devouring all life that was in the way. 

The Red Fleet, on the other hand, would invalidate the League’s greatest asset: their industrial base. Like how they did it at Betelgeuse, the Red Fleet would strike any and all planet with any factory, whether it was a factory for wires or factory for pitchforks, and render them down to more replicators. They would spread out and spiderweb across the League and then withdraw as soon as the Swarm’s job was done at the Confederation. 

Byt Ryerson was important in that regard because unlike the most of the systems and planets that they intended to burn to the ground, Ryerson was going to be converted.

Converted into what? 

As per Hermes’s request, Ryerson was going to be made into a “replicator system,” which would have all of its major planetary bodies turned into hive worlds. It would be, as father put it, “a big fat warning sign.” 

Not that Dansur wouldn’t be as heavily fortified. In fact, because father was there, it would be even more heavily fortified with technology that Apollo and his replicator siblings didn’t know how to reverse engineer in full.

But the world needed to know that any transgression would not be tolerated.

“Spire 1,” he commanded and a single spire jumped into hyperdrive from the outer edge of the system and jumped out of it right in orbit of Ryerson III. And then tilted itself down and used its sharp and angular shape to dive straight into its atmosphere.

Depending on the level of resistance Ryerson III’s population gave, Spire 1 would destroy and assimilate all available metal to create more replicators and create two more spires. 

Apollo watched with his personal spire’s sensors as the spire changed shaped to break its fall and then scattered into a million replicators across Ryerson III’s planetary capital. 

Satisfied with the successful dispersion of troops, he mentally commanded the rest of the spires to turn and jump towards their next destination.