The Acruani Forces Arrive at the Milky Way [IC/Semi-OPEN]

After quick scans through the system the Acruani replied, "We will attempt to divert their attention before we can organize an effective counter-offensive or facilitate a Colonial retreat if required. Do you have the coordinates of the Invader's Hive Queen Base?"

There were ten Acruani spherical formations with each of them having well over forty thousand ships. They were mostly composed of Acruani capital ships, but there was a palpable number of Acruani Hive Queens in the core of each formation, certainly only waiting before properly using their Hyperion cannons.

Less than five minutes later six of the formations jumped deeper into the system, somewhat in between the Invader and Colonial fleets while still remaining slightly to the side of them to avoid staying directly in between them. Meanwhile the four remaining formations appeared on the opposite side of the Invader fleet. Acruani ships as a whole began releasing an incredible number of Heavy and Light fighters, which soon began to buffer the Acruan formation.

As Acruani began to scan the Invader's formation for this Invader Hive Queen Base, the Acruani Hive Queens visibly began to change their shape, clearly preparing to fire their Hyperion cannons towards the Invaders (though haste considered, certainly not as strongly as it may have been).

We will have our fighters search for it. We request data sharing with ColDNet to increase our fighting potential and speed of discovery of the Invader Swarm Queen.

Fighters? Feel free to come closer. Meanwhile, the kinetic weapons hit the Acruani shields, most shields seeming to not hold for very long before going down. The few kinetic shots that hit the Acruani's shiny white armors seemed to be far less effective than they could have been, at most making ships in the outer areas of the formation go deeper into it. Not all too strangely the torpedoes and missiles were shot down by the Acruani lasers as well as some xenomorphic fighters. Not strangely as they clearly were focusing just on that.

The red superlasers and the Acruani lasers met, the Acruani lasers slowly seemed to be losing that battle... but then, they suddenly went from blue to purple, even if just for a moment before going off. At the same time, the several Acruani ships in the various layers of the formation began getting in between the lasers and the Hive Queens. Most shields would hold for long enough for yet another ship to get on the way. After all, Acruani formations were anything but static, the ships around the Hive Queens never stopped, only slowed down and changed distance from the core of the formations.

The attempt for a quick, powerful attack at the beginning of the fight had failed, however it did have one of the planed side-effects. It showed the Acruani at least a good number of Invader superbases, on which the Hive Queens all locked, clearly already loading for a round two, this time, at full power considering how they didn't fire immediately.

Meanwhile, the Acruani fighters split into two groups a smaller one with a considerable amount of heavy fighters and still several light fighters, and another group fully composed of light fighters. The first group met the xenomorphic fighters as they neared the formation, but quite obviously were allowing them to get closer to the capital ships. The second group seemed to put all their power on engines and shields. The later which wasn't very strong, but the first, made them some of the quick, although not as fast, fighters on Acruani records, at least when putting most of their powers on the engines. Those fighters were left in charge of the hunt.

The Acruani shared data from their 12 formations with the ColDNet. On the main targeting and scanning systems of the ships, there were targets the Acruani were planning to aim at and even the planned trajectories of their formations. And more importantly, predicted movement of Invader ships.

The change in ammunition was met with the rapid fire of lasers shooting down the projectiles that showed to be the most dangerous and mostly easily targettable, making the Acruani focus mostly on the highly explosive and energetic projectiles. While the damage of the smart projectiles did make shields flicker, they hardly got any chance to damage any ship deeper in the formation as the gravity changes as well as lasers destroyed them before causing damage deeper into the formation. Meanwhile the outer ones swapped locations with the ones deeper in the formation as they attempted to keep the ships in best shape outside, at least, the ones that survived the focused assaults from the Invaders, something that didn't happen all to often as the ships circulated around the whole formation.

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The message arrived at the Acruani, though they didn't have something as a proper flagship for the whole operation as each formation had their 'core'. Even then a singular individual answered, the answer coming from the center of the closest formation. A hologram of a relatively old man with gray hair and brown eyes, somewhere along his fifties wore a pure white uniform, very similar to the Colonials, the uniform was rankless, lacking decorations or any kind of medal. It even lacked something to identify which nation it was from.

Commodore Bernhard, I am Overseer Alistar Hashtan, responsible for the Acruani formations in this area. The Acruani fighters have been subordinated to your forces. They will be waiting for orders. We request support in clearing the way for them. Our targets should already be on your systems.

The Acruani fighters, both light and heavy, were both mainly focused on having high speeds and considerable attack powers. The most basic difference between the two however were the small scale gravity generators of the heavy fighters which tended to facilitate fighting against enemies with projectiles, specially in group combat.

The Acruani formations in general, however, seemed to be very focused on defense. While less than half of the lasers coming from the ships was actually shooting at enemy ships, they also seemed to be focusing on the superbases. As in, the several thousands of ships focusing in the nearest superbase. While there was a number of Acruani ships damage, the rate they were being destroyed remained rather low, not that their damage output could be considered great. Not all too strangely, their formation kept fresh ships on its outer edge at all times, maintaining their fire-power even with their loses and damage taken. The Hive Queen themselves, seemed at all times having a ship, another or twenty in front of them protecting them, for now, at least.

Despite the excellent Acruani defense, the Invaders continued their fire, adapting, learning. Lasers might have been indeed a good defense, but they're not infallible, especially as the Invaders continued their fire their own lasers. Where a projectile was useless, a laser was fired. The combination of their laser resisting shields, and anti-projectile defense batteries was indeed extremely powerful, but by adapting the offensive measures, it could eventually be broken, exactly what the Invaders were aiming for.

Unfortunately for the Invaders, the arrival of the Star Fleet forces took them by surprise, forcing them to reconsider their plans. Stopping their offensive actions, the Invader forces regrouped, giving the exhausted Colonial forces a much needed pause. The Acruani and the Star Fleet had just entered combat, but the Fleet Groups Rhine, Niesse, and Silesia had been fighting for more than a month, continuously. Without pause, with only limited reinforcements. The only other line that managed to resist for a longer amount of time was Line Gloria,which had been under the command of Admiral Alexander Werther. While fighting an attrition war against the Invaders, the only nation that could have had resisted for a similar amount of time  would be the Keltaken Empire. The other nations... let's just say that it wouldn't end up well from them. Despite the losses, the Colonies managed to fight exemplary. In the entire Kriegsflotte, there were only four commanders that would have managed to do something like that. And now, through Unternehmen Jericho, two of them were here to fight. It was similar to a type of an all or nothing situation. If the Invaders could be stopped here, precious time could be bought for everyone. But if the Allied forces would lose...

The Invaders regrouped, adopting a new formation, clearly focused on defense, forming numerous concentric circles, or spheres, since the battleground was tri-dimensional, so that when the enemy ships attacked, in each possible place, an enemy ship would have to face multiple Invader bases. The more tight formation also favored the flak defense fields of the Invaders, combining them with the usual shields. The new formation also seemed to protect the superbases, shielding them with normal bases and other lower ships, the ships continuously changing in case of damage, the formation taking the damaged ships inside for repairs, while keeping the undamaged ships outside, on the edges of the formation. The Invader ships which had been damaged or destroyed, in the cases in which parts of them still existed, were repaired with the same strange Invader xenomatter, since even if they were maybe a little weaker than the enemy ships, being mere modified copies and enemy resurrected ships, the Invader ships were able to repair themselves extremely fast, a characteristic of the forces of the Order of Eris. Even the Invader fighters entered defensive formation, protecting the larger formations. The Invaders had absolutely no reason to hurry, after all. Attrition battles were the battles they were the best at winning.

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C.M.S. Frühling

 It's a pleasure to meet you, Overseer Alistar Hashtan. Under my command, the Colonial forces will reorganize, and in cooperation with all other Allied forces in the sector, we'll clear way for the fighters, which by using the analysis of the enemy formation our AI and your forces are working on right now, will find the enemy Swarm Queen and mark it. Phase Two of Unternehmen Jericho begins right now., the blonde haired woman said.

The Colonial forces started to reorganize, moving into a more offensive formation, the weaker ships centered around the battlestars, the various fighter formations, from the heavy Wyvern fighters, to the medium Adler fighters, the light Kolibri fighters, and the versatile Cobra drones, ready to jump in at the occasion and enter the enemy formation after their way had been cleared. Their objective, to find the enemy Swarm Queen, destroy its cloaking, and end this battle, in cooperation with the other fighters.

C.M.S. Herbst

While the forces led by the C.M.S. Frühling regrouped, the other part of the Colonial forces, more specifically, Fleet Group Rhine, regrouped around the Colonial Military Ship "Autumn". While the other Colonial and Allied forces had to regroup and attack together, the forces of the Herbst had one clear objective. Attack, and attract the attention of the Invaders away from where the main forces where. A rather suicidal mission, to say the truth.

 In the last century or so of Colonial history, there had been a name usually heard around the Colonial military, the name of many Colonial officers. Bernhard, to be more specifically. And especially in the last few years, there had been three really good members of the Bernhard family fighting in the Kriegsflotte. Erich Bernhard, hero of the Colonies during the Second Intergalactic War, and during the Civil War. Irisdina Bernhard, Commodore of the Kriegsflotte, the one who stopped the Invaders at Line Rose before her flagship was destroyed, and she barely escaped alive, hero of the Third Secession War. And while the first one was dead, the third one was luckily also here. Because if there was one pair of persons the Hegemon would have given the order to perform Unternehemen Jericho, those where Commodore Irisdina Bernhard, and her younger brother,  Kommodore Albert Bernhard.

Since Commodore Irisdina Bernhard was already taking care of the Acruani, and the preparation for Phase Two of Unternehmen Jericho, it fell into her younger brother's reponsability to contact the Jupiterrans and inform them of the Colonial plans.

A message, perfectly similar to the one send by Irisidina, a holographic message, was sent to the JRSF Yokoyama, just that this message featured what looked like a rather annoyed young man, seeming to be around the age of another fairly well known Colonial officer. The young man had a rather messy blonde hair, and blue eyes, matching his rather wrinkled dark blue uniform. As he was speaking, the Colonial was holding a compress over his forehead to stop the bleeding, after having presumably hit himself or something.

"To the commander of the Jupiterran-Relikan Forces, I am Commodore Albert Bernhard, currently second in command of the Colonial Defense Line Stacia. Thank you very much for coming, you have arrived just in time. Please work together with us and the Acruani, we have to find and eliminate the enemy Swarm Queen before it's too late. It would be really helpful if your fighters will work together with ours to identifiy the exact location of the Queen, Phase Two of our operation is about to start soon. If we want to win, we have to eliminate the Queen."

Acruani defense certainly was not perfect, but being hit by lasers certainly didn't seem to have a very strong effect. Acruani shields did clearly go down, but there always seemed to be another shield ready to take its place just in time. Even the times where lasers did hit the shiny white armors, the damage didn't seem to be too grave. It certainly could be broken, but 'soon' is a very flexible unit of time.

It is a mistake to think that Acruani formations were made for wars of attrition. While such formations did give the Acruani much durability, their main use was to protect the Hive Queens, or rather, give the Hyperion cannons on the Hive Queens time to load and fire. The incoming allies certainly did give the lasers time to properly charge, and soon enough they would fire.

Their soon however was not neatly timed with the Invader change of formation (to a very, very familiar formation the Acruani used themselves). It wasn't even neatly timed with Herbst's offensive. But when Yokohama's punched a hole into the formation, the tens of thousands Hyperion lasers fired from the center of the Acruani formations, both the ones 'flanking' the Invader formation as well as the ones in the 'front' with the Colonials.

Each blue beam of light punched though a number of shields and ships, likely the one newly remade considering their relative ease, with small groups of them focusing on individual Superbases. According to the Acruani calculations, a number of them should succeed punching through the formation, and get to the Superbases shield. Those able to do so and break the shields, would momentarily flicker before changing to a bright violet color. Such color would only intensify as the lasers would attempt to cut through the Invader Superbases.

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It is a pleasure to meet you as well. Once its location is marked, we will fire at the Swarm Queen.

The Acruani fighters both the highly maneuverable light fighters and the gravity distorting heavy fighters were ready to assist the Colonials. Hopefully the combination of those characteristics would prove useful in their fight alongside the Colonials.

Finally detecting the ship facilitated its eventual destruction, surely. The number of Acruani fighters destroyed in the Queen Hunt was a truthfully sad number to look at, though their absence didn't seem to hinder Acruani defense in face of the batteries aimed at the Acruani spheres. The radiation, not too strangely, seemed to change the color of the surface of Acruani ships to a shiny gray before it became its previous shiny white. If there was one thing Acruani were better prepared against than lasers, it was radiation. Not that the radiation didn't disrupt most of their radars, but at least the formations could still piece together information well enough to not be affected too badly by such disruption.

While the sides of the spheres receiving the initial part of the damage clearly caved in, it didn't take long for the spheres to return to their usual shape, albeit slightly smaller. While initially most of the Acruani ships destroyed exploded into nothingness (something to do with antimatter inside the ships), over time they seemed to break appear spectacularly evenly, before another explosion in the middle of the ship scattered the debris. Slowly the debris left floating through the outer areas of the spheres, clearly being used to shield the still working ships from incoming strikes.

The Acruani ships however, seemed to maintain their rather defensive formations after their last laser show, either recharging or waiting for further movements from the Invaders, the Colonials, or the Jupiterran-Relikan Star Fleet.