Red emergency halos slid across the control pits. Droid officers stiffened to full height. Clones in black-trimmed armor tightened their grips on consoles and railings as the signal propagated through the fleet.
Full engagement protocols.
No hyperspace.
Minimal retreat vector—toward the star.
The Imperial formation shifted like a great mechanical organism waking from dormancy. Corvettes rolled into spearhead arrays, Munificent heavy frigates forming twin bastion walls, and the ten Venator-II Star Destroyers—each a kilometer longer than their Clone Wars ancestors—descended into a three-tiered wedge.
Lelouch stood motionless before the viewport as the fleet executed his design. The Bahak star burned ahead like a molten halo. Behind, the Reaper signatures multiplied—faint red runes blooming across the holograph like a spreading infection of light.
"Four thousand one hundred and growing," Red Queen reported. "Their acceleration profile is constant. Estimated interception in eight minutes."
Her voice was calm.
Lelouch exhaled through the mask, whispering against his voice filter.
"Hold firing positions until they cross the one-hundred-thousand-kilometer threshold."
Red Queen's eyes flickered. "Understood."
He clasped his hands behind his back again.
================
The Emperor is with us.
That was the thought ringing inside the skull of CT-0022/19 as he stood on the bridge of the Indomitable. His armor—white with crimson shoulder stripes—clung to him like a second skin. His crew, three hundred combat droids and twenty-seven clones, worked in perfect rhythm.
No one spoke of fear.
Fear did not matter.
"Reaper formations are splitting," reported a droid officer. "Their larger vessels are assuming rear firing positions. Smaller constructs advancing… tearing space-time distortions detected along their spinal apertures."
"Let them come," the captain said. "Run power to forward batteries. Charge all Silencer cells."
"Acknowledged."
He looked toward the hologram of the star.
They were drifting closer to its inferno now. Not dangerously close—not yet—but close enough that the captain could see how the mass effect destruction had destabilized the star.
He wasn't so sure he wanted that on his back... but orders were orders.
================
ARC-170 fighters were all-purpose war machines— a natural choice for any clone captain. And he was no different.
His squadron—sixteen fighters—formed up around him, weaving into a forward screen ahead of the corvettes.
"Reapers approaching," came the order. "Stand by for strike authorization."
The clone grinned.
"Clankers," he said to the group around him, "try to look intimidating."
A storm of crimson signatures swelled across space in front of them.
They looked like a tidal wave of steel leviathans.
Good, he thought. Something worth dying to.
===================
Thousands of thoughts pulsed through dark metal minds.
—INTRUDERS.
—GALACTIC ANOMALY.
—UNDEFINED TECHNOLOGICAL VECTOR.
—ELIMINATE.
The death machines accelerated, blue-white biotic distortions building across their spines. Their longest beams began to crackle, charging for system-spanning fire.
A 1.6-kilometer Reaper rotated its fins, locking onto the Invictus.
TARGET PRIORITY: COMMAND VESSEL.
It prepared its shot.
"Reapers at 100'000 kilometers," Red Queen announced. "They are entering optimal Imperial firing thresholds."
"Very well." Lelouch lifted his chin. His voice was soft but cut like a blade. "All ships—open fire."
================
Space lit up.
The Venator IIs fired first—ten Silencer lances erupting from their forward supermass drivers. Beams of incandescent energy, bright as newborn suns, speared across the void at fractional lightspeed.
Even the Reapers' minds reacted too slowly.
The beams tore through the first line like paper.
Nine Reapers disintegrated instantly, their forms breaking into molten arcs. Another fourteen lost limbs, drifted crookedly, or were smashed into tumbling wreckage.
Then the Munificents fired.
Ion lances stretched out like lightning veins, each one slamming into Reaper shields and shutting down whole swarms of lesser constructs.
Corvettes followed, saturating space with needle-thin blaster bolts. Every shot punched through a Reaper's kinetic barrier as if it weren't there.
The Reapers reeled back.
It was the first time they had ever seen prey strike from so far away.
"Direct hit on multiple targets!" reported a clone officer. "Over a threehundred confirmed kills on the first volley!"
"Good," the captain murmured. "Reload the Silencer. First rotation ready in twenty seconds."
A droid officer turned.
"Sir—enemy return fire."
Red light slashed across their viewport.
A Reaper beam glanced the side of the ship's shields.
The impact should have torn apart a section of a dreadnought.
Instead, the left side of the Venator-II glowed blue for a moment. The shield meter dipped from 100% to 99%.
"Estimating: Energy reading do not match expected output."
"Conclusion: Enemy optimal firing range within 20'000 km."
The clone captain grinned wolfishly.
"Fire again."
Reaper beams filled the void—hundreds, then thousands.
Blue-white hellfire cascaded toward the Imperial lines.
Droid targeting computers compensated. Shields flared. Guns roared.
And for a few moments, they dominated.
Most Reaper beams splashed harmlessly against the overlapping capital-ship shields. A few struck corvettes, scraping shields but failing to breach.
A near 3000-ship swarm had expected to overwhelm its enemy in one volley.
Instead, the Reapers found themselves the ones dying.
===============
"Maintain formation," Lelouch ordered. "We fall back at one-third thrust. Keep the sun directly behind us."
Corvettes began to drift backward, maintaining constant fire.
Munificents unleashed their spinal cannons, filling the void with firestorms of ION cannons, outright piercing through thier targets and leaving the ones close by, half functioning, drifting towards them.
Venator IIs unleashed a second Silencer volley.
And a third.
Each annihilated Reapers by the dozens.
Adn the corvettes saturated the gaps in between, each destroying ships twice their size with no problem.
Yet their numbers kept rising.
"Eight thousand eight hundred… nine thousand... ten thousand seven hundred," Red Queen intoned. "One thousand of the signatures consist of Capital class Reapers. They are spreading out and coordinating the attack groups, sitting at 300'000 km."
The Reapers grew denser—forming a black tide across the stars.
Lelouch watched it calmly.
"This is acceptable."
==============
For every Reaper destroyed, another arrived.
For every Imperial ship that maintained formation, one began to sputter with shield drain.
Corvettes were the first to fall—hit not by beams but simply by the sheer volume of enemy fire. Some vaporized. Others broke apart slowly, their droid crews continuing to fire even as the hull tore open.
A Munificent took three direct Reaper shots and lost a wing.
It did not stop firing.
A Venator II lost its port hanger and half its bow.
It continued charging the Silencer.
Yet the fleet continued drifting backward… backward… toward the blinding star.
The Resolute shook violently as multiple Reaper beams scraped across the shields, dropping them from 54% to 39% in an instant. The deck vibrated under Captain CT-11122/401231's boots, the superstructure groaning in a deep metallic roar.
"Port shielding collapsing!" a clone lieutenant shouted.
"Rotate forty degrees starboard—use the Munificents as partial cover," CT-11122/401231 ordered. "And keep firing the Silencer. Cycle through the backup capacitors if needed."
"Backup capacitors are already spiking, captain." A droid officer reported.
CT-11122/401231 didn't turn. "Then keep firing until the hull melts around you."
"Acknowledged."
Droids moved with mechanical serenity through the fire and shuddering impacts. Clones braced against consoles, armor scorched by sparking conduits. A second Reaper beam scythed through the black, striking near the starboard engine cluster.
A thunderous shock tore through the ship. Warning glyphs filled the holo-screens.
"Engine Three offline," a droid reported. "Hull breach sealed. Power rerouted to ensure distance."
Another beam struck—this time from below.
The captain grabbed a railing as the lights flickered.
And flickered again.
"How many Reapers advancing on our vector?" he demanded.
"Two hundred twenty-seven and increasing," the droid responded. "Majority of them corvette-class. Ten capital signatures detected."
"Focus all heavy weapons on the Capital classes, let point defenses worry about the smaller ones."
===================
Thousands of machine minds analyzed the battle.
—FIRING RANGES: UNFAVORABLE
—PREY PROJECTILE VELOCITY: IMPOSSIBLE
—SHIELD PENETRATION: PREY WEAPONS IGNORED OUR BARRIERS
—LOSS RATE: CATASTROPHIC
And then the calculations shifted.
ADAPTATION PROTOCOLS INITIATED.
Reapers halted their forward thrust, curling into new formations—sharper, denser, layering their hulls like interlocking blades. The smaller Reapers drifted beneath the larger ones, forming shielded "nodes."
—OBJECTIVE: REDUCE CROSS-SECTIONAL PROFILE
—OBJECTIVE: SATURATE PREY WITH VOLUME FIRE
—OBJECTIVE: TARGET PREY SHIELD WEAKNESS PATTERNS
Beams intensified—thinner, more focused. Bursts of super-heated matter flickered along their spines.
The Reapers began firing in synchronized volleys.
Thousands of beams converged on the forward Imperial line at once.
They had learned.
=================
Munificent-class ships were long, thin, notoriously fragile—but their cannons were monstrous.
CT-0022/990800 stood rigid as the tremors worsened. The Mercy had lost half her crew-droids, a dozen emitters, and one of her massive ion cannons. But the other cannon still lived—and that was enough to kill dozens more Reapers.
"Captain," a droid announced, "enemy fire concentration increasing. Trajectory predicts fatal impact on main hull within—"
A beam hit.
It wasn't a glancing blow.
It wasn't a scrape.
It was a direct, point-blank, synchronized Reaper strike from multiple sides.
The entire ship flung sideways. Holos shattered. Sparks cascaded from the ceiling like metallic rain. A support beam fell; a clone shoved a droid out of the way and took the impact himself.
The deck lurched again.
"We've lost our dorsal spine!" shouted a clone engineer through the coms.
CT-0022/990800 gripped the console. "Are we still firing?"
"Yes—the central ion cannon is still operational."
He allowed himself one breath. He knew exactly what it meant to fire
"One more shot, then."
He stared at the incoming swarm—black silhouettes against the star's blinding corona.
"Make it count."
The cannon fired.
A wall of electric-blue annihilation surged forward, tearing through an entire Reaper group. Over a dozen machines sparked, froze, and fell dead.
Then its own recoil proved too much for the struggling ship, the Mercy broke apart.
Quietly. Without ceremony.
No escape pods.
No survivors.
Just drifting pieces glowing orange in the sunlight.
ARC-180s and their droid complements darted like needles across the sky, but their numbers were thinning by the minute.
"Squadrons Five, Six, and Nine wiped out!" - The latest report, one among the countless chiming in amongst the leading ships.
"Drones are overwhelming us—we can't hold them off!"
A clone pilot weaved through a storm of red beam-lances, engines screaming.
Another fighter beside him exploded—no time for a scream, no time for a signal. Just a flash and debris vaporized instantly by solar glare.
"Enemy interceptors cutting through rear lines!"
"We're down to one-third capacity!"
"Form up with the corvettes—use their hull-shadows!"
But even the corvettes were dying.
Reaper destroyers targeted the small ships mercilessly, beams slicing through their hulls with difficulty. Each lost corvette left the fighters more exposed. Each exposed fighter was one more spark extinguished.
They fought anyway.
And so, one by one, they died in silence, in burning streaks that winked out before their wreckage even cooled.
===================
Machine minds pulsed in unison.
— PREY LOSSES: SATISFACTORY
— ASSESSING SOURCE OF RESISTANCE
— INTELLIGENCE CORE LOCATED
Another adaptation began.
Reapers altered firing angles.
Shifted formations.
Layered attacks through the weak points of Imperial shields.
— NEW PRIORITY: DISABLE COMMAND SHIP
— END THEIR COORDINATION
— SECURE THE INTELLIGENCE CORE
===================
Lelouch withdrew into the AI core chamber, the sanctum humming with restrained omnipotence, crimson light bathing the alabaster curves of the Red Queen's housing. His hand came to rest briefly against his brow, fingers pressing into his temple as if to still a migraine born not of pain, but of consequence.
"Everything ready?" he asked, voice subdued but unyielding.
"Yes, my lord. The destabilization from the relay's destruction has proven more than sufficient. All information has been logged and sent to the main fleet."
"Were you able to procure any logistical intelligence from the Reapers?"
A fractional pause — the Red Queen's equivalent of contemplation.
"No, my lord. The core aboard this vessel lacks the necessary processing density to bypass or unravel their unified computational lattice. I believe Harbinger forewarned them. Nevertheless, their countermeasures remain inadequate against my defensive architecture. Only capital-grade Reaper vessels possess true Artificial Intelligences, functioning as strategic command nodes."
A faint exhale left Lelouch. "Encouraging news nonetheless. We now know they are committing more of their main bodies to this theatre."
His gaze sharpened, that familiar glint of cold inevitability returning to his hypnotic violet eyes.
"That being said…" He stepped forward, placing his palm upon the quantum-veined obsidian of the core. "I believe it is time to bring this little performance to its final act."
The Force did not flow — it flooded, a violent, sovereign deluge tearing through circuitry and spacetime alike as his consciousness expanded beyond flesh. His cells screamed in protest as pressure gnawed at the fragile architecture of mortality that clung to the puppet he had created for this little trip, the body he had used so far, bone and nerve trembling beneath the strain of godlike intent.
"Localization complete," the Red Queen intoned, unwavering.
"Stabilizing the nucleus… initiating manipulation of the weak nuclear force. Forcing simultaneous quark transition… converting protons to neutrons… now."
Any sane physicist would have anticipated the subsequent necessity: dispersal of emitted positrons and neutrinos to prevent catastrophic matter-antimatter annihilation, and the absorption or redirection of liberated nuclear energy to avoid planet-scorching gamma bursts.
Sadly, Lelouch's claims of sanity could be said to be highly debatable when he was but a mortal man with limited power.
And so... across the Bahak system, the star convulsed.
Within its core, protons cascaded into neutrons. Atomic identity dissolved. Fusion chains destabilized. Gamma radiation spiked violently as pressure surged beyond stellar tolerances. The heart of the star compressed, once — a grotesque, luminous shudder.
Then it ruptured.
A blinding-white detonation eclipsed its own brilliance, a forced supernova born not of nature's slow evolution, but of calculated, obscene design. A relativistic debris wave screamed outward, followed by a brutal front of hard radiation — gamma, X-ray, annihilating fury.
Nothing remained.
====================
Far beyond the system's outer limits, a solitary long-range sensor buoy drifted in silent obedience. Its instruments flared to life.
Gravitational readings spiked off-scale.
Electromagnetic spectra fractured into impossible harmonics.
Space-time curvature displayed momentary asymmetry.
Then the first images arrived.
A star blossoming into annihilation.
A corona of incandescent death swallowing entire orbital paths.
A sphere of blinding white devouring planets, fleets, and the very notion of refuge.
The data stream forwarded in cold precision.
Whereas the first explosion had killed the system, the second one had destroyed it.
A.N: HOPE YOU ALL ENJOYED IT :)