After Kaiser the Second uttered those words, he immediately ordered the call to be cut. His command was cold and absolute — "Destroy that ship."
Within seconds, the void ignited. Beams of plasma fire streaked across space, raining down on the Tartarusios. The barrage was relentless, lighting the dark expanse like a thousand suns bursting at once. But as fate would have it, the firepower of the Baraken fleet was no match for the plasma shield of the Tartarusios.
Inside the control room, tension gripped every soul. The ship had been through hell over the past weeks, battered and unprepared, its hull still scarred from the last engagement. Repairs had been rushed — some systems barely holding together — but if there was any vessel in the galaxy capable of enduring this storm, it was the Tartarusios.
Bjorn leaned toward Oscar, shouting over the alarms. "Are we gonna fire back, Captain?"
Oscar stood silent for a moment, unease flickering in his eyes. He knew what was at stake. There was no outrunning this — no negotiating. The only way out was through. He clenched his jaw. "Fire the cannon."
The order rang through the deck. A deep hum shook the ship as the Tartarusios' main cannon powered up, energy surging through its core. 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.
Enemy ships erupted in waves of light and debris. The crew cheered briefly, but the relief was short-lived.
"Do you think we can get the Titans out?" Oscar asked, glancing toward the tactical display. "Can you handle all of them?"
Tom, standing by the hangar interface, smirked. "Those ancient scraps? Leave that to us."
The hangar bay cracked open, releasing the shadows within. One after another, the Titan units began to awaken — massive humanoid machines, their armor gleaming with streaks of blue plasma, engines roaring like beasts ready to hunt.
"Orbitons, deploy," Tom commanded.
The Tartarusios shuddered as the orbitons launched into the void. The first wave of Orbitons emerged, their forms cutting through the darkness like gods of war.
For the Baraken fleet, it was a sight they had never witnessed. The tactical officers froze at their stations, unable to comprehend what they were seeing.
"Sir, multiple contacts — unknown class!" shouted one of the Baraken lieutenants. "They're… flying?"
Kaiser the Second's eyes narrowed. "What in the stars are those?"
The Orbitons closed in, engines burning bright. Plasma blades flickered to life, carving through enemy frigates as if they were made of paper. The Baraken formations faltered — their ships breaking ranks as chaos spread.
From the Tartarusios, the cannons kept firing in rhythm with the Orbitons' assault. One Titan gripped a cruiser and hurled it into another, detonating both in a spectacular bloom of light. Another ripped open a dreadnought's hull and plunged its blade straight into the reactor core.
The battle had turned from a siege into a massacre.
The Baraken fleet tried to regroup, launching fighter swarms and rail fire in all directions, but the Orbitons danced between them — agile, precise, devastating. Their movements were like a storm given form.
Bjorn stared in awe. "I've never seen such dominance…"
Oscar, eyes locked on the tactical display, replied quietly, "Neither have they. Let's make sure they never forget it."
As the void burned with the wreckage of ships and the roars of engines, one thing became clear — the Battle of the Baraka had begun.
In a meter of minutes much of the fleet head already head been lost and a clean, hellish line of white-blue plasma — found a seam in the Imperial formation and punched straight through the flagships forward shields. For a heartbeat everyone thought the flagship was invulnerable; then the hull split open like paper.
The beam tore a corridor through armor and bulkhead, throwing cascades of molten metal and sparks across the void. Secondary detonations rippled inward: a reactor venting, a hanger collapsed into flame, life-support rupturing in a chorus of shrieks and alarms. From the bridge of the flagship the holo-feed stuttered, then exploded into static as the main comm array fried. For a breathless second the Emperor's image on every screen hung there — distorted, flickering — and then it went dark.
Inside the flagship, corridors filled with smoke and the orange flash of failing systems. Officers were flung from their consoles by shockwaves. A senior admiral vanished behind a wall of fire; cries for backup and damage control choked into raw panic. Automated extinguishers fought a losing battle as hull plates buckled and a control node for the main batteries vaporized in a white flare.
Back on the Tartarusios bridge the lights dimmed as the tactical feed updated. Everyone watched the flagships outline collapse in on itself: forward superstructure caved, the prow sheared, whole wings of destroyers near it spinning dead in the void as fragments tore them apart. The orbital formation staggered; coordinated fire faltered; dozens of targeting locks collapsed in a single, catastrophic moment.
For a breath everyone held — then the Emperor's voice, raw and ragged, cut through the static on an emergency channel, no longer the calm monolith they'd seen before but a man with fire in his ribs. "You will pay," he rasped. "This is not over."
The flagship's near-destruction sent a shock through the Baraken fleet: pride cracked, command fractured, morale bleeding. It was not the end of the Armada, but it was the first honest wound the Empire had taken in a long time — a wound that would change the tenor of the battle and the politics that followed.
Oscar keyed the comm and sent the message himself — terse, measured, and meant to cut through the fury.
The Emperor had escaped the flagship and retreated to the consul, sheltering under the Armada line drawn up over the capital. In the chaos of damage reports and emergency reroutes, the last transmission from the Tartarusios never reached him — a negligence that would prove costly. The message left on the open channel read:
"Emperor Kaiser, we mean you no more harm. We don't want this conflict any more than you do. Hear our demands and we will stand down. Grant us safe passage out of Barak orbit and we 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 the sake of you and your empire, comply."
Oscar sent it and waited, the bridge holding its breath. Outside, the Titans still casted they're long shadows across the void; behind them, the Imperial formation tightened like a noose. The fate of that single transmission—heard or missed—would tilt the day toward surrender or blood.