After a mere second got stretched into hours in the minds of every mind on both sides "Fire!" hundreds of bolts of red light impacted the powering shields of the enemy side, and dozens impacted the hulls of the ship creating pockets of light before almost instantly disappearing to show a breached hull, in response, the enemy ships also fired back but with the fully powered shields, less power each bolt had, and the lower number of bolts overall.
The fighters and smaller craft of the Sanguisugion side held position close to the large fleet unlike their previous missions where they would directly attack this time they wanted to protect the slower ships while baiting the faster enemy ships out of their formation, and if they don't then they will just be continuously pelted by their large capital ships.
Two seconds later another volley exited the large batteries and into space before crashing into the enemy shields, while the enemy heavy cruisers were still perfect, their corvettes and frigates, the main targets– they weren't doing so good, almost 40 of them are smoldering messes with entire pieces of the small ships floating apart from each other, with the less powerful weaponry of on the enemy side they are no forced to focus fire on the smaller ships with a dozen coordinated to each Sanguisugion ship, an impressive feat of their commander to be able to coordinate ships with such deft.
"Focus fire on those frigates and corvettes, any fire towards the cruisers and above will be directed to the-" Aleister commanded on the bridge of the Birkenhead before noticing a group of two cruisers in the back turning around and beginning to flee "No– destroy the engines on those fleeing ships" in an instant a dozen bolts collided with the two cruiser's shields, while only a few hit the engines completely destroying them rendering the ships completely immobile "good, focus fire on the large heavy cruisers and have the starfighters hold their positions".
Getting the command the still organic controlled guns on all of the ships turned to one of the four Heavy cruisers, with the attention directed elsewhere the enemy corvettes and frigates now began to make progress toward the Sanguisugion formation gaining the attention of the bombers and fighters who quickly began to harass them.
Breaking through the constant onslaught of fighter and bomber harassment a group of corvettes and frigates made their way above one of Sidenvis l class destroyers, showing their specialty a dozen missiles dropped from each of the missile boat corvettes pelting the shields, to combat this 19 other bubbles formed quickly, however, such a drain on power made all but the kinetic flak and concussion missiles completely inactive. Responding to the missiles seven devourers ejected from the sister Wimvana ship next to the Sidenvis l, flying into the vacuum of space right where the missile boats would be on impact, however, first, they must pass the shields which dropped and re-engaged while the shields on the Sidenvis l also dropped down to three allowing the ship to reactivate the guns on the corvettes, however, they were only to deactivate the shields as this was a perfect opportunity to test the devourers.
In seconds the fast and speedy but most importantly shieldless missile boats impacted the devourers, all being watched by Aleister. Gaining traction on the lower side of the hull they all dug into their ship while only one of the corvettes was able to dodge the spinning circle of death earning a few railgun shots proving to be effective making the explosion send shrapnel and debris into the enemy and friend which bounced off the shields of another friendly ship, for a few seconds Aleister and the officers in the bridge of the Sidenvis l Class destroyer and the Wimvana saw nothing, but soon the red hot sections of hull gave an indication of explosions in the ship and a few more seconds the devourers made it to a reactor and the missile boat corvettes exploded into a mass short white light which shrunk into an infinitely small point giving way to a group of ships in pieces bouncing off of each other before the bouncing off the shields of the larger friendly ships.
"Both effective, very good" Aleister mouthed almost a bit surprised at the effectiveness.
While the test for the railgun and devourers was being watched Aleister missed the groups of Star Break and Star Fall Fighters and Superiority Fighters ripping through the shields and hulls of corvettes and frigates all in groups– While the enemy side is undoubtedly the one facing the greatest casualties the Sanguisugion also has its fair share of casualties, mostly being starfighters being ~350 but the worse loss is the frigates and corvettes being ~9 and 15 respectively.
"Your majesty, we are receiving a message from one of their heavy cruisers" one of the bridge officers reported "Put them through".
Turning around the wall on the far side changed to a repulsive species more closely resembling a dumpling with worms waving off its head of it. Over the past 70 years, Aleister's father had sent hundreds of people to all the different entities and civilizations around to learn their language and culture, and while the Falopians were isolationist it wasn't very difficult to trade their language for the Sanguisugion language only requiring time to piece together the languages, meaning communication through a translator was possible.
"Unconditional total surrender across all planets and fleets" Aleister started "that is the only way your species lives on".
"I promise no surrender outside my jurisdiction" The Falopian commander replied making no visible facial movements "However, I hope such a skilled and prestigious commander wouldn't decimate a surrendered and defenseless fleet of innocents".
"I make no promises, move your fleet to the side and away from those cruisers, any attempt of FTL or usage of guns will result in total annihilation" Aleister commanded gaining no response other than the flutter of the worm-like tentacles sprouting from the head of the Falopian admiral.
"Prepare the boarding parties The Birkenhead alone will go and board those cruisers while the rest of the fleet will watch that fleet and board them," Aleister said while walking out of a room off to the side of the main bridge, it was the hologram room connected to every captain and commander in the fleet.
Cutting through the fleet The Birkenhead lumbered towards the cruisers escorted by 400 of the Star Fall legionary Dogfighters, once the flagship loomed over the two cruisers Aleister commanded the two special forces legions on board to prepare "Prepare the saint and prime legions to board those ships".