"XO, what's the status of the crew?"
"All the nonessential personnel are inside their safety chambers and on lockdown, the marines are in their places and the rest of the crew are all armed and ready."
AM confirmed after looking at his monitor which showed all ships departments as green.
Judging from their heading trajectory the space spores came to feed on the Hyperions gases the only gas giant in the new sol system so they would ignore us for the time being but once they started multiplying and expanding their territory they would destroy us in the end.
Since they treat anything that isn't of their species as enemies so there's no choice but to kill them here and now plus their bodies are the raw resource needed for biological augmentations and medicine-related things which I'm not willing to pass on.
I thought as I gave my orders after making up my mind.
'Weapons target Alpha! Suppressive fire ! 5 seconds interval! Fire!"
"Target Alpha! Suppressive fire! 5 seconds interval! Firing!"
Harmand echoed out as he pressed his console's firing button.
Boom!
I heard the sound of electricity getting discharged ring inside my ears and felt the spaceship's hull tremble as the top ultra-heavy mass accelerator cannon fired its first round causing the ship's red lighting to dim down as the canon sucked up all the available energy it could to recharge itself as fast as possible.
One 900 mm nanocomposite slug was flung out at a speed of 300 km/s towards the spore mothership and after 5 seconds the bottom's canon fired its own slug while the top canon which took 10 seconds to reload and recharge fired another slug.
"Captain detecting signs of building up plasma inside the motherships! They are charging up their bio canons! ETA till discharge 30 seconds!"
"Weapons ignore it and keep firing!"
"Yes sir!"
The sound of the mass accelerators firing one after another was like music to my ears.
"Fuck! How I missed this music of death."
I murmured under my breath which didn't go unnoticed by AM causing his hair to stand up from how creeped out he became.
Shit, I knew my best friend was not right in the head even before he joined the army but this is just way too creepy!.
AM cursed as he tracked the moving holographic slugs in his monitor.
In total, the two canons fired 6 slugs in the span of 35 seconds the amount of time it took before the first lucky slug went straight through the Alpha target's opened mouth and exited through its back bringing flesh and blood with it that immediately froze after getting exposed to space in which a ball of plasma was gathering causing the ball of plasma to destabilize and explode while only two more hit the target while rest missed it.
"Hit on Alpha! It's seriously wounded!"
Yang Ning cried outing excitement.
"3 volleys on Bravo!"
"Yes sir! 3 volleys on Bravo coming right up!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!
"Plasma discharge detected! The motherships have started their long-range bombardment!"
"Acknowledged sensors!"
"Weapons, after you are done with target Bravo, switch to target Charlie same pattern, and after you're done shelling all the targets repeat the firing solutions!"
I updated my orders.
"Yes sir!"
This continued for another 3 minutes until the first inaccurate balls of plasma passed through all around the ship causing no damage at all because although the plasma would burn through the REAPERS armor without any difficulties it is quite inaccurate and its travel speed is quite slow so once fired from 12000 kilometers its impossible to hit something so small as REAPER at those kinds of distances.
"Captain, why aren't we firing our space torpedoes? With the speed that motherships are regenerating, our canons are just waisting their ammunition."
AM asked curiously since during his time in the academy the instructors kept drilling into his head that the nuclear space torpedoes should be fired before the hostiles manage to get close to their main weapons range as he watched the motherships patch themselves back into one piece at naked eye visible speed in his monitor.
"Because the doctrine of launching space torpedoes first is only valid for fighting other human spaceships and not for these fuckers."
I answered AM's question as I looked at my monitor only for the regenerating motherships who could no longer fire their bio canons because of the damage they suffered to finally start launching their bio strike crafts which looked like their mini versions from inside them and their acidic bio boarding pods with infantry drones inside them.
The strike craft would surround their target and pummel it with their bio canons while the bio pods would stick themselves to the ship's outer hull and after burning through the armor would release their drones into the ship which would destroy it from inside out.
"Multiple contacts detected! The mother ships had launched their strike crafts and boarding pods! 100...200..2000...12000!"
"Fire space torpedoes from 1 to 20!"
"Copy! Firing torpedoes from 1 to 20!"
10 armored hatches on the ship's top behind the continuing to fire canons that had electricity running all over through them opened up and 10 nuclear space torpedoes blasted out from the tubes with blue flames and darted towards the thousands of tightly packed drones that didn't react to it at all.
It seems like my suspicions were correct these spores had never encountered something like torpedoes with nuclear warheads since the new sol system was quite far away from Earth meaning that these spore motherships had never exchanged their genetic memory with the motherships that fought the UN's navy during their reproduction cycle.
I thought as I licked my lips knowing that I already had this in the bag.
"Navigation prepare for evasive maneuvers and weapons get ready to divert all power to lasers on my command!"
"Aye, sir!"
"Yes sir!"
It took 2 minutes before the 20 torpedoes made contact with the spores that didn't know that most of them were about to die thou not like they cared they had no mind of their own they just followed the mothership's orders and that was it.
20 mini suns appeared in the darkness of space after the inbuilt AIs detonated the nuclear warheads once they were deemed to have reached the most optimal distance for destroying as many drones as possible.
"90 percent of spores have been destroyed! The rest are continuing on their course toward us!"
"Weapons now! Blast those fuckers to pieces!"
"On it sir!"
Harmand echoed out excitedly as he diverted all the power from the cannons towards the laser canons and pressed the firing button causing the 59 9-barreled canons which were basically ship-sized miniguns extend from all over the ship and start pouring out red laser beams at the surviving spore drones continuously without stopping while the cooling systems did their best to cool them down as fast as possible.
As hundreds of laser beams tore the evading spores strike crafts and boarding pods into bloody chunks of biomatter and the closer they got the more accurate and deadly the lasers became until finally the strike craft entered their firing range and started pouring out mini blue plasma balls from their mouths as they started surrounding the REAPER.
"Evasive maneuvers!"
"Aye, sir!"
"Attention crew strap in or grab anything secured and prepare for g impact!"
After I said this into the ship-wide intercom the pilot began evasive maneuvers.
"Urghh!"
I and everyone else grunted in pain because of the g's playing ping pong with our organs.
As REAPER spun around while continuing to spray lasers looking like a hedgehog the drones whose mini plasma balls became ineffective as they only left gauges in the nanocomposite armor unlike before where they burned all the way through the armor.
"PDLCs 12, 25, 14, 18, 5, 4, 10, 30 and 36 are destroyed!"
"300! 200! Drones left!"
"PDLCs 9,8 and 13 barrels just melted down!"
My officers continued to report through their clenched bloody teeth as small trickles of blood leaked out from their mouths.
"100! 70! 30! All the drones have been destroyed! Captain, I'm detecting multiple hole breaches! A dozen of drones managed to board the ship!"
"Terminate the evasive maneuvers, target the motherships, and fire all of our spare torpedoes we have left!"
"Aye Sir!"
The pilot answered enthusiastically because he was more than happy to end this rollercoaster while Harmand locked onto the motherships and launched all the remaining torpedoes even before the REAPER's secondary thrusters built all around the ship stabilized it.
Once the ship finally stabilized itself and the artificial gravity came back online I remotely contacted Lilith who wasn't very happy about the rollercoaster episode.
"Urghhh! Big bro are you crazy?! We almost vomited our guts out into our helmets! Anyways what's the sit rep?"
The pale-faced Lilith in the corner of my HUD view asked.
Only for Harmand to cry out in excitement after watching the 90 percent motherships biomass get vaporized into atoms.
"Captain all targets are destroyed their not regenerating after something like this!"