Half an hour has passed. Fighters closed in to the dangerous distance of 12,6m km. PURGE Team reported readiness for a few variants of the missiles that were likely to be fired. Besides Channel 9 sudden incident, the enemy hadn't made any diplomatic moves. No negotation, no talk, not even a surrender demand. All official channels remained silent. 120 fighters maintained a collison course and the speed of 12502 km/s. At this distance more sensitive radars were able to already tell the exact hull composition. The scanned profile left no doubt the weapons glued to the side pannels couldn't be anything but missile launchers or railgun array.
Minutes passed. Distance decreased to 7m km. Everyone on board became more nervous and paranoid with every second. The truth about the volley size was about to be determined. There was nothing more to be done but wait. And sure enough, it was what everyone had already realized. Crewmembers remained oddly calm when 480 small nasty contacts were detected at a distance of 6,6m km. They were travelling exactly at 25000 km/s. Class 3 missile, thermal signature type 4. Radars were weak just enough to not be able to see them from a distance they've been fired.
Combat simulation officers had a lot of work to do. Distance of 6,6m km meant exactly 220 seconds till impact if speeds were to be maintained. But engineers working on simulating possible scenarios just got an idea. The starting point for them was the obvious observation that there was no way these missiles were able to hit anything from such a range. 220 seconds were more than enough to comfortably affect the speed vector in a way that'd allow them to pass at safe distance and get a decent safety margin, too. To score hits, they needed engines. And engines needed fuel. With a missile weighting only 7,5t in total and having to carry payload, engines, targeting computer all encapsulated in its own hull, only so much fuel could be brought along. First step was to calculate the exact burnout rate. The missiles didn't accelerate, which meant 25000 km/s was a good balance between speed, not wasting too much fuel and still make the final adjustments moments before impact. Determination onboard computers had already implemented Evasive Corrections Protocol, triggered automatically at missile detection with the missile simulation variant that was the best match for reality, with a new model, fine-tuned for the presented situation, being already uploaded to the engine controls.
Slight modifications to flight trajectory weren't neccessarily easy at 5000 km/s, with a few millions kilometers ahead, the tiniest change meant missing entire volley. According to PURGE report, targeting software was not of the best league, too. Every time N.O.V.A. Strike course modified speed vector, missiles corrected theirs, too. By the time there were less than 197 seconds till impact left, crew of Scandroid 001 was the first one to determine fuel consumption patterns of the missiles and predict its changes in the future. That data was enough to determine that at worst, these missiles should have enough fuel to cover a bit over 10m km before their engines turning off, maybe more but in that case they wouldn't hold enough power to apply the final change during last kilometers of their journey, severely limiting their accuracy so that shooting down 200 of them would statistically be enough for the whole fleet to come unscratched.
After briefly looking at the numbers, admiral gave orders to turn around. His intuition told him that if the fleet could force the missiles to fly for at least 10m km or maybe even a bit less, they'd waste all their fuel, making them easily dodgeable. Smaller relative speed was also vital for anti-missile fire precision. However, there was no time for simply firing engines in the opposite direction. Even with reactor overload turned on, the ships would barely start accelerating away from the missiles by the time they'd catch up. So instead he issued orders for turning only 90 degrees away from the hostile contacts. It should be much faster this way, compared to canceling current velocity altogether. Also it forced missiles to take same turn, hopefully crippling their fuel supply. They had five times higher speed to work through. Five times bigger problem for that particular case.
Soon everyone onboard felt the heat accumulating from overcharged reactors, having nowhere to be dispersed, but the fleet slowly started shifting towards its new course. In the meantime fighters had all finished making U-turn and proceeded to redenzvous point with the bulk of enemy forces. Sam Tucker was cursing all the time for the fact there was no chance of detecting which ship was a carrier. N.O.V.A. Strike force would have to simply rely on luck to pick the right one once in laser range.
Distance between missiles and their targets diwndled, but at 1,5m km the shift was almost complete and the fleet was pushing forward, faster and faster, trying to get to 8000 km/s. That'd leave missiles at only 17000 km/s worth of effective speed. Enough to have them fly by if they'd burn through all of their fuel. Finally the magic 8000 km/s barrier had been reached by the time missiles were less than 1,1m km away, chasing the fleet's tail. Moment of truth was drawing dangerously near. Many officers didn't even notice holding breath for half a minute or more at this point.
Some soldiers let screams of relief or even celebration out as soon as the thermal signature of missiles disappeared with only 468000 km left before impact. Final evasion pattern was applied, ensuring clear course, but even at 100000km and less not a single missile lightened up again. Even if they would have been programmed to save a last resort reserve to surprise the enemy who got too comfortable with them being dead weight, with less than 6 seconds left and presented angular distance there was nothing they could do.
Crews and officers watched in awe as the enemy detonated the missiles in frustration, somehow clinging to the hope that the blast would catch up to N.O.V.A. forces. But it just couldn't. Cosmic fireworks lasted for a few seconds until everything went silent once again. The fleet was safe (till another volley). Anti-nuclear EMP shields held, too. The enemy had 480 missiles less and yet nothing came out of them.
After detonation N.O.V.A. fleet immediately plotted the shortest interception course possible with the main forces. Post-processing of the first encounter in this battle revealed the effective range of missiles to be more or less 9,4m km, but it hardly mattered. No way Comitee would make the same mistake again. They didn't even make the mistake first time, at least not when it came to volley timing, their leadership simply got tricked into assuming the speed at which their opponent could fly. No way they would let that happen again.
N.O.V.A. Strike Force had more worries than that, though. Their speed meant effective speed of next volley increasing to 33000km/s. Theoretically nothing wrong with changing it, practically there was only so much fuel left and the bulk had to be spared for the main firefight. Tucker knew all he had to do is repeat the maneouver for a few times and see all nuclear material depleted, with his fleet drifting away into interstellar space, without any chance to slow down.
As cruise towards enemy continued, sensors kept warning about identifying new hostile contacts. One, two, three... The fleet wielded by the Comitee of Humanity was massive.
Before distance from the enemy dropped to 150m km, all 120 bombers disappeared from the radars. Another two contacts popped up, though. By the time range was about to cross 120m km mark, a total of 17 hostile spaceships had been identified to be a part of hostile formation. Quick scan on thermal signatures and a bunch of computations later admiral was very anxious. Most of the fleet had comparable mass to the N.O.V.A. ships, except four. Four behemoths weighting bloody 75000 tons each. Their hull profiles differed slightly. It was reasonable to assume two of them were the carriers, each for 60 fighters. The other two... Just thinking about them turned many people pale. If someone was using only two curses per sentence at that point, it meant that solider remained very calm and had nerves of duranium.
Many considered early retirement if they'd be lucky enough to survive after a swarm of Sabadells had been detected. Only 5000 tons each, but an impressive and fearsome squadron nevertheless.
While computers were burning from all the simulations of possible weapons, armor and kinetic forcefield ratios, defensive systems and many other details that might or might not be present within hostile forces, 120 fighters reappeared again, this time spotted at 25,6m km. There was no point in even trying. PURGE Team checked their jamming sequence for the final time, a few diagnostic scans on weapon platforms were run, but that was about all that could be done.
They didn't fire until 4m km away. Just to be sure nothing could be done to escape. Nothing left to do but to hope for the best, prepare for the worst. 3m km... 2m km... 1m km... 468000 km... 100000 km... 50000 km... Everything was ready. At distance of 10000 km, hundreds of railguns opened fire, showing the enemy their Determination. At 5000 km, PURGE Team broadcasted jamming sequence. At 2000 km, a series of EMP blasts followed, mixing with pulses from nuclear detonations as warheads popped out like punctured baloons all around. Stars faded and the endless night saw the light of the day for a brief moment. Some crewmembers weren't fast enough and got blinded before they could turn around their eyes. For a human observers, it was total chaos. For the computers resolving this volley, it was a perfectly calculated, precise maneouver, an art of computing and programming. Swarm of slugs kept bumping on the missiles. Electronic and magnetic warfare turned some off, either disarming them, rendering them easily dodgeable or in some rare instances even smashing them against each other. Some flew a bit too close and got caught in their own blasts, triggering chain reactios. Admiral was standing in the middle of the bridge, listening to the sound of sirens and watching the volley being thinned away. Blue and violet lasers flashed in front of the fleet, sometimes burning through the missiles, overloading warheads and kickstarting nuclear reactions preemptively. Particle beams were even more effective at this, once they connected with the target. Some shots would miss the payload, but instead burn through the internal circuits, also resulting in a missile being disarmed.
But it was still a total of 480 missiles, and only so much could be done. Five of them exploded across Dark Phoenix 001's kinetic field. It didn't destabilize. The ship was intact. Not a scratch. But Determination 002 wasn't so lucky. These ships, lightly armored and with no shields, never meant to get into direct firefight and having railguns as their main defence against things that could go beyond pewpew range, were weak if one could luck out to work their way through the storm of slugs. A total of 82 missiles impacted. Hull dissipated heat, thin but densely packed layers of armor prevented any serious damage from each missile alone. But there were 82 total, and their power combined breached hull in two places. Explosions killed hundreds, radiation outbursts another hundreds. Only 213 were lucky enough to not stand too close to have a second chance in life (provided RadAway would be administered within the span of next day, two at most), out of witth only 154 got to the escape shuttles before they'd get sucked out into the void.
A total of 225 missiles got destroyed or disarmed, 168 were countered by the PURGE Team. 87 landed on their targets, out of which 82 caused any meaningful, permanent damage. Firepower of N.O.V.A. Strike Force didn't suffer in the slightest, but there were now 10 Determinations instead of 11. Next volley would hurt more. And the morale damage was worse than expected. No simulation could prepare anyone for the scale of space combat, when mighty spaceships could be removed from existence in a split second after hundreds of ridiculously fast objects overshadow their field of view.
Battle intensified. Only a few minutes later another 120 missles were detected, but this time their speed was only 17766 km/s relative to the Sun. Class 6 missile, thermal signature type 5. They would knock half the fleet out of combat if given chance... Still, 10000 km was deemed safe enough to let them explode and so they all did. Something had clearly gone wrong in the enemy's anti-missile defence estimations, because one Determination less wasn't nowhere near enough for only 120 missiles to stand a chance. Before they would get annihilated, though, enemy fired yet another volley, only 125 seconds later. But as soon as the first one was removed, no additional missiles arrived. Whatever glitch caused Comitee to waste 240 powerful warheads must had been fixed when anti-missile defence reports arrived.
When the distance separating both fleets was only about 30m km, all 120 fighter contacts disappeared from the radar, shortly after they more or less bruned out through most of their velocity and approached the fleet. Teams on Scanrdoids tried their best, but ultimately failed at detecting the mothership. At such distance all ships have been way too close to each other to determine which was the closest one the fighters were when their signatures vanished. Active sensors were a guarantee they would still be visible until they'd get "swallowed" by the hangars, despite thermal signature progressively diminishing, so that one bit of information would suffice for getting a certain answer, but even that was too much to ask for.
Another round of calculations displayed that the second trip of fighters had been detected when the fleet was at 69m km, but they disappeared at 30m km worth of distance. That meant the distance shortened by 39m km since they launched, fired and till they returned, and even more than that as at 69m km they were already ahead of the fleet. This meant in theory N.O.V.A. could position its ships in the laser range before third, even more punishing volley, but the distance fighters had to travel through also was an important factor, so there was a risk they'd fire for the third time. On the other hand, maybe it'd be better if they did before close range firefight...
Distance was reduced to 2m km only, but it was then when the third, most powerful volley had been launched. 480 class 3 missiles from fighters, 120 class 6 missiles from the main bulk of enemies, accompanied by previously unregistered 120 class 1 missiles, too. This could be the matter of victory and defeat already. Sam Tucker sweated nervously. Only 2m km. Despite engine differences, all missiles should have enough fuel to synchronize speeds before reaching targets and then 10 Determinations would have to deal with 720 missiles at once. 600 were already flying in sync at 25000 km/s, even if 120 of them were significantly smaller. The fleet stood no chance against something like this. Even with prioritizing the 120 most deadly ones, at lest a few Determinations would likely got destroyed, and everything would spiral out of control after that.
However, class 6 missiles started accelerating a bit too late. They were still over 200000 km behind main bulk when the 600 flying at 25000 km/s splashed against N.O.V.A. Strike Force. 81 class 3 missiles and 61 class 1 missiles got through. Class 1 missiles weren't powerful enough to change the outcome of the volley compared to the previous one by much.
The damage got split between PURGE 001, PURGE 002 and PURGE 003. Second and third from the PURGE Team came out of this with only a few dents on the external armor layers. The damage wasn't too threatening and both ships cleared their course and continued cruise towards enemy. But the first one suffered a lot. Significant holes in its armor belt had been made, with 4 missiles in total breaching through it all and destroying one of the control rooms and killing 25 soldiers. 120 remaining missiles arrived a bit too late and were no match for the railgun defence array.
Targeting Determinations was bad... But N.O.V.A. admiral came to a conclusion that in a way targeting PURGE Team was very dangerous. With so many ships on the enemy side, laser firefight might not go as smooth as anticipated and risk of defeat could be high. PURGE Team was the key to prevent this. If Assault Squadron and Velociraptors wouldn't cut it, PURGE Team was the difference between easy victory and certain doom. Plus additional benefit of switching off enemy ships instead of destroying them, reinforcing N.O.V.A. security forces, further discouraging anyone from rebelling ever again.
The distance was just above 1,6m km. Given the speed difference, less than 6 minutes remained till the fleets would sync with each other. Meaning less than 5 minutes till the beginning of the main battle.