LAST GENERATION OF ZENN-LA3486 AM hibernation cycleNew generation of Human Space Fleet components still struggled to leave prototyping stage, because physicists claimed the new type of gravitational weapons felt underwhelming during lab tests. In theory the latest soulgrain gravity theory held immense power ready to be weaponized, but energy requirements were still too high for any reasonable starship onboard reactor design and the guiding system propagating gravitational pulses through a set of entangled soulgrains left a lot to be desired in terms of accuracy. Or rather the system itself was quite good, but the need to initially deploy the soulgrains was what caused most trouble, because it severely limited the usage of a new weapon. It took the precious time, tactically-wise introducing warmup period before the weapon could be fired for the first time. That alone maybe could still pass, with other armanents taking the responsibility of pushing the fleet through first volleys, but with next shots the situation became even worse due to the risk of next pulses affecting each soulgrain already deployed at the same time, excluding more and more spots across the battlespace for Groaxian ships, making navigating a cosmic watchmare. For example, in the most simple case of firing at the enemy in front, destroying it and not being able to change course before crossing through the space it had occupied, firing the weapon once again when next to its wreck could as well mean the same spot would be affected once again besides the new target, crushing the ship which dared to attack as well as whatever else would have been targeted. Of course that could be easily avoided by using a new soulgrain set each time, independent and not entangled with the ones already deployed, but slowly building a network of nodes through which destructive force could be propagated while only harming whatever existed at the targeted ones was a key advantage naval officers refused to give up on. The main idea behind deployment of this monstrosity was to have the battlespace littered with "killing nodes" past a certain point, almost guaranteeing enemy ships in between them would have no realistic way to not cross through at least one, facing certain doom once that happens.
These issues postponed the deployment of next-gen starship weapons, and thus the entire fleet itself, but despite missing these crucial deadlines, Conglomerate still wanted to push the idea of another preemptive strike against Zenn to delay their Blutgang assault before the new warships would finally enter the service. And so, having no other clues as where to start besides Hauteclere encounter during which the two Baernoloths had been destroyed, Human Space Fleet was sent to Hauteclere to find any traces of the damaged Umbara fleet and avenge the fallen explorers if possible. But if for strategic goals alone, Conglomerate might as well withdraw from sending any fleet anywhere before new ships would replace outdated Strikers and Pikes, but the mission was supposed to be a breakthrough based on the fact that Umbara soldiers were to be used for the first time in history. Conglomerate started small, with sending only small teams to support only a few crews, still leaving half the ships Umbara-free, confident in Groaxians handling any mutiny the assimilated race might try and the possible battle likely not happening at all, and even if so, not getting out of hand due to the damaged state of Hauteclere fleet, generally making the mission the safest possible proof of concept regarding Umbara assimilation in practice.
At 3486 AM hibernation cycle four Strikers and four Pikes making for Human Space Fleet straightened space while entering the gravity well of the three stellar bodies making Hauteclere system and headed towards Hauteclere-A II, the planet near which Baernoloths had been attacked, preparing curvature disturbance scanners to determine possible routes enemies might had taken since the last encounter. But what was found was not just traces of Umbara presence, it was their entire fleet still floating in deep space slightly beyond the planet. They had stayed in the same system through all the hibernation cycles that had passed since surviving Baernoloths had left it. Maybe it was Curvature Drives damaged beyond repair, maybe some strategic goals, maybe pure accident of them warping to the system once again at the exact moment when Human Space Fleet had arrived. Whatever the case, a space battle lied ahead, with not only Groaxians fighting against Umbara, but with La fighting against Zenn at the same time, being just another battle in the great conflict that lasted for generations ever since the two civilisations encountering each other on their homeworld.
Human Space Fleet accelerated forward, aiming at crossing in between the two groups of Umbara ships and firing away during the short window of opportunity, hoping the high velocity would prevent enemies from locking onto them and retaliating, but it would not be a space battle if something hadn't progressed not according to the plan. A very small mistake in calculating slingshot maneouvre around Hauteclere-A II was all it had to occur for the fleet to land not in between, but behind the two squadrons and not gain enough speed in the process. The one Groaxians had passed closer to was more than capable of opening kinetic fire. First metal slugs impacted on hulls, not piercing through them yet, but leaving a few significant weak spots on the outer armor layers. Not wanting them to give a chance at firing once again, fleet admiral decided to use Pikes and their phased curvature disruption systems to create a gravitational well which Groaxians could use to rapidly reverse direction while maintaining decent velocity for the entire maneouvre. The outcome was satisfying, with the next two kinetic volleys missing the target after slowing down too much due to the presence of strong gravity nearby, meanwhile Groaxians, already flying away from the enemies, rotated in place and opened particle beam fire, further contributing to the state of decay of enemy fleet. First target was taken down, as the concentrated stream of near-lightspeed heavy particles had proven too much for one of the hulls.
Groaxians maintained velocity, preparing to fire away before crossing the maximum range at which targeting systems worked in a reliable way and then use the planet to help them rapidly turn around once again and get back to battle. A simple plan with solid outcome predicted by the simulations, but before it could be executed, the Umbara serving on the ships spoke. They pointed out that they recongnised many of the signatures found on radars and claimed that many of the bigger ones were harmless terraforming ships. Brief Transcendent Speech scan was used to prove they spoke the truth. It was a fair information, allowing Groaxians to focus on the ships that were armed and posed a meaningful threat instead. But Umbara insisted on something more - they wanted to send surrender message receivable by terraformes and only terraformers. When asked why would anyone surrender in a Dark Forest, La pointed out that Zenn for sure should have learnt that Groaxians were a weak Dark Forest player and besides the plan wasn't neccessairly to convince them to surrender, but rather to spread confusion among enemy ranks: they declared they had a way of identifying themselves and to see Umbaras serving on Groaxian fleet would be the last thing the every expected to happen.
Not having anything to loose, fleet admiral authorised Umbaras to send a message to the terraformers. Apparently each class from Umbara fleet had its own unique message encoding system, so it was possible to communicate with only certain types of ships from a fleet. There was nothing preventing other ships to decipher the message of course, but according to the Umbara they should have them filtered out by default. This questionable setup that was about to be abused originally served to limit the communication to the bare minimum as given Umbara biology, focusing too much on talking disturbed their vision which was of invaluable help during space battles, almost as if it had been evolved to serve for this exact purpose.
No answer for the surrender broadcast came, but before next particle beams and gravitational pulses were sent across the void, several terraformers were observed to fire their engines in reverse and slow down. Interestingly, one of the kinetic warships had done the same. Before Groaxians could fire, though, several ships from the second squadron flying further from Human Space Fleet opened fire at their own ships, the ones that slowed down:
Seeing this unexpected turn of events, Groaxians withdrew from firing once again and continued their cruise towards the planet itself. Some enemy ships decided to pursuit them, but most stayed behind, with some firing at the terraformers and the lone warship that slowed down, but struggled to get through their armor. Or rather not struggled with penetration itself, but terraformers were simply massive enough to make hitting that one particular crucial spot much harder, often dealing damage to non-essential terraforming equipment. Meanwhile Human Space Fleet turned around and overdrove the engines, rapidly accelerating as it chose to fly above enemies. Gravitational pulses kept them mostly in one spot while particle beams precisely picked weakened targets and finished them off. Speeding starships passed the first squadron, destroying every single starship from it, then continued past the supposedly surrendered terraformers and caught up to the second squadron, however they closed in too much, making clear targets for the enemy. Many projectiles were dodged because the speed alone made it possible to fly past them before they could connect, but some landed, dealing further damage. At first it wasn't very dangerous, but after a brief firefight one of the Pikes had its armor basically shredded into pieces. One slug even narrowly missed the fusion reactor, but killed most of the crew responsible for keeping it safe during demanding battle power requirements and frequent overdrive usage.
With its reactor exposed and not enough crew to monitor and fix it, the ship came dangerously close to full destruction and each new volley could prove fatal for everyone on board. The captain did not hesitate with the evacuation order. First shuttles flew ouf of the endangered vessel soon enough, trying to safely navigate in between accelerated particles and kinetic projectiles. But as one of the starships opened fire in the general direction of that one Pike, destroying some of the shuttles and damaging the command bridge, several kinetic shots echoed across its hull. It was that one armed warship that had stayed behind with terraformers that attacked it. One particle beam later there was barely anything left to be gathered from its wreck. With the chaos that followed, the ship that flew in one formation right next to the last victim of the battle sent a surrender message. There was no time or way to check whether it was sincere, but with more targets than guns still present Groaxians could allow not to target that particular one in the next volley. To be absolutely sure, evacuated Pike fired one last time befote the captain and last survivors flew out of it, sending a gravitational pulse to trap it almost motionless as it struggled to overcome the mighty gravity force.
At that point the battle turned into a cleanup operation. Space warp disturbances had proven that at least some of the vessels from Umbara fleet had been capable of interstellar flight, but they were all blown out of the void before their Curvature Drives would charge. The battle with Hauteclere fleet finally came to an end and space was calm again.
After the battle Umbaras were able to confirm the remaining starships indeed had surrendered, confused about the whole situation. Several Groaxian squads wore their space suits for underwater survival and boarded them in order to carry some improvised repairs to bring the ships back home and keep tight watch over the subjugated species. Surviving Zenn were all brought to Blutgang and placed in water habitats on Scar'am. According to their thoughts, they were a part of the last surviving Zenn fleet out there. Suffering several crushing defeats from Tempestsaurs Of Achernar, these two damaged squadrons were all there had been left. Their fleet had fled to Hauteclere and tried to end the nomadic lifestyle to rebuild their strength and even started settling down on Hauteclere-A III, but then Achernar found them, bombarded their habitats on the surface and engaged in space combat. Most terraformers had been lost in that battle, crashing against the surface of Hauteclere-A III and most other ships were badly damaged, but managed to engage Curvature Drives in time and escaped into interstellar space. After some time they made a return to this system, because they believed Achernar were unlikely to think they dared to hide there once again and so far it proved true, but Groaxians found them instead. And so the generations-lasting Umbara Odyssey had oficially came to an end in Hauteclere.
Captured ships were of invaluable support for terraforming efforts in Blutgang and undoubtedly a perfect workplace for assimilated species. Also because of the events occuring during and after the battle, Bound by Dark Forest grew more respect for the other hald of the society and their dream of Umbara assimilation. Meanwhile the other side of the barricade kept noticing how some battles were unavoidable in order to bring Groaxians, Zenn and La all united under the banner of one civilisation, even if very few from the last two survived and their civilisations were collapsed on a large scale. But it was a great achivement of all the actions taken against Dark Forest regardless and countless efforts to overcome it. And with each solar watch the undergoing merge of all Groaxians into one balanced community once again was growing more visible. And with it more visible became questions about the true nature of Dark Forest itself - if it was possible to move beyond it in some limited ways, but at the same time not avoid its applications along the way, then it might as well be a force of balance, as hard as it was for the soulseekers to say. It forced to bring extermination upon each other, but also allowed backdoors for assmilating last survivors to exist as figured out by Humanity long before. And according to Achernar forced the civilisations to destroy each other, but allowed life to continue in some distant future, preventing the universe from eternal lifeless hibernation. As if on a higher level of abstraction it was meant to be something more than existential fear of individuals, a powerful force tying the universe together and keeping it alive through infinity by an endlessly repeated cycle of death and rebirth.
The Odyssey of Zenn-La had came to an end, Dark Forest consumed its yet another victim. But Zenn and La survived in some form and those lucky enough to see one more solar watch joined the Groaxian Odyssey across dimensions.