Kardiac's swift brutality at first took the Polian Alliance by surprise; they were ill equipped for the kind of war that he brought to them.
It was what made him such an effective Warlord, the fact that he was a sledgehammer in situations requiring a scalpel.
HMS Lex Talionis - En-route Amsus Hegemony
TRANSMISSION TERMINATED
COURSE PLOTTING...100%
FARSTEP DRIVE...NOMINAL
EXECUTING
* * *
Lex Talionis's battle scopes went active the moment he entered the core Hive systems. Amsus listening and monitoring posts were screaming messages and dispatching couriers trying to relay the information back to the regional headquarters, alerting the home fleets to the imminent danger posed by the sudden arrival of the Pocket Battleship.
Lex observed and contemplated their possible responses. With the majority of the Amsus fleet sectors away, clustered to smash the Imperial forces, the remaining 'home fleets' would be nominal at best. Older ships - meticulously maintained, he was certain, but older none the less. Vessels unfit for front line service; commanders who were unremarkable even for Amsus.
He dispatched his drone cloud, bringing his newly acquired Polian cannons online as he drove onwards, a singular malevolent purpose in mind as he searched for the right target. His tactical computers engaged, plotting probabilities and weighing the possible Amsus reprisals. An acceptable risk, considering the potential gains.
The holographic warlord twirled his baton through his fingers, tucking it up and under his arm. His god had spoken and so should it be.
He thought a moment on the discordant nature of his god, the burning will that was subverted by the weakness of the flesh. Organic Cognitive Malfunction was comprehensible to Lex; he understood that it was the nature of Organics to exist with flaws in judgement when they were ruled by the base chemical reactions that came with such a lowly form. The divine was suffering the price of his rebirth.
The flashes on the edge of the system heralded the arrival of the Amsus home fleet. Ten Battlecruisers, two dozen Missile Destroyers, one Command Carrier, forty-nine Raptors and nine fighter squadrons. There would be at least twice that many waiting in reserve, ready to intercept him should he penetrate through their fleet.
Lex Talionis computed their vectors, accessed the Amsus procedural manuals and analysed their attack strategy. Simple and rudimentary, based upon tried and tested strategies of Humanity, the Amsus had been bred as warriors. Their uprising had caught the Empire ill-prepared. Lex Talionis was far from ill prepared.
His Polian weaponry cycled up to charge as his drones formed a whirling and buzzing cloud about him. His adaptive armour reconfigured itself, forming a tight shield around the warship as Lex transferred his consciousness to the Polian computer core, shutting down all the non-essential systems that would be vulnerable to EMP bursts.
The Amsus strategy would be two-fold: first they would close to maximum range, firing their nuclear missiles in an effort to pull him down; once that failed they would begin salvo fire, retreating back as their Raptors and Predators harried the larger vessel, Missile Destroyers moving to flank him.
Of course, they were expecting him to engage them.
The hologram smiled as he swung his baton up to tap his jaw. "Such Organic thinking," he murmured.
Sun Tzu began his art of war by listing the five factors that determined the outcome of battle. The relationship between superiors and their subordinates, climate, geography, the personal characteristics of the general, and logistics. In this battle the first, second, third and fifth factors were wholly irrelevant.
There was little by way of cover in space. If you could be seen, you could be hit. So Lex had brought his own. He adapted his drones, splitting them up into smaller groups, setting them on intercept mode. The Amsus nuclear weaponry would be exhausted long before he ran out of drones; his newly-enhanced onboard factories were already producing more in anticipation.
The Amsus were about to taste the bitter truth of true warfare. They manoeuvred, opening fire, as the battle began.
Unlike ground combat, or even aerial dogfights, space was not constrained to two dimensions. The greater manoeuvrability translated into a perceptible 'slipperiness' as it became impossible to hold lines, block or pin down the enemy, while it greatly increased the effectiveness of evasive actions, circumnavigation and rapid escapes.
Yet with everything in motion, true space combat was about fourth dimensional thinking. It wasn't simply a matter of distance, but relative speeds and timing.
They were concepts that eluded all but the most creative organic minds.
As the explosions of light began, the Amsus began to hammer out their flak barrier, explosive rounds that would keep his drones at bay. Lex smiled. Let them exhaust their ammunition; his drones had other orders.
Lex Talionis calculated the orbital paths he would require, accelerating along a set vector that would take him past the fleet, firing his thrusters to turn his bow towards the enemy, his drones taking up a similar posture. The Amsus wouldn't expect him to be able to close with them that rapidly, but without organic life aboard, Lex wasn't constrained by the same problems of acceleration as they were. That gave him the kind of edge in manoeuvrability and speed that would prove decisive.
He had also been creative; his drones began to spit fire from their specially-adapted weapon mounts. The new ammunition separated into smaller clouds: the pico-drones had been constructed of nuclear dense material and were powered directly by micro-Zero-Point reactors. The microscopic drones combined the destructive capabilities of explosive munitions with the control and manoeuvrability of drones. Clouds of them spread out, slamming into critical areas of the Amsus fighter shield; a single pico-drone flying into the open weapons ports of one of the fighters, guided by Lex's will, resulted in its fiery death.
His beam weapons lanced out as the larger drones intercepted the nuclear missiles, the beams tearing a swath of irradiated light along the rows of missile destroyers hammering at him with their Aegis missile launchers, ripping them apart. He concentrated his fire. The rotating beam mounts pivoted and discharged again, drawing upon the power provided by his redundant generators. A sheer overwhelming amount of firepower carved up the enemy ships almost effortlessly.
The might of the Polian Alliance, combined with the ingenuity of the Empire...
He turned his attention from the row of devastated missile destroyers, the drones pushing inwards, concentrated fire that enveloped the Amsus cruisers as the Raptors made a diving attack for the command ship.
Lex allowed them to close with him, the Raptors moving in towards his hull, peppering it with their weapons fire, auto cannons impacting with his bulky armoured plates. Ill equipped as the Amsus sensors were, they were unaware of the danger.
Lex waited until one was close enough before he detonated his first reactive armour plate. The shaped charge shattered the plate into shrapnel. The kinetic shotgun blast tore the Raptor to shreds; a second and a third died just as spectacularly as the Amsus attempted to react to the unexpected method of attack.
The cruisers were of no concern to Lex; they were too slow to be any kind of danger, and he continued on his course the moment the last escort vessel was destroyed, his drones pulling back and sweeping up to return to their escort position. Lex powered up his drives as he watched the second wave of Amsus vessels sweep into the system, trying to mount a pitiful defence around the Hive world.
Billions of Amsus troopers, hundreds of hive ships. A central production world for the Amsus war machine. He recalculated his approach, releasing his own drone reserves as he stood ready to smash his way through that fleet, the Amsus cruisers behind him trying to pivot on their axes and give chase. But it was too late for them; they would never be able to match his acceleration curve.
He bore down upon the Amsus second wave fleet, his drones forming a black shield before him as the second round of nuclear fire began, Lex ignoring the EMP disruption to his communication nets by pre-programming his orders into his drones. They slammed into the protective screen of Amsus warships, Kamikazeing into cruisers and destroyers; detonating enemy missiles too close to the Amsus ships that launched them, a wave of machinery that swarmed over their hulls.
And through the heart of chaos, the Pocket Battleship roared.
They threw nuclear missiles, it didn't matter.
They threw fighters, it didn't matter.
They threw ships, it didn't matter.
They threw their lives, it did not matter.
Lex Talionis emerged into the heart of Hegemony space, targeting the central planet, watching as the defence force swarmed around to stop him, sending forth yet more ships to intercept him. The mighty warship ignored them as he sighted in, released his payload, and jumped away again.
The Type-Nine slammed into the surface of one of the Amsus Hive world, detonating with a monolithic burst of energy, ripping through the mantle of the world and shattering it as the molten core of the planet disintegrated. The world shivered and imploded upon itself.
Across every FTL comm. system a single message was relayed: "I am the balance of judgment, and my God has spoken!"