Battle between Task Force 97 and Expansion Fleet Bankala

The **battle between Task Force 97 and Expansion Fleet Bankala** was a naval engagement fought on May 21st 2792 CE, and one of the last battles of the Compact-Confederacy War. Confederate Task Force 97, led by the deep space fleet engagement vessel UECNS *Nemesis*, fought Compact Expansion Fleet Bankala, led by the Chariot CSFWV *Bringer of Light*, which was attempting to rendezvous with Compact command stations and forward bases in order to pass on the discovery of the location of Sol and organise a massed strike against it.

Despite the destruction of *Bringer of Light* by *Nemesis*' displacement engine, the battle was not the victory hoped for by the Confederate Admiralty. After the battle was all but over, the only vessels on each side that remained anywhere near intact were *Nemesis* and the Compact scout cruiser CSFWV *Curse of Prophecy.* Because the local Compact groups would start looking for the Expansion Fleet as soon as it disappeared, *Nemesis* had to leave as soon as possible to avoid being finished off. However, because of this there was not enough time to completely search the system for the wreckage of every single Compact ship. When Compact forces did arrive, they eventually found the *Curse of Prophecy*, with the location of Sol in its databanks and the recordings of the Confederacy's first dreadnaught deployment.

*Bringer of Light*'s destruction and the death of the Triarch aboard it would have been bad enough for the Confederacy, but the fact that the dreadnaught used to do it was partially AI-operated was what caused the Compact to deem humanity a potential threat to its own existence and too dangerous to leave alive. Just under a month later, on June 19th, the First Battle of Sol would begin. This heralded the end of the UECN as a coherent fighting force and indeed the Confederacy as a nation when the fleetyards of Luna and Mars- the last ones left anywhere in all of human territory- were destroyed.

## Background

In the last ten years of the Compact-Confederacy War, the United Earth Confederacy had been losing ground at varying rates depending on the current strength of the local Compact expansion fleets and the comparative strength of the United Earth Confederacy Navy. However, beginning in roughly 2790, Compact Force Command had become increasingly impatient with how long it was taking to bring humanity to heel, and so three Triarchs along with their Chariots were invited out to oversee the conquest of the remaining human holdings. Barely being able to counter Compact battleships, the Confederacy started losing ground at the fastest rate it ever had, and realised that the amount of time it would take to catch up to the Compact in weapons and protection technology was most likely going to be several years more than it would take the eventual advance of the Compact fleets to find Earth through sheer elimination.

Therefore, a paradigm shift of naval technology was required that could hopefully nullify the Compact's technological superiority. Several projects that had previously been sealed in presidential archives (deemed too dangerous to allow to exist in the peaceful Confederacy, but also needed as part of contingency planning) were restarted, and the result was the *Nemesis*-class deep space fleet engagement vessels. Systems used in the design could be used in smaller vessels of the fleet once they were proven, and would give Confederate vessels an edge over Compact ones that would hopefully allow humanity to hold back the tide. The introduction of AI-assisted ships could alleviate the critical manpower shortages facing the UECN, as well as give Confederate ships a massive edge in electronic warfare and tactical planning, while derivative weapons of the *Ukonvasara* meteor cannons could nullify the Compact's range advantage in conventional weaponry. However, for this to happen the location of Sol had to remain secret until at least the several of the *Nemesis*-class could be commissioned, as these ships would be the only thing that could stop a Compact Chariot; with three dreadnaughts of their own, even a hypothetical Compact fleet containing all three Chariots could conceivably be stopped, albeit with massive losses for the smaller ships in the Confederate fleet.

With the commissioning and successful fleet trials of UECNS *Nemesis,* the next two in the class were laid down, although *Nemesis* herself was not supposed to see combat until at least shortly before they could be launched. While *Nemesis* could handily defeat anything short of a Chariot, if she could be pinned down by Compact units long enough for all three to arrive then her fate would be sealed, and even more Compact ships would flood the Confederacy trying to track down the shipyard she was built in.

## Prelude

Task Force 97 sortied in early May in an attempt to intercept and destroy Expansion Fleet Bankala as they performed a realspace check in the Proxima Aleph system. With Red One's aid, the exit point of the entire Fleet from shockspace could be predicted, and they could then be ambushed before their sensors could clear. With the Compact ships unable to fight back for the first few minutes of combat and Nemesis' displacement engine, even the Chariot could be crippled or outright destroyed before they could even see their attackers. The Confederate Admiralty hoped that a loss of this magnitude would force the Compact to pull back and reconsider their approach long enough for UECNS *Hekate* and UECNS *Athena*, the next two of the *Nemesis*-class, to be completed.

However, unfortunately for the Confederacy, the Compact scout cruiser CSFWV *Farseeing Strike* recovered the location of Sol from an intact UEC vessel's databanks (presumably, a civilian ship caught unawares and then boarded). It then ran from Confederate warships until it reached the Expansion Fleet. Having changed course towards Compact lines, TF97 had to intercept it, but as the Compact ships could outrun the Task Force in shockspace, the resulting battle could not be the planned ambush; instead, a direct fleet-on-fleet engagement was the only option, something which the Confederacy were loathe to do under normal circumstances due to the inevitable massive casualty rate.

## Battle

The battle began with a dozen human destroyers seeding the outer system with hunter-killer drones, dedicated to killing any shock-capable couriers the Compact might launch. This meant that the Task Force would "only" have to eliminate every Compact warship, rather than every parasite craft or drone launch. These destroyers were all in turn destroyed themselves.

Two destroyers tracked down the cruiser CSFWV *Curse of Prophecy* on the outer of the system, and shocked in almost at point-blank range of it, trying to stop it from leaving (this is probably the first ever use of an inner-system shock by anyone, though it also likely wrecked the destroyer's own shock drives). One destroyer shocked in so closely that it rammed the cruiser, and the shield-on-shield interaction completely obliterated it. Despite being crippled itself, *Curse of Prophecy* managed to eliminate the other destroyer before it could send an alert signal to the rest of the Task Force. However, it was then stuck at the edge of the system with beyond-critical damage; its sublight drives were completely gone, life support was just barely hanging on, communications could only recieve and not send, and only a few weapons batteries were still functional.

The ships of the Task Force rushed towards *Bringer of Light*, trying to protect Nemesis from being too badly damaged by the escorting Compact capital ships. At a range of 97 million kilometers, Nemesis opened fire with meteor cannons, destroying eleven ships before entering missile range. As the displacement engine's length readying sequence began, almost half of TF97 had been destroyed or mission-killed by Compact ships. Enemies that got too close to *Nemesis* were hacked, with some even turning their own guns on their fellows and others destroying themselves when missiles detonated prematurely in their silos. When her prow finally shuddered open to begin firing, human ships kamikazed their opponents rather than let them close in. As the Chariot was cut apart by the shockspace beam, barely any of the escorting fleets were left, let alone in a position to fight.

All damaged Compact ships that had been in close proximity to *Bringer of Light* were been destroyed when its primary reactor overloaded, the command cores that would have governed its operation now drifting on a physically seperate part of the ship or vaporised by fire from *Nemesis*. All humans aboard the ships of the Task Force were either dead or dying, including the crew aboard *Nemesis*. Shrapnel from a penetration of the armored core entered the command deck, instantly killing Commander Charles Sansbury, Admiral Tartarsky and many others while also fatally wounding Captain Yasmine Sudoki, and the rest of the crew fared even worse. This left *Curse of Prophecy* and *Nemesis* (albeit being solely operated by Red One) as the only survivors.

Red One attempted to jump back to Earth by herself, leaving the scene of the battle unsure of if all enemy capital ships had been destroyed but far too damaged to survive a follow-up attack by a Compact search team trying to figure out just where their Chariot and its Triarch had gone. However, with extreme shock drive damage, this instead flung *Nemesis* off into deep space. Red One refused to believe that she had not made it, and so kept screaming a distress signal on all frequencies until absolutely sure there was no one to listen, at which point the whole process would repeat. This carried on until auto-repair systems fixed enough of the ship for Red One to regain proper navigational control and return home.

## Aftermath

Once Expansion Fleet Bankala was recorded as overdue for its mission, local Compact command send out ship trying ascertain just what had happened to it. They eventually found the system in which the battle had taken place, and sifting through the wreckage led them to the damaged *Curse of Prophecy*. Looking at the sensor data from the battle, Command realised that, without as advanced conventional computer systems as theirs, the human dreadnaught had to be partially AI-controlled in order for it to keep its breach core and displacement engine stable while also being able to turn Compact ships that got within real time communication range against themselves.

Since the ship also had the location of Earth in its databanks, the next step was a decapitating strike against what was left of the Confederacy, though with the revelation that humanity was building AIs, the objective was no longer brutal subjugation; now, it was complete extermination. The First Battle of Sol saw twenty-two billion humans die, six on the outer colonies and sixteen on Earth when it was scorched clean of all life, all because humanity had the audacity to fight back effectively and do what the Compact has never been capable of.

## References

1. The Last Angel, Prologue
2. The Last Angel, Chapter 10