They were too late.

The massive series of warp rings broke apart in a rapid series of silent explosions, blue light flaring through the darkness one last time before going dun, fizzing out like a burst light bulb. Debris scattered on the all three axis of the third dimension, left right, up down, forward and back.

The Empyrean's shields flared with golden light but did not break.

What was a little debris after the full heat of a blazing star.

Still, the Empyrean may have been fine, but that was about the only good news.

Below them, and a little to the left, the Andromeda trading hub, a once massive rotating space station, broke apart into thousands of chunks, big and little, like a crushed potato chip. Even from here the warning lights flaring inside the space station could be seen pulsating red. Many of the station's interior doors had been locked tight, sealing off the sections that were still intact.

But plenty more pieces were compromised beyond repair.

Bodies mingled with debris around the station.

And what seemed to be a thousand void ships stratified their shields, many of them too small and too fast for the Empyrean to get a proper lock on. Several dozen smaller turrets fired from the sides base and peak of her hull intermittently shattering the smaller ships into brief explosions of fire, quickly snuffed by the surrounding vacuum.

But still The empyrean struggled to fight all of them, and in any case it could only contend with a few dozen of the smaller ships while others continued to reap destruction upon what remained of the trading station, falling slowly apart under the continual barrage of ordinance.

This violent tableau painted itself across the night in complete silence in contrast to the loud colors and powerful flashes of light.

The empyrean was holding up, but she was still only one ship and could do little against the swarm, breaking and whirling around her hull like a school of fish part around the sleek body of a shark. Sure a few of them went down, but the vast majority remained.

Other ships were on the way, but it was already too late for the station, and every second another surviving bit of the space hub was torn open or blown apart, scattering innocent bodies into the vacuum.

Some would likely die there suspended in nothingness.

There was only one option.

Deploy their own squadrons with their best pilot at the head.

Ramirez broke right with the empyrean, and Adam broke left from the open hanger, ship cutting through a brief opening in the empyrean's shields as he passed into the night. Inside his helmet, his HUD lit up sharply displaying vector lines, and highlighting his enemies in red.

The Fealty combat system was eager to begin briefly appearing on screen as a small animated dog before vanishing.

They had work to do.

The old Darkfire hummed pleasantly under Adam's hands, the joystick familiar beneath his fingers. Overhead, the 360 canopy gave him a unique view of the carnage being sewed around him. His mirrored visor kept out the worst of the light, shed from explosions. Cool air was continually fed up into the space inside his helmet, supplying him with a steady stream of oxygen while the cooling air helped him to avoid airsickness, a problem which he had never really had issue with.

He flicked the joystick, and his aircraft rolled sharply right, two times before he restabilized, the rapid spin brought him out of the line of fire. From there he rotated and dropped rapidly, locking onto his attacker, and blowing them out of the sky in quick succession.

In the long standing military tradition of earth since WWI, Adam had become a Flying Ace after five confirmed kills on enemy combatants during a dogfight. That status had been gained over the Gromm homeworld some time ago, and since then he could have become an ace several times over. In Adam's own opinion that fact said nothing about the flying abilities of the men and women who came before him in Earth's military history, but the simple fact that there was a higher emphasis on aerial combat these days, and more people to shoot.

These days the threshold in difficulty for becoming an ace hovered somewhere around the 50 kill mark. Even with all the opportunity to join aerial combat, rarely did anyone have the opportunity to make fifty confirmed aerial takedowns. Human militaries the GA over had coined the term

Superace.

Only a few men and women had since gained that title.

Adam oriented the darkfire vertical to his previous line of flight, and then rotated the back burners in the direction he had originally been flying.

When he fired up the burners, his ship shot backwards in the opposite direction, passing under his pursuer by a mere few feet. As he passed, he deployed a rapid burst of hornet missiles, which swarmed the other ship and tore it apart.

From there he rolled left and dived down as his own ship began. Someone had lock on him, and he wasn't going to wait for them to use it.

He corkscrewed into a sharp dive, up or down or sideways it didn't matter before pulling up sharply. The enemy combatant followed him with only relative difficulty.

This one had more talent than the others.

Orgave void light flared from its engines.

Adam rolled right and then arced in a large sweeping parabola down and to his left, passing under his pursuer. It was a good manuver, and it kept him out of weapons lock, but it also didn't put him into a good attack position either. The other pilot seemed to be well aware of that fact, and their two ships were swept into a violent dance around what remained of the shattered space station.

A burst of orange energy shot over Adam's right wing, singing the paint black.

Damn this one was good,

The pilot was probably human, no other way they would have the reflex to go toe to toe with Adam like this.

It was an interesting sensation. Adam had never fought another human before, and the experience was wholly unpleasant.

He tired to shake his pursuer, pulled out every trick in his proverbial book, but at the very last second whoever they were always seemed to manage to pull out before catastrophe.

Adam was the better pilot, but not by much.

Below him, the broken station took reprieve in their sudden bout of violence, untouched for the moment. They hadn't intended to come here, had intended to go meet Kazna at the place where the stars matched Naktan's vision, but all of that had gone to hell in a hand basket when the GA declared war on Arcadia.

The GA which was now run by the void under control of none other than the dark general Kazna herself.

The attacks had happened all at once, all at once all over the two galaxies as Adam and his crew had prepared for their final push to the finish. As the Arcadian star, Bob, fell under fire, so too did their allies.

An entire armada of previously unseen black void warships had appeared at Celex borders, The Jovian System Europa Colonies (JSEC) had gone under siege at almost the same time and several of eighty moons had been destroyed along with a thousand or more people who made the moons of jupiter their home. None of the Galilean moons had been destroyed but Amalthea had easily been the largest casualty . Europa had been locked down to secure the Hydroplants, while its military had mobilized from Ganymede's surface.

Meanwhile an advance force had locked down Anin, unable to make it past the Drev field Nexus that guarded the planet, but effectively cutting them off from the rest of their allies.

So far, the interior of the Solar System had remained untouched.

Noctopolis had been taken rapidly, and the Terasaki homeworld was following close after.

Their entire alliance was at war.

Adam rolled onto his back rapidly considering his opinions. Briefly he considered trying to lose his pursuer among the debris, outfly him, but he worried what would happen if the other ship crashed into one of the surviving station pods.

He couldn't risk it.

The other ship dropped low and pulled back, trying to lock onto him again, but Adam pulled into a sharp backward loop.

The other pilot saw hat he was doing and rotated his ship in place trying to keep Adam within his sights.

That not working, Adam began a slow spiral inwards and sped up.

Angular momentum.

If he wanted to keep it up he was going to have to spin in a tighter circle than Adam with higher G forces.

The other pilot gave up and broke out of the spin, but by that time Adam was behind him Another set of ships cut past, a void ship chasing one of the Empyrean's own ships.

It was a Maker design, part of what had been included in the Empyrean's equipment, its hull pearly white, its engines alive with golden energy. It made Adam's old darkfire look like a scrap heap, but the pilot didn't have nearly as much experience as Adam, or its pursuer.

Whoever was flying that ship wasn't going to last long.

Adam had an idea.

Fealty tagged the friendly ship.

Callsign: Copycat

Adam cut to the side as her pursuer came back around intentionally allowing the other pilot to hook onto this tail as he keyed his mike, "Come in Copycat,"

"Cherub!"

Wow, he hadn't heard that name in a long time.

You don't give yourself a callsign, it's simply bad form. That name had been given to him back at the academy shortly after his first flight, Kimball had read his review from then Captain Palmer who said, "A man with a baby face who can fly like an angel." Hence Cherub.

Adam didn't keep his baby face for long, but the name stuck.

He hadn't used it much since.

"Follow my lead copycat, and I'll get you out of this." he didn't usually like to make promises, but this one he knew he could cash.

"Copy Cherub."

Copycat was just holding on, but she managed to follow his orders circling in a wide arc upwards.

Adam had to time this just right or they were screwed.

He cut upwards as well, angling down sharply going fast.

Copycat was reaching the top of her arc.

"Turn down in three, two."

"He's Got lock on me!" She shouted.

"HOLD." Adam snarled into his mic

She quivered in the air but did as told

Adam shot under her at high speeds just as she began plunging dowards. Her nose missed his tail by feet. Their pursuers were not so lucky, vanishing together in very brief fireball as they collided, shattering apart mid air as they both broke rolling to the sides to avoid flying bits of metal.

"Air fleet, this is the Empyrean, hostile forces are breaking, moving to surround the station."

Ramirez's voice crackled a bit over the comm but Adam moved to do as told, flying wingtip to wingtip with copycat joined shortly by Sidestep and Kermit." as they moved to the station, rotating around what remained of one of their central trade hubs.

Adam's heart sank a bit as he looked on at the carnage. A lot of people died here today.

But not only that.

The void was cutting off the trade supply.