Twenty-five fighters versus several hundreds. Stephanos knew that he and his men (and one woman) were all that stood between the incoming enemy fighters and several flights of bombers. He let out a grin and thumped the comms on.

'From here on out the battle begins! Trust your training, your instincts and after we dispatch these headless chickens, trust your wingman as well. No enemy in the galaxy has faced our Triglavs before! After today we'll make our name and fame spread far and wide! Go, Nightprowlers! Tear them to shreds!'

A loud chorus of acknowledgements were shouted and then complete silence reigned as they all focused on the task at hand. Steph's hands danced over the control panel and began their dance of death as the enemy crossed the final threshold. He liked to imagine the loud clanging of the rails as thrusters flared to life and tilted his heavy craft, pointing his nose towards the enemy. Already the simple manoeuvre placed several G's on him. Nothing compared to what would come soon, though. Triglavs were, aside being horridly expensive and agonisingly uncomfortable, incredibly draining to fly. The stress a pilot went through was insane and in the time it took his grandfather and his engineers to smooth out the 'little' kinks to properly protect the flyer, every test pilot had ended up with several broken bones. Steph himself had once made the mistake of trying to take the heavy fighter to its limits and had found his own falling woefully short, his entire rib cage shattering in a spectacularly sharp turn. His fellow pilots had congratulated him on the impossible manoeuvre and he had been forced to admit that he had blackened out the moment he had initiated the turn.

Now, however, the fighter was perfected and his ribs had long since healed. The balance between front and rear was perfect and as the thrusters gently pulsated to position him just right, his craft slid around on the internal rails in the ball-like construct around it. His nav-computer already began selecting targets, the heavy vulcan-cannons, pulsar-batteries and point defences ready to flash to life at the drop of a button. His engine growled softly, eagerly awaiting the moment when the oversized powerplant would feed it without holding back, letting the aptly named Drak-engine roar and spit flames. His eyes darted to his scanners and he saw the enemy come closer, the first missiles heading his way. It was a solid tactic. Most craft were outfitted with frontal weaponry and some defences in the rear, but that left them vulnerable from the side. Normally you relied on speed and not exposing your bombers to an incoming assault, but just because it was common sense to not do that, his grandfather had managed to rewrite the books on it. As inertia carried them further the Nightprowlers awaited the signal from their leader. It came a moment later when the missiles' thrusters burned out. Lighter, anti-fighter missiles would keep up their agile dance much longer, but to deal with heavily armoured Imperial bombers you needed a significantly heavier missile to crush their armour and slam through their thicker shields.

The engine roared to life and Steph laughed as G-forces pulled on him, his tight-fitting chair keeping his body from being slammed into anything. His laugh grew louder as he could see the errors in the enemy flying patterns, who were predictably stunned and equally horrified by something that was emitting the energy signature of a heavy bomber accelerate towards them in the wrong direction. His original inertia was still attempting to make him black out, but the suit whirred to life and rapidly compensated for the relatively minor pressure. Then he was off. His ship rolled itself sideways as his thrusters danced delicately at his touch and he dodged through the incoming missiles. Point defences came online and opened fire with sporadic bursts and explosions bloomed around him as he wove expertly through the missile curtain. Then he was through and the Nightprowlers went to work.

The distance between the two fighter groups shrunk rapidly. Some Novicans already opened fire, but without a proper up and close targeting profile the shots lost too much power and were nearly entirely diffused by the time they reached their opponent. Pulsar weapons were the weapon of choice for fighters, with lasers being a close second. The expensive Triglav carried a new type of weapon that would eventually come to dominate the Imperial Strike Forces, the aptly named Vulcan-cannons. As an enemy threw himself into a sharp pass to use his superior speed to get out of the heavy fighter's sights, Steph's computer took over and the twin cannons barked once. The ace pilot whistled appreciatively as the shots impacted, ripping the lighter fighter to shreds. The weapons were based on the repulsor weaponry in that their main impact relied on kinetic energy, making them a devastating threat for lightly armed craft. The enemy's wingman swirled by a second later and he was cut to pieces by a stream of pulsar fire. The pair that followed never even saw what hit them as his vulcans spoke once again. The Triglav danced under his touch as he guided it through the battlefield with grace. Occasionally counter fire would splash harmlessly against his shields, but for the most part his constant manoeuvring and unlimited mobility kept him out of harm's way. After another fighter was downed and he gained a moment's reprieve, he looked at his scanner to see the status of his squadron and to see if any enemy had gotten away. He grinned at what he saw.

Aboard the Tatyana Vaslow was grinning ear to ear as red lights winked out by the dozens across the entire board. Just as he had predicted, the Novican light fighters were not even a remote match for his Triglavs. Their ability to turn and redirect themselves within the ball made them unpredictable foes, able to fire accurately in the direction they were facing rather than the one they were flying. Their triple engine system, internal thrusters, external thrusters and engines, which had coined their name as being three headed, let them fly far more freely than any other fighter in existence. Even the Kra'lagh would be hard pressed to go up against them if the bastards ever deigned to use carriers as well. For now he had to contend himself with the battle with a bunch of traitors. He checked the screen again, making sure that it was all being filmed, and as countless of light fighters ran into a solid Imperial wall that only allowed the occasional lone fighter to pass, he realised he'd never have to worry for eager recruits again. No more receiving only a handful of earnestly enthusiastic young men and women who voluntarily signed up to become fighter pilots. Once this footage hit the datanet the academies would have recruits lining up for miles on end! Even if both Strike Forces would end up annihilated over the course of this campaign, the future of Imperial fighters was safe. Provided they survived the fucking Kra'lagh, at least.

However, the battle was far from over. His lighter fighters were still harrying the enemy ships, of whom mostly destroyers remained. With their sensors largely blasted off by the constant flybys, the Novican Task Forces were struggling to dodge the incoming mass rounds and roughly half of their fleet had been reduced to scattered debris. If the Novicans hadn't been so desperate to close in to the Paris', whose thrusters were slowly burning to reverse them at a snail's pace, the sheer level of scrap metal floating about would have forced him to call his fighters off or risk seeing them collide with it by the hundreds. Even now he had lost a decent number of craft, but it rested well within expected parameters. Once the heavy bombers arrived, that battle would be over. His pilots knew what to target and while they couldn't exactly destroy capital ships just like that, they didn't need to. Disable their engines and thrusters and their own battlecruisers would finish the job.

No, the real battle, for his units at least, was about to start. Already the Novican light fighters were breaking off their attack runs and forming up with their heavier brethren. His old eyes could tell apart the enemy groups, if with some difficulty, as they each reacted slightly different. Some raced ahead, counting on their numerical superiority to carry the day. Others were more cautious and had begun slowing down. The last group was ran by veterans, or at least people who knew what they were doing. They understood that if the Empire was willing to throw a handful of fighters against theirs while slowly reforming their ranks, then it meant their own plans had been predicted. Those squadrons were pulling back entirely, returning to the heavy fighters a ways behind. They didn't do so right of the bat though, a few squadrons had been ordered to ignore the Triglavs and try to just fly past them as fast as possible, but they couldn't get enough forces past to pose a legitimate threat to the already reformed bomber squadrons. The Novicans weren't fools, after all. Merely hopelessly outmatched and outplayed. The Empire had always kept its strongest cards close to them. Even if the levels of technology were similar, the raw amount of resources that the Imperials were willing to invest in their military had widened the gap tremendously.

Admiral Vaslow tapped out his orders, tight beam transmissions rapidly relaying them to his field commanders. The wings and squadrons responded accordingly, trusting their Admiral blindly. Moving fighters in open space was always a dangerous task. More than one squadron had received their orders too late and had rushed headlong into an enemy fleet or, far more frequently, nothing at all. It was a pilot's greatest fear to lose contact with their allies and be set adrift in the void of space, lost forever. To be consigned to a slow death that could take days or weeks, depending on your rationing. It was why a lot of pilots carried a pistol with them.

As a veteran pilot he was aware of this and knew that the orders he had just sent out would put that fear into the hearts of many. His Triglavs were making a frontal attack on the enemy. His other heavy fighters were regrouping and would cut a sideways path, flying an intercept course with the enemy carrier groups. His bombers would be hiding behind them, on a symmetrical course but further away from the enemy. To plot a course to where your enemy would likely end up, at least according to Admiral Verloff. He'd have to be wary of pulling his own ships back, however, as there were still enough strike forces out there and the Novican battlecruisers would have his carriers for lunch without slowing down much. The Paris' battlecruisers and their escorts were behind him, with the fleeing corvettes rapidly entering safe space now, beginning minor repairs and taking on new crew. Behind his allies were roughly half of the Novican strike forces, or at least what was left of them. That meant that the remaining half was in front of him, but so far they seemed content to hurl themselves at Admiral Verloff's ships rather than his Strike Forces, which was a blessing given that he already had enough on his plate dealing with his Novican counterparts. That left the enemy carriers, who were trying to move towards Verloff's rear, where their attack craft could do tremendous damage while running little risk themselves, hiding in the Imperial's drive wake. If they could get past him, that was. Fighters could very easily be forced to switch targets to defend their carriers, because losing that was equal to a death sentence to the thousands of men that called it their home. A fighter simply couldn't travel as far, bombers had a constant need for rearmament and no other ship but a dedicated carrier could accommodate the sheer numbers of craft flying around. Naturally the same truth held up for the Imperials and the enemy fighters and bombers had painted the carriers as priority targets.

So now, with both carrier groups racing back towards the same location, it was only logical that their large fleets of fighters would collide roughly in the middle, with the same objectives in mind. Stop the bombers or lose the carriers. Everything else was a secondary objective. His eyes were glued to the display and he knew he would no longer be able to blink once the main forces would clash. He had the advantage of a better equipped fleet, but his enemy outnumbered him ten times over, if not more. If the Novicans played their cards right they could just waltz over him.

But as Admiral Verloff had already displayed, that strategy had one fatal weakness. It required the Empire to let the Novic Confederacy play their cards.

Admiral Vaslow laced his fingers together and closed his eyes for a brief, blissful moment. He thought of his grandson. Of how proud he was when he had decided to enlist in the military. How that pride grew when the young man had entered the pilot academy. How he had aced test after test. His first assignments, the countless war games. He had dozens, hundreds of men and women flying out there, braving the void, whom he saw as sons and daughters and he whispered a heartfelt prayer, that he'd see them all again.

When he opened them again the fear and doubt was gone from his eyes.

The Novicans simply had to maintain their formations to win. It would be that easy for them. The simplest of plans.

He grinned a wolf's grin.

The hardest to execute.