To a certain degree, this engagement was similar to the one between the Hyperion and Nyon’s fleet in the orbit of Xil. The only difference was this time the terran were the ones on the aggression.

“All units proceed with the plan.” Horner, the commander of the combined forces, ordered.

Even though Tosh’s men made up most of the combined forces, the spectre had no intention of being the leader. He was an experienced covert operative, but being able to infiltrate a fortress and slit the fortress’ commander’s throat didn’t mean being able to launch a full scale assault on the fortress with an army. Tosh was well aware of that fact, so he handed the privilege to the second best person in the room.

Most of the Raiders knew Jean was a better commander than Horner, but after Xil Raynor wouldn’t give Jean command of the Raiders unless he absolutely had to. Thus came Matt Horner as the commander of the combined forces.

One of the usages of covert units like dark templars and ghosts was the ability to scout without being detected. As enhanced ghosts, spectres were even better at this job.

Before the attack, unlike the last time when the Raiders just blindly warped in, Tosh did some scouting. He sent two spectres, piloting two wraths, onto Bel’Shir first. Armed with cloaking fields, modified engines, and powerful psionic abilities, these spectres were able to sense and evade the few Tal’darim detectors and patrols.

Without much trouble, the spectres took a full scout of the Tal’darim defenses and reported back with all the information the terran needed for a clean engagement.

When the seven terran battlecruisers exited warp space, they were right beside one of the scouting destroyers.

If an army wanted to cover every inch of a planet as large as Bel’Shir, it would need hundreds of capital ships at least. That was more than twenty times the ships available for the Tal’darim defenders.

But the Tal’darim couldn’t just abandon the rest of the planet and focus on securing the terrazine geysers either. Thousands of probes were ravaging through mineral clusters all across the planet. They needed protection. Even the First Ascendant couldn’t shrug off the loss of this number of probes.

In his wisdom, the ascendant in command ordered destroyers and phoenixes to scout across the orbit of the planet for hostile presence.

This order allowed the ascendant to cover most of the planet but also left half the Tal’darim fleet scattered and relatively defenseless. Usually this shouldn’t be a problem and the Tal’darim fleet could come together as soon as enemies exited warp space, but to the prepared terran vessels, it was an opportunity as bright as the star in the sky.

All seven battlecruisers appeared in close proximity to the destroyer. The destroyer pilot barely had the time to scream into the comm

“Multiple terran capital vessels incoming! Ascendant Olane! We need countermeasures now!”

The ascendant in command, who was lazily lying back in her seat in her carrier’s bridge, sat up in vigilance. “All ships converge on my location! Tal’darim warriors, assemble near the terrazine geysers! The fleet will engage the terran in battle, but if they are to deploy landing parties, it will be your job to obliterate them. Probes, fall back to the defenses.”

“I shall become one...with the void...”

The seven battlecruisers started to blast away at the destroyer. At this close of a distance, there was no way for the destroyer to evade the laser batteries. Under the storm of orange, the support ship class plasma shield collapsed like broken glass.

The destroyer focused its destroyer beam on one of the mercenary battlecruisers, but under the terran firepower the ship was turned into a ball of flame almost immediately.

The destroyer was picked off without doing any real damage to the combined terran fleet, but it did buy some time for the Tal’darim fleet to assemble. When the terran vessels made a move at the planet’s surface, they were stopped by four carriers and seven destroyers.

Horner tapped his fingers on a table. Things didn’t go as well as he and the rest of the commanders have hoped, but they planned for this as well.

Without another word, the terran fleet charged toward the Tal’darim in high speed. The Hyperion was leading the charge. Its combat ability was one of the reasons Tosh, even with his fleet of five ships, dozens of elite assassins, and a group of mercenaries, still went through all the trouble to come to Raynor for help.

The terran didn’t bother sending ground forces to the surface of Bel’Shir. They knew as long as they could take down the fleet, the Tal’darim ground forces would have no way of stopping the bombardment of the battlecruisers.

On the other side, ascendant Olane was observing the terran moves with a few advisers.

“My master, these terran seem to be preparing for close quarter combat. Shall we pull back?” Inside Olane’s carrier and beside the female ascendant, a supplicant zealot observed.

“Pull back? Those terran are fools to engage us in melee. Their firepower will be crippled inside the hull of the ships while our blades will be unstoppable. Whoever came up with this plan is a fool.” Olane smirked. “Are our supplicants in place?”

“Yes, my master. All 200 of your supplicants are yearning for battle. As soon as you give the order, they will charge into your foe and rip them to pieces of broken flesh.” The supplicant replied zealously.

In a situation like this, when large numbers of units couldn’t be fighting at the same time, it was better to use fewer but stronger units. With this in mind, Olane kept all the Tal’darim ground forces on Bel’Shir and used supplicants alone to defend against boarding battles.

A part of Olane still believed the terran would follow their ships with a ground assault. Unless the terran believed they could destroy her fleet, they would try to hold her ships back and deploy ground forces to Bel’Shir and seize whatever they came here for, and she needed all the ground forces to hold them back.

“My master, the terran vessels are charging up their main weapon!” Another supplicant warned. On a scanner in front of him, seven bright heat signatures appeared.

“Shields to maximum.” Olane ordered coldly. “All ships move forward. The closer we get to the terran, the less effective their guns will be. Those who back off will be branded as traitors and will suffer an excruciatingly slow death.”

Olane wasn’t worried about herself. Her carrier was the best one in the entire fleet. Its top notch plasma shield, combined with the modified khaydarin crystal, could withstand almost any punishment.

Some of the destroyers might fall, but Olane didn’t really care. These destroyers, along with their pilots and supplicant forces aboard, were only under her command because Nuroka ordered so. She didn’t give a damn if they die.

They were largely useless to her, and if they died Nuroka could simply send reinforcements to her, so she was fine with watching them burn.

The Tal’darim fleet complied. The rest of the carriers put all the energy to the front plasma shield. Destroyers did a similar thing, but some of the pilots were already checking the emergency warping systems. Others were ready to give their lives for the cause. Even so, the entire Tal’darim fleet moved forward toward the encroaching terran ships.

“All cruisers, open fire!” When the Yamato Cannons were fully loaded, Horner didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

Seven balls of orange energy smashed into three of the seven destroyers. Once again, Horner chose to take out three ships once and for all in contrast to wound all seven ships.

The three unfortunate destroyers exploded immediately. Two Yamato Cannons at the same time was more than what their shields could handle. A hundred or so Tal’darim, pilots and supplicants alike, perished in the explosion.

But that was it. Both fleets were charging at each other, and the battlecruisers didn’t have time to reload their main cannon and fire again.

Dozens of phoenixes, along with nearly ten thousand interceptors, swarmed upon the seven battlecruisers.

Usually when facing this type of situation the Raiders would simply try to gun down these protoss fighters with their laser batteries and air to air missiles, but that was simply because usually the Raiders didn’t have enough fighters. A dozen vikings was nothing compared to thousands of protoss fighters and drones.

But this time the terran were much stronger. Tosh has spent years building up an army, and someone as ruthless and deadly as he in a place as chaotic as Deadman’s Port formed the ingredient of success. Through a series of blackmail, assassination, mind control, and threats, he gained himself a small fleet that would die for him.

The five battlecruisers were just a part of that fleet. A squad of a mixture of thirty wraiths and twenty vikings was another. He even purchased three assault galleons. Their polariton torpedoes and assault drones added to the relatively weak terran flanks.

Still, these fighters were still outnumbered by the Tal’darim, but they had fire support from the battlecruisers. ATA laser batteries, lanzer torpedoes, gemini missiles, polariton torpedoes and burst lasers formed a web of death. Assault drones from the assault galleons stood tall against the interceptors.

Phoenixes had the best hardware, the fighters themselves, and the best software, the pilots within, but sometimes neither was enough to save the fighter from a dozen missiles locked onto the fighter itself.

Interceptors were even worse. They were expendable drones with little armor and no shield. A single missile could destroy half a dozen of them.

In a wave of explosions, five dozen interceptors and two phoenixes were no more.

The Tal’darim retaliated swiftly. Interceptors washed over the fighters. Their pulse cannons picked the relatively weak armor of the vikings and wraiths apart. Phoenixes charged at the vikings with their weapons firing. Some Tal’darim pilots didn’t even bother to dodge the incoming missiles.

Jean saw a phoenix literally crashing into a viking. The viking exploded. The phoenix, on the other hand, emerged from the flames. It glanced around, looking for its next target, but suddenly a pair of missiles came in front an area of empty space behind the phoenix and ripped the fighter to shreds.

The wraith pilot silently grinned, but the kill exposed his position. One of the carrier pilots saw where the missiles came from, and fifty interceptors swarmed into the area and started firing blindly. The wraith, still cloaked, dodged, but one of the pulse cannons must have hit the cloaking field generator. The wraith blinked a few times before appearing.

“Shit!” The pilot cursed, but he didn’t have the time to say anything else as the interceptors overwhelmed him.

Horner frowned at the wave of screams from the radio channel. He wasn’t used to fighting in this brute force fashion, but Tosh insisted on breaking through the Tal’darim fleet ASAP. If the battle was drawn out long enough, the Death Fleet would reinforce, and there would be no way the terran could get the terrazine when it was protected by hundreds of carriers and motherships.

Plus, even Tosh, the owner of these fighters, didn’t mind the losses. Horner glanced at the computer screen that Tosh was on and saw the man was standing there, casually flipping his dagger. Horner suddenly realized he was very similar to Jean.

The captain sighed again. It was too late now. The dead were already gone. The only thing he could do would be completing the mission and making sure their death wasn’t pointless.

As the fighters from both races fought, the capital ships got closer and closer. Both laser batteries and destruction beams were targeted on ships of the opposite side. Crimson beams and orange rounds covered the space.

“Mr. Tosh, please ready the drop pods.” He turned to the large spectre.

“You’ve got it, captain Horner.” Tosh nodded as he turned around and walked out of the bridge. In comparison to sitting back in the battlecruiser’s bridge, he was much more useful in the field. Sure, it might be dangerous and perhaps a single interceptor might destroy the drop pod he was in and straight up kill him, but if he was afraid of death he would never have made it through the ghost training program.

To a certain degree, Jean was indeed similar to Tosh. Both were ruthless and willing to do anything to get to their goal. Both of them were willing to put themselves at risk. The only difference was Tosh was cold because of the decades of ghost training.

Jean was cold because she was built to be so.