The Battle for the Katar Wormhole is the name given by Quaranian historians to an engagement between the Drakodominatus Tyranny and the United Free Peoples Coalition during the Great Tyranny War. It was an attempt by Coalitionary General Gustavus Ikeben to further isolate the Dominatus' forces in Andromeda by shutting down a wormhole that led to the Katar Sector. However, after having succeeded in securing the installation, he decided against destroying it and instead went on to establish a presence in the Katar Sector.
Opposing Forces[]
PLA 1st Armada[]
Fresh from its victories of the Scorched Earth Campaign, the People's Liberation Army had already seen months of action against the Drakodominatus Tyranny. Its pilots and leaders had been well conditioned over the course of the arduous struggle. At home, Coalition factories were churning out starships faster than they were able to find crews for them. By the time the Tyranny was finally expelled from Coalition space, the PLA had acquired hundreds of thousands of Warships which they divided into eleven armadas each composed of roughly 50,000 vessels.
The PLA 1st Armada, under the personal command of Coalitionary General Gustavus Ikeben, spearheaded the devastating offensives that followed the end of the Campaign. Its ships, unlike their Dominatus counterparts, were well stocked, well supplied, and had a high morale. Elements from the 2nd and 5th Armadas also participated in the battle, having been called in for good measure.
821st Petahydron[]
The 821st Petahydron is the name of the formation assigned to policing the system which contains the wormhole. It is divided into 10 different battlegroups, each of equal size and each headed by a Dreadnaught, save for one, which is led by a Demogorgon Mark 2 Leviathan, and each polices the outer rim of the system at equidistant points from each other in order to enable them to support each other. The 821st Petahydron is commanded by Richtov Reukritz, a Dominatus Admiral Letheon, who actually controls the larger formation of the 96th Exahydron, which the 821st is part of. While generally speaking, the vast majority of supplies were being shuttled off to the campaign against the AGC, the 821st Petahydron was fully supplied and ready for combat due to the relative importance of the location that it guarded.
Background[]
After having succeeded in repelling the Tyranny invasion during the Scorched Earth Campaign, the PLA launched a devastating offensive which flooded through nearly undefended sectors of Tyranny space. Unlike the Dominatus commanders, Ikeben now had the luxury to take risks and was able to engage them head on. Tyranny formations rallied to defend key areas, forming small pockets of resistance that had to be stomped out directly. One such pocket was the fleet defending a wormhole to the Katar Sector, through which Ikeben feared they would be able to shuttle in reinforcements. It was important, he surmised, that the PLA capture it to further isolate the Domiantus in Andromeda from the rest of its territories.
Reinforcing his 1st Armada with elements from the 2nd and 5th Armadas, he set out to accomplish this goal with a force of roughly 63,000 ships.
Battle[]
Life proceeded as normal for the 821st Petahydron as the 10 battlegroups went about their endless rotation about the wormhole at the center of the system. Thinking this installation secure, the Dominatus were not prepared for the magnitude of the attack to come from Gustavus Ikeben's massive armada. For the robotic ships, it was merely another day with no changes, and the same protocols went through.
Gustavus though, having the strategic offensive, could dictate the tempo of the War in this sector, and could attack wherever he wanted to, and whenever he wanted to, giving him an unprecedented advantage over his overextended Dominatus nemeses. Using jumpdrives to enter an area where the full firepower of only on the Dominatus battlegroups could be brought to bear, he optimized the situation for his forces by reducing the formidable power of the Dominatus ships by a large factor. Still unable to intercept the jump drives, a technology that they had never required and that bypassed their exceptionally precise hyperspatial detection sensors, the Dominatus were initially caught unaWare. However, the unerring skill of the robotic ships meant that the ships were combat ready in a period of time impossible for an organic crew.
The Dominatus battlegroup and the massive armada started exchanging fire instantly as the other Dominatus battlegroups fired their weapons at longer ranges. The Dominatus battlegroup that was engaged was hopelessly outmatched as their size and technology advantage was completely offset by the massive amounts of FPC ships. Within moments, the battlegroups shields were collapsing, under fire from an enemy orders of magnitudes more numerous, and while they put up as heroic a fight as robotic ships could do, the massive salvos of antimatter from the FPC overwhelmed them. Soon, Dominatus ships in that battlegroup were exploding as the antimatter torpedoes impacted them. This is not to say that the FPC were unscathed by this firefight as the battlegroups formidable firepower as well as the firepower from many of the farther out Dominatus ships impacted them, but they had won the skirmish.
While this happened, the Dominatus ships formed up into one cohesive battlegroup made of the 900 ships remaining, so as to offset the disadvantages the first battlegroup happened, however, they were still horribly outnumbered. Having higher effective weapons ranges, the Dominatus kept their distance from Ikebens armada and ruthlessly bombarded them with their weapons which decimated whatever they hit, especially when the cataclysmic main weapon of the Demogorgon Class Leviathan Mark 2 impacted the FPC ships. Ikeben, with his tactical acumen, thought quickly on how to remedy the situation and used jump drives to get his forces to the area immediately outside that of the system and thus beyond the range of the Dominatus.
While there, Richtov made the decision to enter hyperspace as soon as the FPC returned into the sector so as to offset whatever move Ikeben may have made. Ikeben, deciding to close the distance, which favored the Dominatus, used the jump drives to enter a place where Dominatus ships would be in effective range of the FPC's weapons. As per Richtov's plan, the Dominatus fleet immediately entered hyperspace, leaving Richtov alone in the system while Richtov figured out the best way to deal with Ikeben. Ikeben, thinking as fast as ever, told his engineers to rig a plan to have his ships home in on the next thing that entered the system, which he was sure would be Dominatus ships. The engineers, though perplexed by the unorthodox strategy, had faith in the tactical genius of Ikeben, and implemented the strategy speedily.
Richtov, wanting to enter first with his most powerful and most long ranged ship, used the STA calculations of the realspace positions of the FPC ships, used the machine brain of the Mark 2 to calibrate his weaponry to the FPC ships so as to give them a fearsome barrage once he exited hyperspace. After doing this, Richtov exited out of hyperspace at maximum weapons range with the massive Leviathan, leaving the rest of the ships in hyperspace. As soon as he exited, the FPC ships entered hyperspace and exited it right next to him, and they ended up as crowded as could be around the Dominatus flagship. At this range, completely encircled, the Dominatus ships barrage did utterly catastrophic damage to whatever it hit as the FPC ships tried to destabilize and prevent themselves from being drawn in by the gravity of the Leviathan.
Aftermath[]
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