Chapter 195: Strike Force Reaches The Mining Sector

The strike force reached the mining sector before the Kharov understood that it had become the next target.

That was the value of Eirenne’s work.

Without her, the Kharov would still have been confused, but confusion alone was not enough. Confused enemies could still fire in the right direction by accident.

They could still throw ships forward, send warnings, or destroy supplies out of panic.

Eirenne made sure they stayed confused in every possible way, delaying them.

The mining-sector fleet had already been pulled off its best defensive position by false routing orders.

Half of its ships were moving toward a threat that did not exist, while the other half remained near the depot without a clear idea of whether they should hold position, regroup, or move to support one of the other garrisons.

By the time the first ships realized something was wrong, Solenne’s aircraft were already moving in.

"Carrier wave away," Solenne said.

Her voice was calm, but there was a hard edge under it now.

This was no longer the opening strike. They had already hit two garrisons and taken enough supplies to make the raid worthwhile.

This last target had to be clean, fast, and controlled. If it dragged out, the advantage would start slipping away.

Aurelian watched the mining depot appear on the main display.

It was larger than he expected.

Not beautiful, not refined... Just huge, blunt, and useful.

Processing towers surrounded several fortified storage blocks, with ship berths built into a wide industrial ring.

Mining transports were scattered across the sector, some loaded, some empty, some still attached to resource lines.

Around it all drifted the remaining defense ships, turning too slowly as alarms finally began to make sense.

"Outer ships are reacting," Neris said.

"Too late," Rhoswen replied.

She moved before the Kharov could settle, cutting across the forward path of the nearest destroyer group.

This time, Aurelian did not need to warn her. She kept inside the marked line, hit the ships that mattered, and forced the group away from the transport approach lane.

Lysara opened fire from the other side.

Her beams cut through two heavy defense platforms before they finished rotating toward Solenne’s aircraft.

A third platform managed to fire once, its shot scraping across the edge of one strike formation, but Solenne adjusted immediately and sent a torpedo wave into its exposed side.

The platform broke apart in silence.

The mining-sector defense fleet tried to gather.

It failed for the same reason the others had failed.

Their network was broken, their orders conflicted, and every time a commander tried to make sense of the situation, Eirenne gave him something else to worry about.

One Kharov group received a warning that the depot’s reactor line had been sabotaged.

Another was told a pirate boarding force had already entered the lower storage ring.

A third was ordered to protect an empty cargo corridor.

By the time the actual threat arrived, they were all facing the wrong way.

"Begin suppression," Aurelian ordered.

Solenne’s aircraft struck first, not at the warehouses, but at the defense nodes and ship berths around them.

The goal was not to destroy the depot. The goal was to make it helpless long enough to take what mattered.

Missiles tore into gun nests.

Drones hit sensor towers.

Torpedoes disabled the heavier docked escorts before their crews could fully bring shields online.

Then the mechs moved.

Almost every shipgirl in the expedition had brought spare frames for this operation. Not enough for a full planetary invasion, but more than enough for a fast station assault.

Under Solenne’s cover, dropships and boarding craft reached the depot’s outer locks and maintenance hulls, cutting in through marked points that Eirenne had already identified as weak.

The Kharov defenders were not ready for that kind of landing.

They had expected ship combat.

They had expected boarding from pirates, perhaps, but not organized mech forces in large numbers, supported by carrier aircraft, jamming, and real-time internal mapping.

The first Kharov defense line collapsed in minutes.

Their troops were brave enough in places, and some fought hard, but their equipment was poor compared to what had come through the breach.

Heavy infantry weapons barely slowed the lead frames. Their armored vehicles were useful only in open corridors, and the boarding teams avoided those whenever possible.

Aurelian watched the station map fill with blue markers as his forces advanced.

"Storage ring breach secured," Eirenne reported. "Processing block three is locked down. Resistance at dock control is heavier than expected."

"Send reserve frames," Aurelian said.

"Already routed."

Rhoswen laughed through the link. "She really does like answering before people ask."

Eirenne replied, "It saves time."

The depot’s internal resistance lasted longer than the outer fleet, but not by much.

Once the command node fell, most of the remaining defenders became isolated. Some kept fighting.

Others locked themselves in secured rooms. A few tried to trigger emergency destruction protocols, but Eirenne had already cut off the self-destruct chain before the mechs even entered the main storage level.

That alone saved half the haul.

"Self-destruction systems are disabled," Eirenne said. "Local commanders no longer control the depot."

"Good," Aurelian said. "Transports in."

The heavy transports moved forward.

This time, the work was even more direct than at the garrison starports. The mining depot existed for storage and processing, so everything important had already been gathered into dense, easy-to-move forms.

Refined alloys.

Rare metals.

Industrial crystals.

Reactor-grade fuel cells.

Heavy machinery modules.

Mining drones.

Shipbuilding stock.

Aurelian had no intention of taking bulk ore unless it was already compacted and worth the space. The transports had limits, and every container had to justify itself.

Astercourt’s priority list was followed without argument.

Eirenne enforced it anyway.

While the loading started, another problem appeared.

"There are foreign merchant vessels docked in the secondary ring," Eirenne said. "They are not Kharov military assets. Several have sent negotiation requests."

Aurelian turned his attention to that part of the display.

He had expected something like this, though not here specifically. A cluster this active would not trade only with itself.

Even if the Kharov were brutal and disliked by many, business tended to survive where profit existed.

Merchants would come if there were resources to buy, and the mining sector had plenty.