[AgentZero]

Oh look what we have here? Could it be? It is! More Hell is for Heroes! A fairly short installment this time, to set the stage for the thrilling finale. I planned to finish it tonight, but the pig I ate for dinner seems to resent me for it, so I'm going to curl up in a ball and try to sleep, and try to get the last chapter out by lunchtime tomorrow.

-----

A million is a very large number. The frequency with which it is used has robbed it of much of it's significance, because there are a lot of very big things out there. A million light years. A million credits. A million years. A million ships. Even something small multiplied by one million wound up being something awfully large. A million seconds was nearly two weeks. A million minutes was a couple months shy of two years. And a million hours was a bit over a hundred and twenty years.

Yes, Grand Admiral Angus McArthur mused, a million ships was an awful lot of ships. Seven million ships, on the other hand, was an awful lot more. And while a million fighters was the stuff of nightmares for any point defense operator, one hundred and forty million fighters was enough to drive that same poor PDO absolutely mad. And yet, for better or worse, that was exactly what he found himself in command of. News of the Great Enemy's return had reached the Empress rather quickly and McArthur had just as quickly found himself promoted to Grand Admiral of the Fleet and put in charge of nearly every single warship in all the Imperium, even if it had taken the dissolution of Parliament and the execution of a few rebellious Senators, it was still a rather remarkable feat for the amount of time it had taken the headstrong young lady.

The Armada, as it had begun to be called, was the single greatest concentration of firepower ever mustered in one place by the Terran Imperium, or for that matter, any known sentient race in the galaxy. Save one, McArthur thought with a shiver, although it was debatable whether the Great Enemy could be considered sentient. It was also debatable, he admitted to himself, whether or not his mighty force would be enough to overcome the Enemy fleet that had just begun to show up on the tactical plot in front of him.

“All fleets, enter attack formation,” he said calmly, rising from his chair. The phrase 'all fleets' still felt strange on his tongue, for a man used to commanding task forces and squadrons.

It took nearly ten minutes for all fleets to report ready status. McArthur cringed inside. For a single fleet, such a response time was thoroughly unacceptable, but his armada consisted of over twenty thousand fleets trying to work together as one with far, far too little time to practice.

“All fighters, assume standby positions.”

This time it only took a shade over four minutes for Fighter Control to report readiness. Of course, the fighters didn't have to do much maneuvering, they just had make sure they weren't in the flight path of any of the countless missiles McArthur was about to unleash. The fighters themselves would go in behind the the Armada's third missile salvo, to make sure that the Enemy was suitably tied up not to notice the fighters bearing down on them until it was too late. Every single one of McArthur's one hundred and forty-plus fighters was either equipped or retrofitted for anti-ship duty. The Enemy did not employ fighters, despite the horrific destruction the Imperium's fighters had wrought on their most recent assault, even despite the truly appalling casualties the Second Dynasty's fighters had inflicted so many thousands of years ago.

The enemy did not seem to adapt well, if at all. It was their one, perhaps their only weakness. From mankind's first encounter with them up to the present, they had always favoured big ships. And when their big ships fell prey to small nimble fighters, their solution was simply to build bigger ships. Not ships with more point-defense, not dedicated point-defense cruisers. Just bigger ships. Of course, their biggest ships still fell prey to the Second Dynasty's fighters, it just took a lot longer. The fighters were a tremendous advantage for the Imperium, and McArthur was willing to take all the advantages he could get in this fight. Especially since from the reading coming in to the tactical plot, he was going to be outnumbered almost two to one.

“Missile Control, status report,” said McArthur, his eyes fixed on the tactical plot.

“All fleets report firing solutions locked in, sir,” came the response.

“Very well,” said McArthur. “All fleets, prepare to fire salve one on my mark.”

“Five...”

“Four...”

“Three...”

“Two...”

“One...”

“Fire.”