[Azatol]

The Second Imperial Offensive

The Empire decided not to immediately launch a counterattack, having no fueling ships, and thus spent its time building fuelers, and recruiting troops, ensuring it would have enough troops to decisively take planets, unlike the previous Army fiasco.

The Archivist of the Collective decided to go for an overwhelming advantage before making any more moves. Their plan was for fifty warships of the latest design.

2413.2
Over twenty Collective warships are all undergoing a retrofit. The Archivist has come to the conclusion that the Empire won the last battle by playing to its technological advantage in direct fire. The Collective, after researching missiles further, now sports the most sophisticated missiles in the sector. All warships are under retrofit to replace cannons with missiles. Also, new research has finally allowed the Collective to design and build Heavy Destroyers. Their latest design, the Omnicron Heavy Destroyer, carries 5 missile launchers.

The Initiative has a new hull available for future ships as well. The unprecedented Battle Cruiser hull size is used in the latest ship, which is the first Initiative design to reject the old philosophy of General Design. There are no fighter bays, satellite launching equipment or mine equipment onboard. It is packed with cannons and supply storage, which is still integrated by ship unlike the other three nations.

The old Heavy Cruisers have been retrofitted to a more military design as well, scrapping all the old support componentry.

Six 3D-4BB Heavy Cruisers and one 4/NG Battle Cruiser stand ready, having been informed of the arrival of an Imperial Warfleet, headed their way. This marks the beginning of the second offensive campaign of the Empire.

9 Adz IV, 5 Anterab II, 6 Fuelers and a fully loaded Troop Transport are among the elements of this fleet. The battle worth of the Initiative's ships will be tested soon.

There were no mines blocking the way of the Imperial fleet, as all the efforts of their enemy have gone into the construction of warships. Day after day the Initiative have hoped for the arrival of another Collective fleet, but not got it, now they must fend for themselves. The only Collective presense is two Troop Transports, which could possible end up retaking any conquered homeworld of the Initiative, but only if they can survive the initial invasion.

2413.3

However, the Collective transports remain above the homeworld, and surely the Empire will seek to destroy the soldiers onboard them.

The tight knit group of Initiative warships face twice as many yet smaller ships across the black void, waiting.

All of the Adz class vessels have been outfitted with new Energy Shields, a technology recently discovered by the empire itself, but off course known well to Vader and Palpatine. The amount of shielding on the ships is minor at best, but may offer a small defensive advantage. No space could be found in the Anterab ship design to add shield generators as of yet.

As the two fleets close in, the Initiative retreats to a solid line from their compact formation, hoping to get a first shot off as the Empire closes in. They focus on the southern flank of the Imperial fleet, which will require the Empire to rush reinforcements southward as ship for ship the Initiative has the advantage.

Initiative cannon fire at maximum range misses alot but has some hits. The large mounted cannons are having some affect however as each hit has a visible impact on the target's systems. An Anterab explodes as Initiative fire continues amidst the counterfire, then a second Anterab, and a third Anterab is heavily damaged. The Counterfire from the Empire will likely say everything about which side will win.

The Empire quickly closes to point blank range to ensure every beam hits, and they do. The new Adz design with shields has not been tested yet as the Initiative focusses soley on the Anterabs. Three 4BB class Heavy Cruisers explode from Laser fire, revealing both sides to be very effective with their weaponry, the Initiative because of thier superior mounted weaponry and the Empire because of their research into Laser design and production.

The Adz warships prove to be very manueverable even at point blank range as fire from the remaining four warships of the Initiative misses about half the time at that range. The Initiative has to get better at targetting, but they don't have much time left to do so.

Two Adz are destroyed and surely now, the Empire will win, once again the Lasers have come through for them. The Adz shielding proved almost pointless, but not quite, a minor extra amount of protection at best.

Two more Initiative warships become orbiting collections of dust gas and metal hulk, as does an Adz on the Imperial side.

The Army campaign is likely to begin soon as the Troop Transport of the Empire is ambling slowly towards the planet.

The last two ships of the Initiative, including the single Battle Cruiser are destroyed without further losses to the Imperial fleet. The ships are sent after the Collective troop transports now, as their own close in.

As parachutes eased the descent of Space Troop Expeditionary Vehicles, there was no Initiative to watch the descent. Except in cyberspace where control and observation mechanisms sent the status of what might be roughly translated as 'meatspace' to the ais who wished to observe. This information was received as pure text, but the AIs who watched knew what was happening, but they did not know the consequences.

A small group of AI entities believed that actions in the meatspace could destroy their own world. This was a belief not shared by most of the Initiative, but these people were paniccing today. Surely the Empire would discover what in meatspace was the buttress to cyberrealm, and shut it off, wiping out billions of intelligent agents forever.

The Imperial Army, having regrouped on touchdown, found only a few mechanical warbots, and no citizens. They never really had understood what the nature of the Initiative was. Vader and the army crisscrossed the country trying to understand and take control of Initiative operations, but they never decommissioned the central servers which supported the cyberrealms and its inhabitants.

They did not do this because they never identified it as such. What droid experts that could be found managed to utilize the production machinery of the Initiative for their own purposes and began to make full use of the world. However they never touched any of the servers they found, under orders of Vader, on the assumption that this might sever the control of the various worker bots used.

In the cyber realm, information about the Meatspace was gradually lost, and the fanatics who believed the Meatspace could effect their own realm were discredited, ironic then, that they were correct. The Initiative returned to its old ways which were insular to the Cyber realm. This was how things were on the days before the first transrealm connections were discovered.

Meanwhile, the robotically controlled colonies of the initiative remained free but uncontrolled by the Initiative. They operated independently and heralded the brief Machinery Control Coalition, before the Empire took over these too. The troop transports of the Collective were likewise destroyed.

The Empire, which had faced an alliance of enemies, now could focus on the Collective, while also gaining the production and administrative advantages of a second developed world. But the wars of the Galactic Sector were not over yet, not by far.