Tommy Telly the Great Khan had never been stingy about sharing his grand vision with talented people around him who were worth winning over. Dr. Warren was one such person, and Warlord Sazaka was no exception.
For an unconventional troll warlord like Sazaka, becoming part of the future Great Khan's grand vision was far more appealing than remaining a warlord who never knew whether he'd see the next day.
But whether that vision could become reality was, in a sense, closely tied to the battle unfolding before them. Though the troll general didn't mourn his army, he had to focus on what was happening right now.
At that moment, hundreds of piloted Phantom fighters and more than twice that number of unmanned wingmen came screaming in. They clashed with the Marauders' bizarre assortment of fighters and a vast swarm of ancient triangular drones.
Earth's fighters were outnumbered, but they were flying Phantom fighters, excellent craft that had ranked among the top five carrier-based space fighters in the galaxy ever since entering service. They were, of course, superior to the Marauders' green-skinned, mishmash fleet.
As for the mining drones, they could jump and make sublight-speed penetrations, but their sheer size worked against them. Their only weapons were the mining lasers and mining-wave generators mounted in their noses. Against large warships, these ancient machines were like a dense pack of hyenas. But compared with the more agile and lightweight fighters, they were clumsy groundhogs.
By that reckoning, the two sides were somehow evenly matched.
We all know that evenly matched battles are often the bloodiest. And according to the post-battle figures, this fighter engagement really was the battle in which the Thirteenth Fleet suffered its greatest losses over the course of the entire campaign.
By then, the strike fleet from the Aurora