Encirclement and Counter-Encirclement

"Starboard alert! Leviathan spotted forty degrees ahead!"

"Turn twenty degrees to port! Broadside volley!"

"We've been hit! The midship deck's been breached!"

"This is the Taradorn Knight. We've taken heavy damage! Heavy damage!"

"Abandon ship! Abandon ship! We're going down!"

"Reposition to the M7A Region! All batteries, fire forward! Break through!"

"Successor, charge the main guns, fire! Two Leviathans? Then hit them both!"

"Clear this area! Leave no survivors!"

Across the Terran Empire fleet channels in the Tiberius System, the orders and shouts of ship captains rose and fell without pause. Brilliant cannon fire tore through the darkness in dazzling orange and red streaks. Hundreds, thousands of colossal guns roared at once, brighter than white stars.

The war had long since entered its truly brutal final phase. Vast swarms filled the entire system, so dense they blotted out the starlight. Savage battles raged everywhere, while the enormous wrecks of Imperial warships and Zerg biomass vessels lay scattered throughout the system.

"Another Zerg fleet. They're trying to defeat us head-on. Those bastard mutts don't even take us seriously." On the bridge of the Steel Justice, Lieutenant General Garr stared grimly at the holographic display, his face lit by flickering numbers and the intense flashes that occasionally streaked past the viewport.

"The Overmind has lost its patience. It's ready to swallow us all in one bite." Admiral Horace Warfield swept his gaze over the horrifying figures in the column marking Zerg numbers. "Our flanks are exposed to the Firmament Brood and the Kukulkan Brood. Order all fleets to converge on the flagship, Steel Justice, immediately. Contract the battle line and establish a defensive perimeter!"

Then, in that very instant, a sudden flash swept across the bridge. A bright pillar of fire erupted from the massive hull of the Hesper. The shockwave from