For all the skill that the commander of Oscar One had demonstrated, he was still confined to a mostly immobile space station with limited defenses. There were only so many floating drydocks you could move in the way of a volley of turbolasers before your resources ran out and you could do nothing more than brace for impact. It was a battle against time, and one had to hope that either the enemy lost their will to fight or the situation changed before your clock stopped. For the O'reen space station, it was too late.
As one, the large Imperium-designed Star Destroyers opened fire on the defense station. Their initial volley burned through whatever satellites where in the path, and splashed across the platforms shields. They they began to volley, keeping up a constant stream of fire on a few points. It took less than a minute to punch through the shields, and then the station was rocked with explosions. It returned fire as best it could, but the line of Gyon's and Lee's kept up their fire on any other defenses, and soon there was nothing left in orbit that could shoot besides Oscar One itself.
But the situation was changing, the O'reen fleet had finally started moving. It was slight at first, subtle enough that Cyrus had to double check the various displays, but the haphazard collection of ships that made up O'reen's navy were a conical formation and advancing. A pair of splinters, consisting of a handful of ships each, had detached from the main body. One group of three frigates headed towards the Akatsuki and another of two frigates and Cruiser was aimed towards the Kusong.
They were clearly diversions. The idea was that Cyrus would overreact and dispatch ships to reinforce the crippled vessels, thus weakening the core of the fleet. The conical formation would attempt a breakthrough and then attack the rear of the formation, effectively performing an envelopment. It was a decent strategy, but the O'reen fleet simply lacked the ships needed to pull it off. Their heaviest vessels were a few old Heavy Cruisers. Not the sort of thing you wanted to take into a close range slugfest with a modern Star Destroyer. Given the care that the enemy commander had shown thus far, it seemed uncharacteristically rash.
“36 A as in alpha 97 C as in Charlie, Yovshin Togashi Yokuni, Elder of the Togashi Clan. Mission confirmation… Confirmation on O’reen Planetary Shields… is it down. I repeat is it down?”
For all that had been going on in space, Cyrus had not even paid attention to the battle on the planet below. He glanced up and watched as the planetary shield flickered and vanished, then shrugged and turned back to the real fight. The only effect it would have is signal the approach of the large transports to ferry the thousands of troops that would be necessary to occupy and pacify the planet. It wasn't as if the legions below needed fire support from above anyway, by all accounts the fighting was nearly over.
The thought struck him like a blaster bolt. The transports were large, slow, and had nearly no protection. They were generally used only when control of space had already been achieved. The destruction of even one could have a profound effect on the ability of the Empire to properly integrate O'reen. If things delayed too long, there could be a full-on rebellion.
The O'reen fleet wasn't trying to envelop the Imperial navy at all, they were headed for the transports.
