77.      Completion

Battle Bill coordinates the final defensive assault against the Others' armada approaching Delta Pavonis. Three staggered attack waves of Bob-piloted ships and drones engage the enemy while cloaked stealth bombs attempt to strike from an unexpected vector. Despite inflicting significant damage and destroying several death asteroids and cargo vessels, the defense ultimately fails to stop the Others' advance.

Battle Bill hosts a strategic meeting in VR with defensive crews arriving at Delta Pavonis. He announces that cloaking technology has been cracked but only half of Jacques' nuclear weapons have been retrofitted, leaving most hardware to serve as decoys. Working from strategy discussions with Colonel Butterworth, Bill outlines a three-wave attack plan approaching from different vectors to overwhelm the Others' defenses and allow cloaked stealth bombs to approach undetected. The first attack group encounters the Others' drone defenders and suffers losses but inflicts greater damage, discharging at least one death asteroid. The second wave comes in quickly from a different angle, destroying cargo vessels and a death asteroid in a spectacular explosion, but the Others retaliate with fusion bombs, wiping out the clustered second battle group and killing twenty-five dreadnaughts. The third group comes in from an unexpected angle, destroying defenders and two cargo vessels plus another death asteroid. A final volley of ballistic nukes on trajectories matching the expected attack vector destroys two more cargo vessels. However, the Others emit a massive SUDDAR ping that reveals the cloaked fusion bomb approach. The Others' fusion drones intercept and destroy two of the three remaining cloaked bombs, with only the last weapon reaching its target and destroying a death asteroid. The defensive forces exhaust their ordnance and retreat at velocities too high to reverse course. Despite heavy losses to the Others' fleet, eight death asteroids and eleven cargo carriers remain operational and continue toward Delta Pavonis. Bill receives a message from the Others in Mandarin, mocking humanity as pests rather than mere food and promising to harvest Delta Pavonis, Sol, and Epsilon Eridani. Jacques was killed during the assault. Andrew confirms that Jacques had previously implemented a contingency plan to kidnap twenty thousand Pav and evacuate them off-planet before the Others arrive.