Re'vas would have loved bunting a gyro-round through his skull >:/

I'd say both.

I just died a lot inside 

Yeah, where's KitKat, UFO, Raz, ect. ect.
This is starting to get depressing. This is one of my favorite things, and having seen these last few projects die pains me on a level few things can, having sunk, what now, 3-4 years of my life into this?

"That ship," 'u'Sadow pointed to a single ship that stood out among the response fleet's vessels. "That ship appears to be the command ship. Make it dead."
The Fear's main gun angled to Aguilan's  ship, barrel glowing as energy built up. A second before it fired, the space around the barrel distorted, warping out as the lightning bolt-esque energy beam streaked towards the command ship.  When the feedback died down, the ship remained unscathed. The shields were down, and energy arced from the hull, but it was undamaged.
"Un-be-lieveable...?" 'u'Sadow breathed. "Follow up, keep it targeted. Kill the head and the body will die." The main gun fired again, but the unbelievable happened. The shot was blocked by a massive ship, appearing as if from thin air.
"Tell me, 'u'Sadow, just how did you think this would end?"
The ship that had materialized was the Leviathan. Behind it, hundreds of other Photos ships materialized.
Val'ones cracked his knuckles, grinning.
"Let'em have a few vollies off the side guns then move into firing position for the main gun." He switched the comms channel from general to the response fleet's channel.
"I trust my timing is as impeccable as usual, Captain?" He said jokingly.

I might be on less than usual the last few days, I just found out my Grandpa has Leukemia.

"Fear breaking formation, intercepting response fleet. All other units maintain mission objectives." 'u'Sadow ordered, the Fear's massive shape breaking off from the fleet at a surprisingly high velocity for such a large craft. "Power to Inertialess Drive. What say we show them why this ship is called the Fear?"
 Once a safe distance from the rest of the Shadow fleet, the Fear engaged it's Inertialess Drive. Preceded by a sudden pulse of energy, the massive worldship zipped up to near blank range with the response fleet in the blink of an eye, guns roaring.
 The distance of the targeted ships had kept them safe; beyond optimum range, the blasts lost most of their power. Unfortunately, at this range, the guns' fire impacted with pretty much all their initial energy.
 This inertialless jump was not without negative effects, however. The drive, when engaged, overloads the engines of the activating ship. While this does no damage to the engines, it does leave them offline for a period of time, and in the case of a large capital ship like the Fear, this can leave a critical- and often underarmored- flank underprotected.

"Ha, how utterly predictable. Side guns, target those destroyers." 'u'Sadow ordered, and with that order the Fear's broadside guns, which had not yet been given targeting orders, hummed into life and with unnerving precision spat volley after volley into the Orealyanis and Luzonian destroyers attempting to flank. One ship took a heavy hit to it's side, another crippled by a direct hit on it's engines. Fortunately, distance kept the destroyers relatively safe, for they were just beyond optimal range on the broadside's targeting array.

According to this all an antimatter blast would do anyway is release incredible amounts of radiation.
Cancer; bad for organic life, useless for ships and other non-biological things.

"Gaaah." 'u'Sadow snarled. "I hadn't expected auxiliary forces so fast. I suppose it makes up for the shockingly light defenses otherwise. It is disconcerting that they're using railguns, meaning our shields won't help much. Armor should be sufficient anyway." He said almost boredly as batteries turned to fire back at the offending PDRR, without slowing down. They were sandwiched between the GPA forces and the Photos sentries, though they were able to take much of the firepower directed at them and return it in kind.
As the Shadow fleet drew closer, the forward carriers began to launch assault ships. The small, agile craft made it to Photise in little time, and teleported down initial Sickle and Scythe waves as they entered the upper atmosphere.
The Photos were not without their own defenses, however.
Individually, the Anti-Orbital cannons sprinkled throughout Photise would be bad enough for an attacker. It gets worse, however, when they first open fire; each gun is linked to a fire control system which is connected to every AO Cannon in a large area; these are, in turn, connected to the High Command's fire control deck. With instant access to satellite information and data-feeds from all ships, along with long range sensor sweeps, the fire control deck and coordinate AO barrages with pinpoint accuracy, vastly increasing the deadliness of the system.
And it was now that the Shadow met this system. While the Assault Ships were too small and close to be targeted, the AO guns could tap out quite a good distance, and two forward carriers soon met their demise when  the AO guns of an entire district focused fire onto them. One took a good shot to the bridge and the engines, and without a brain nor propulsion the ship was for all intent and purpose destroyed. The other one, took three blasts to the same location; the three purple-blue beams punched through aft to stern, but by some miracle the reactor didn't go critical. Other ships took hits from the guns, but survived in various states of function.

Correct on the typo, good sir. I'll correct that in a moment.

At least for this one, I'd think a bit of hybrid micro-macro would be in order; micro as in the various command structure(s) receiving the news and deciding upon a course of action, and the macro for the big 'ol space ship dakka contest.

Sooo...anyone going to be able to post soon?

Alright, first post is up. Had a bit of writer's block with this one but got it out, if you can get through a sub-par sentence or two. Wanted to make it bigger but this was sorta the set-up post.

Oh, and for added awesomesauce, listen to this while reading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4CToyYbZFs

"Are the preparations made?" Kari'u'sadow stood in the bridge of his flagship, the Fear looking over his amassed force. It was huge by Shadow standards. However, it's intended target made the size necessary .
"Yes, lord. All requested forces are present, and Gate Drives are fully charged and on standby. All that needs be is your word."
"Good," 'Sadow raised his suit's clawed arm, clamping it into a fist. "Let us crush them." Ahead of the amassed fleet, a small dot of light appeared. It remained for a moment, growing slowly larger as it gained energy. Then, with a flash, it exploded into a wormhole, and ships began to pour in.
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The space around Photise was a busy place. Ships of all sizes, from one-man starplanes to capital ships, intermingled in the space around the capital planet and out into the encapsulating system. Two task forces sat in perpetual guard of the system, ready to deal with any problem from collisions all the way to military raiding parties.
"Captain, are you seeing this too?" Asked one of the bridge attendants on an outskirt patrol vessel, pointing to a dot of light just outside the system's periphery.
"Yeah...too big to be a supernovae...scan it." Before the sensor operator could even move, the dot of light exploded, driving up arms to shield eyes from the blinding burst. When the captain's vision settled, he could make out hundreds of vessels, their outline nearly visible against the dark of space.
"Get the Supreme General here, now! Those are Shadow craft!" The captain ordered, running to the command console. He brought up the system-wide comms unit.
"Attention all vessels of the Photirian District! Large Shadow invasion force sighted in system periphery, transmitting coordinates now. Engaging, requesting assistance. He killed the link and looked to Photire itself. He could make out the outline of two dreadnoughts breaking off towards his location. His attention was pulled by the command console buzzing into life again.
"This is General Val'ones. What is so urgent, captain? I get a blank, urgent -"
"There's a Shadow invasion force here in the capital! At least a thousand ships, we are not fortified enough to even stall them, much less repel them!" Val'ones' face was strick with horror.
"Creator protect us... buy us a few minutes, my fleet should be there in a few minutes. Stand strong, captain." The channel went dead, and the captain turned to the fleet in front of him.
"Charge the antimatter guns, get firing solutions. Fire at will!" Their Dreadnought was the first to open up, it's guns spitting out waves of plasma bolts. The two Dreadnoughts that broke off added their fire to it, flashes erupting where plasma bolts hit shields. The Shadow ships responded in kind, bolts of energy ripping from the fleet and tearing into shields of the two oncoming Dreadnoughts.
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As his fleet's Warp Drives powered up, Val'ones sent an urgent-status recording to both the GPA and Perrachi.
"I urgently ask of your help. A large Shadow invasion force is attacking our Empire's capital, and our garrison is not sufficient to repel them. My fleet is on it's way but I fear even this will not be enough. I understand we may sometimes have differences but if something is not done, trillions of people will die, and this may just well be the beginning. Val'ones out."
"Warp Drives online sir, jump?" Val'ones' aid notified him.
"Jump!" Val'ones ordered.

Yeah.
It'll sure hurt the Photos' pride asking the PERRACHI for help, of all people xD

I thought that sense some of us aren't as well-versed in the higher tiers of science as others, a thread where you could throw down an idea and get some feedback on it plausibility-wise would be a good idea. To start, I have here a chunk on the inner workings of a Photos Plasma Rifle:

The standard issue weapon for Photos infantrymen, the Plasma Rifle is am efficient, reliable, and powerful weapon. With an effective range of 850 feet (259.08 metres), and dealing both kinetic and thermal damage, the Plasma Rifle is a weapon to be feared.
     The weapon possesses a fairly interesting firing mechanism. Rather than use a container of easily-ionized gas as ammunition, the rifle instead uses average atmospheric gasses as it's munitions. While these can normally prove to be difficult to ionize in a rifle scale, the Photos get around this by using a block of soft, conductive metal; usually aluminum. The firing mechanism will shave a minute amount of this off and shatter it into tiny fragments, usually only a fraction of a milimetre in size. These are then launched into the firing chamber, while a pair of oppositely-charged magnets spin around the ionization chamber. The rampantly alternating magnetic field tends to cause the fragments of conductive metal to superheat and give off a huge amount of energy, ionizing the gas contained in the chamber. The plasma bolt is then launched down the barrel by electromagnets much like a coilgun, to be expelled out the barrel and downrange. The block of metal used to ionize the gasses is good for around 1,000 shots in Oxygen-based atmospheres- others may need more or less conductive filaments to ionize properly.
     While against unarmored or lightly armored targets a single shot can be fatal, the weapon can have a hard time piercing heavy armor, as armor can be designed to cope with the heat from the plasma impacts, and while the weapon does deliver notable kinetic impact, it is seldom more than an average modern bullet.
     Like most Photos weapons, there is a targeting node in the weapon's barrel that will sync with the HUD of Powered Armor and link to a dynamic crosshair, indicating just where the user's shot will land and what discrepancy the projectile itself may be expected to have due to factors like wind and such.