"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.

Aguilan kept her form as the Shadow began to pile the pressure on her forces. Being in a rapid response unit, as the name heavily implied, meant being the first in line to respond against new and unknown threats on the field, and at most times holding that field until the big guns finally rolled in. It was a demanding task with many inherent risks, more so for the people the lead them with an unflinching will. If there were any particular groups that would be least fazed by the likes of the Shadow worldship, the PDRR would be one of them.

That, and another, more subtle issue came to her notice.

It was telling that the Fear's own guns, despite being an order of magnitude or so stronger than what her unit was carrying, were at most merely able to mission kill one of her destroyers rather than completely annihilate it. It was, for lack of a better word, a rather anticlimactic affair. One which she readily played to her advantage.

The Shadow's rear carriers began to experience a slight lull in bombardment as the PDRR's ships slowly pulled back. Several variable armors clamped onto the crippled destroyer before going full throttle, towing the heavily damaged craft to the rear of the receding formation. Instead of completely falling back, however, Aguilan's forces resumed their former intensity, firing volley after volley at the vulnerable carriers while careful to maintain their distance from overbearing retaliation.

"'Tis only for a while longer...", Aguilan told herself, being enough of a realist to acknowledge the thin line she and her forces were straddling, all of which merely to delay the assault until a proper force arrived to face overwhelming threat.

But if 'tis what it costs to buy those fifteen minutes, so be it.

"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.

... and light.  

The same light that's used for military-grade lasers.  

And then comes the fact that part of the hull has just been converted into pure energy.



And those effects won't be the only ones if it was in an atmosphere, where it gets a bit more complicated as some of the energy is released in the form of really impressive shockwaves.

For all it's cartoonish themes, the antimatter bombs in Spore are actually kinda faithful to reality.  

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.

Look at this nifty calculator I found!   

"'Tis good to see the AOs in action!", Aguilan noted from the visual feed sent to her through the planet's military communications network. Comms networks, a system independently developed by various civilizations with the main objective of enhancing precision of command as well as coordinating large volumes of operational components, mostly in the form of individuals. Highly prevalent in the military world, it has grown into an integral pillar of command and control. This specific pillar belonged to Photise's planetary defense force, a subdivision of the Photos' armed forces.

And now she was using it to view exploding Shadow vessels in high definition.

"We have to do something about those surface units, though.", the Captain added, spotting several hostile vessels managing to pierce the atmosphere and unload their lethal cargo upon the local population.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


"OMS-CD 2, 4, 5, break formation! LKS-CD 3, 4, break formation!", Aguilan's voice rang clearly across the PDRR's channel. To break formation, that is to detach oneself from the primary combat arrangement in order to pursue a more specific objective, or in some situations merely to avoid imminent destruction from a barrage of fire that is much the bane of tightly packed formations. In this case, it was the former, a command issued by the Captain to seek a certain goal, a goal which she promptly disclosed with her succeeding order.

"Focus fire on rear guard CVs."

The Orealyianis and Luzonian destroyers which previously broke away were now unleashing a torrent of rail and plasma fire at the Shadow fleet's rear bound carriers. It was an attempt to pick off a number of the Shadow's carriers before they could reach the surface while also serving the additional purpose of drawing part of the invaders' attention away from the Photos homeworld.

"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.

I'll probably be posting several Kosmosis-related artworks here once I finish them.

So, yeah...