Battle of Side 8 (I)
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| Part of the Uterio War arc | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Battle of Side 8 was initiated when Naju hacked into the main computer of Project Genesis on the planet Tasabian, in the early days of the Uterio War. He used the computer to broadcast a signal across the cosmos which commanded every DAL unit to execute its first priority: Delete All Life. This caused every turret and defence system of the DAL-controlled Side 8 to turn on the Zion Cluster fleet.
This battle was concurrent with the Battle of the Icy Planet, but in another part of space. It was also a lot shorter - the Battle of Side 8 started and ended during the aforementioned battle.
Description[edit | edit source]
The First Attack[edit | edit source]
Ta'harok was on Tasabian at the time and witnessed Naju's plan unfold, but was helpless to stop him as a small army of Neo Ta'har walked in to defend him. Ta'harok managed to kill two of them before retreating back to his ship and taking off towards Side 8. Inside his ship, a hologram of John Shepard appeared, informing him that Side 8's DAL systems had turned on the Zion Cluster, and requested that they put their differences aside to stop the massacre. Ta'harok agreed and continued onwards. Following the transmission, Shepard rallied the Zion Cluster's First Fleet of Sacred Retribution to decloak and attack Tasabian, as that was where the DAL central processing unit was located. The entire First Fleet fired on the planet, causing its surface to become a molten, nuclear wasteland. Despite this, thousands of commandeered Ta'har ships were launched from the surface and returned fire in a surprise attack. Hundreds of Zion Cluster ships were instantly destroyed with the count rising every second, with little damage being done against the enemy, so Shepard ordered a retreat in the form of slip-space jumps. Only a fraction of the fleet survived to regroup at another part of space. The remnants of the fleet were joined by Ta'harok in his ship, who assumed command and ordered that all the ships switch to stealth mode and input a new course to an asteroid field near Linkit so that Naju's fleet would remain oblivious as to their destination. Ta'harok himself took several ships with his to a secret underground bunker on Linkit and loaded the ships with a variety of explosive devices from the bunker before returning to the asteroid field.
The Second Attack[edit | edit source]
Meanwhile, Naju entered his flagship on Tasabian and rallied his second fleet in its orbit. They immediately departed for Side 8 and came to the same asteroid field on the way there. Suddenly, one of the ships exploded without colliding with an asteroid, so Naju prompted one of the crewmembers to maximize the image of the explosion. At 100 times the magnification, Naju saw Ta'harok and hundreds of space-suited Zion Cluster soldiers fly round the asteroids with jetpacks and attach bombs to his ships. As they were too small to pinpoint successfully with the ship's weaponry, Naju ordered the first thousand of his ships to leave the asteroid field immediately with him and proceed to Side 8.
Aftermath[edit | edit source]
Naju and his ships arrived at Side 8 a few minutes later, but crashed into the cloaked, unmanned ships that remained of the First Fleet of Sacred Retribution (which had also been filled with nukes). Naju's fleet inadvertently fell into Side 8 along with the unmanned ships, creating a massive explosion which destroyed that part of his fleet and took the DAL program that was controlling Side 8 offline. Ta'harok and the few hundred spacesuited survivors of the First Fleet did not have much time to celebrate however, as they were instantly attacked by a swarm of Parasitic Fluff. Ta'harok flew towards Side 8 to escape but ended up crashing into the battered remains of the Moon-Ship, which knocked him unconscious. The Parasitic Fluff successfully consumed the spaceborne survivors and moved on to places unknown.
