Awesome / Order in Chaos

• The fall of Usuuth is The Last Dance of the Usuuthir military. They are outnumbered, outgunned and outclassed, and they know it... So they fight like possessed, inflict disproportionate losses to the Orieni invaders, and take down a Prophet-class command ship (something the Centauri, with their superior numbers, technology and firepower compared to the Usuuth, had not managed to do yet) before their fleet is annihilated. Doubly done because the ship that destroyed the Prophet was the last Usuuth warship in a ramming attack done just to take down that command ship as they both blew up.
• In the early war, the Orieni inflicted many a Curb-Stomp Battle on the Centauri, but that's not awesome yet due the lack of ability among the House Militia and part of the Royal Navy officers and the various Militias inability to coordinate between each other and with the better trained Royal Navy. The awesome part is that, as admiral Ahrish Hakei's Enlightenment Fleet was fighting and conquering the fortified system of Alpha One, the Harmonious Fleet under Hirka Shria managed to change beacons while in hyperspace (an almost suicidally dangerous procedure for a single vessel, and still hard for a fleet that can count on multiple vessels to keep a beacon while the lead take the new one), bypassing Alpha One itself and conquering Quadrant Five before anyone (including Hakei) thought it was possible.
• The first actual moment of awesomess from some Centauri happens at the First Battle of Lerrust. The Orieni are winning, thanks to having duped admiral Tillo Garlan, commander of the Centauri Eight Fleet, into dividing his mobile forces into piecemeal squadrons before committing their main force, and, with the Eight Fleet being destroyed and the jump gate garrison already dealt with, they start calling in the Enlightenment-class invader (basically one of their large command ships with most weapons and the jump drive swapped for troop transport capability) Scourge of Heaven. And as soon as they cross the jumpgate:
  Sensor operator: "Captain, we have sensor readings from our—by the Living Gods!"
  Captain Trevesk: "What was that?"
  Sensor operator: "Centauri warships!"
  The Scourge of Heaven and her escort are quickly annihilated by a Centauri squadron that, as soon as the system-wide jamming started, moved to the jump gate just in case, let the Orieni jump in, and then locked it to prevent an escape, transforming the Orieni triumph in a Pyrrhic Victory and crippling them for the rest of the campaign. Also, they can't actually occupy Lerrust until they've brought more troops, troops that were originally supposed to be deployed on Tagarhd to subdue the still-resisting Centauri garrison on the planet.
  • Compounding on this one is what happens to the convoy that was bringing the forces to Lerrust. It had been left without escort, as it included a number of Enlightenment invaders (still more heavily armed than most combat warships) and the only Centauri force in the area, the Eight Fleet, had been crippled before retreating to Quadrant Three. A squadron from Eight Fleet (and not from the Thirty-Sixth Quality Fleet, that had just arrived to Quadrant Three to oppose the expected Orieni attack) jumped out of hyperspace to see if the convoy they had heard about was vulnerable and proceeded to wipe them out, further slowing them down.
• The Second Battle of Beta One for the Centauri admiral Landis Syma, and a particularly humiliating one for the Orieni, as the latter are forced to retreat, with a Paragon-class command ship heavily damaged and barely able to escape in hyperspace and an admiral dead... By a combined force of House Militias. Honour to Landis Syma who managed to actually be obeyed not only by House Syma ships but also by the allies.
  • To make this better, the Orieni are forced to weaken the force besieging the planet Quadrant Three (temporarily abandoned by Thirty-Sixth and Eight Fleet) to the point it can't overwhelm the defences, thus leaving in Centauri hands an important world and its shipyards and increasing the strategic value of the Centauri victory.
• One of the Orieni victories had been the First Battle of Tagahard, where the Strike Fleets smashed through a combined fleet of Centauri Militias with more ease than usual, before occupying the planet and reducing the ground garrison to guerilla fight. But when Landis Syma's fleet starts the Second Battle of Tagahard to free the planet the Orieni realize that the Centauri ground forces are a lot more capable and devious than the fleet:
  Commander Nicosia *commander of an Orieni mechanized infantry unit*: "We need more than armoured cars. The Centauri have deployed tanks! Where in the triple hells did they hide tanks?"
  Communication officer: "Would now be a bad time to inform you of an uprising in the capitol?"
  Nicosia: "An uprising? That is Grek’s problem. He’s supposed to safeguarding the capitol."
  A random soldier: "Gorai fighter/interceptors!"
  • The Centauri ground forces in general. The Orieni never actually conquer a Centauri world, they just force the garrison into hiding until the arrival of a Centauri fleet, at which point they will throw the Orieni forces into disarray-the ground troops by attacking with an impossibly large amount of tanks and heavy weapons hidden under their noses, and the fleet by causing the black-out of their planetary command post.
  • Also, the space battle itself: Landis Syma won again, managing to hold his fleet of mixed House Militias together for two battles in a row. Just for this, he deserves a place here.
• The Battle of Quadrant Three is another for Landis Syma. The Orieni had used the Royal Navy garrison redeployment to Beta Ten to attack and besiege the planet, but had to weaken the force to try and stop Landis at Lerrust... Only for the combined Thirty-Sixth Quality and Eight Fleets to show up and hit them with everything they had, up to an almost unarmed Garut-class survey ship (very large, but undergunned for her size. It was there to provide jamming, and killed the occasional Orieni corvette), enough to force them to run just as they were about to finally break through.
  • Also, the intervention of the combined fleet itself, arriving just in time to stop the Orieni from crush the mobile units of the garrison that had been lured out of the orbital defences and avenging the destruction of Quadrant Three's capital, hit by a nuclear strike a few minutes before (how they had lured them out).
• The Second Battle of Lukantha. We learned before Second Zwiest that Urza Ritan has been promoted to Grand Admiral of the Fleet (basically commander in chief, second only to the emperor), but it's here, seeing him outmanouvering the Orieni with embarrassing ease, that we have evidence he deserves it. And to add insult to injury, the one move that could have allowed them to evacuate most of their personnel, jumping from a part of the system to Lukantha Tertius, was foiled by a sudden Hyperspeed Ambush not from the Royal Navy or even House Militia, but inferiorly-equipped privateers: the Merciless Death and her band, old knowledges of the Orieni, jumped in, wasted half of their escorts and ran.
  • On the Orieni side, the Righteous Return entering the battle. The ship had been damaged in previous battles and was being repaired in shipyard that wasn't willing to disengage the umbilicals and let them go... So the commander told them they would go in battle anyway, even if they had to shoot at the umbilicals to cut themselves free first.
  • Also, Second Zwiest, where he brought the Orieni out of position by using a light cruiser and transponders linked to batteries to simulate a fleet hiding in the most awesomely dangerous area of the system (the rings of a planet, where discharges of static electricity could fry a ship at any moment). To add some mind screw and honour the Centauri dead, the transponders were simulating the Twenty-Third Standard Fleet, that the Orieni had destroyed in that very system.
• During the Centauri raids at Usundikar, Shaal Jaddo versus Shrieka Rak. They're so good they can't spare the time to take their opponents' name, as they're too busy trying to kill each other without getting killed for that.
  • Gets a repeat at Third Usuuth. Once again, they can't afford to notice who they're fighting against, but this time there's a difference: Shaal Jaddo's ship, the Balciron-class Kutai of Glory, is crippled and abandoned after fighting superior numbers of Orieni ships.
    • And this turns in some more awesomeness for Shaal, as the admiralty promptly gives him the much more powerful and jump-capable Talvan-class attack cruiser Splendor of Entat, a ship that should have gone to a more senior officer had Shaal not been that good. And that, under his command, will take part to the destruction of the Orieni flagship.
• How did the Orieni reply to the triumphs of the Centauri under Landis Syma and Urza Ritan? Easy: they found a new hyperspace route and conquered Quadrant Thirteen and Mantukas while the Centauri were looking the other way, with the plan to conquer their way until the Drazi border. They also forced Natto Danan's subordinates to abandon Quadrant Three (where his Thirty-Sixth Quality Fleet had already kicked Orieni asses), and other Centauri forces to give up Tagahard and the previously untouched Lodira. Danan had to admit that he hadn't seen it coming.
• The Battle of Tyzala. Orieni forces were establishing a base in neutral space to try and flank the Centauri border systems by skirting Minbari, and Centauri militia from House Syma and allies finds and attack them. The battle is hard for both sides, there's no clear winning side yet... And then the Minbari show up itching for a fight, and crush both sides, destroying anything too slow or stupid to run. The only reason the Orieni got away marginally better was that a Centauri with more greed than common sense attacked the Minbari, causing them to focus on the Centauri while the Orieni took the chance and run and the Syma militia used the morons to buy time and get away.
  • Following that, there's a moment of Pure Awesomeness enjoyed by the Minbari going to warn the Centauri to not provoke them further: without any idea of what they're doing there, the commander of Batain's garrison nearly crapped in his pants as soon as he learned there were three Minbari warships in system. And his reaction to learning why they had been there?
  "Of these supposed trespassers, will you be returning them to us? So that we might arrange suitable punishment. Of course, they will be given the harshest possible—"
  "No prisoners were taken."