03.458.M39

We’ve been at this for a little over 8 years and have visited nearly a 1,000 systems. Most have been lifeless, human, xenos or otherwise. When I said we were being systematic I meant it. The average jump distance is only ~5 light years between systems.

Father utilized these visits well by initiating contact with quite a few worlds with a human presence. The systems with humans dealing with ork infestations were especially grateful for our orbital bombardment.

At last that’s what I tell myself. I’m sure there were quite a few environmentalists that were upset by the ecological disasters left in our wake.

Using so many under or unutilized warp routes would normally be a cause for concern. Yet the short distance alleviates any such concerns. The jumps are so short we could do calculated jumps without a navigator.

We’ve burned over 100 systems with planetoids that had visible ork presence. Most of which didn’t even possess space flight. We still burned them and made a log of it.

The few that did didn’t have anything of much concern. Nothing bigger than a cruiser or two. Mostly a few light cruisers, escorts and some roks. Certainly nothing to sneeze at.

We’ve collected a few 100 more megatonnes of loot for the Dynasty and the forge which father has used to queue up more Starr-Class frigates.

Father had been moderately happy with our progress up to this point. Even if it was considerably slower and more dull than I think he imagined it would be. He has that pie in the sky romanticism view on conquest.

Pragmatically he knows better but the dynasty’s growth into the conquering aspect of the rogue trader business is the entire reason I exist. Now however I think his butthole puckered and he’s become hesitant to engage what is before us.

Well he wanted to sink a fleet. Here it is… 1 space hulk, 4 battleships, 13 battlecruisers, 42 cruisers, 379 escorts, 621 roks and a space station. *breathe*......*breathe*...... *grin* I fucking live for this shit.

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Alright everyone. Save the space hulk, battleships, battlecruisers for last. Particularly the battleships and space hulk might have weapons that can match or exceed our range.

Play it safe and mark them as well as the battlecruisers with double our max weapons range as ‘safe distance’.

We’ll split into 3 primary groups centered around our battlecruisers. Felicia and I with 6 star-class frigates each will be aggressors. Nathaniel with the 6 tempest frigates and 2 clippers will engage but be more reserved. It suits his personality anyway.

The roks should never be a concern with how slow they are but watch for torpedoes. We'll try to draw the escorts and cruisers out as much as possible.

Make sure we get a focused augury of the cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships before closing into weapons range.

I like to imagine if Big E were watching the rushing escorts it would be akin to watching a swarm of mosquitoes fly into a bug zapper.

It was a target rich environment. With most of our ships being equipped with quad void shields we were able to utilize a much more aggressive approach against them.

Even after many began trying to use evasive maneuvers it only delayed the inevitable. A good salvo or two from any of our ships left them drifting and burning in the void.

It became more of a game to see who could plot the more optimal path between them to maintain the maximum amount of weapon “up time”. While also staying outside enemy weapons range.

We harried them as they fell back in tatters to their larger vessels. Where they once again fell back on that sort of “bait ball” tactic trying to get us close to their larger ships.

We used the opportunity to get some focused auguries on their larger vessels while picking off any of the smaller vessels that strayed too far.

Trying to scan a space hulk is always hit or miss. They’re so large it’s hard to know what’s what or what a vessel is. It takes quite a lot of time. So we’re still being extremely cautious of it.

We’ve identified that we likely out range most of the battlecruiser and battleship weapons…

Spoke too soon that was a fucking nova shell!

It’s one of the battlecruisers. I quickly update the holo, upgrading its threat level and its kill priority.

A few of them are possibly of imperial origin and have some lance or laser batteries. It’s unknown if they have the range to match us but they’ve had their threat levels updated as well. That nova cannon needs to go though.

Nathaniel’s group has been pulled back as most are still utilizing a single void shield. We in general open up our distance between ships to avoid the AOE from future nova shells.

It manages to splash a few of us a couple times before we’re finally able to put it down. Luckily our void shields hold. Having quad shields is fantastic.

That could have been quite a bad turn of events if they had been targeting Nathaniel’s single void shield escorts.

Once the battlecruiser with the nova cannon was taken out Nathaniel and his escorts returned to the fight. With the additional firepower we were able to pick up the pace once again.

We did have to repeatedly break off and re-engage whittling down their fighta-bombers and torpedoes. Orks aren’t big on torpedoes as a general rule but when they have this many ships. Well, even a few having them is plenty to cause you to disengage.

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