June 14, 004 SDE; New Valoria Colony, 1030 hours, eight and a half hours after the initial exchange:
Countryman leaned over the strategic display, they were in the final stages of packing up. However long-range sensors had picked up the Third Fleet, they would be here in thirty minutes. Unfortunately, their lead elements were going to be here sooner. He’d already had enough trouble with the scattered patrol groups that had been able to make it back sooner. Given they were currently taking on supplies and bringing troops up from the surface, it would be even more troublesome and he had few luxuries during this period—Something that left him considering how they would deal with those elements.
Misaki said, “I have Captain Drakes on the line, he would like to speak with you.”
“On screen.”
Drakes appeared, and quickly began to speak, “Countryman I presume you’ve noticed the lead elements that are about to jump in?”
“I have, I presume you have an idea?”
“Yes, the Coto and the Umikaze can head off the fleet, buy the time the Enterprise needs to finish extracting the troops and make the jump out of the system.”
“That’s suicide. With the damage you’ve sustained, there is no way...”
“I’m aware, but let's face it, the Umikaze is practically a lost cause anyway, we’ve taken far too much damage. We’d need months at a yard and we just can’t afford those kinds of repairs anyway.”
“We’ve lost one ship, we can’t really afford to lose two.”
“I know, but trust me, the Coto stands a much better chance of success if the Umikaze joins her. I’ve got things ready on my end, permission to evacuate to the Enterprise?”
Countryman turned to Greyman, “what do you think?”
Greyman sighed, “I hate to say it, but he’s right.”
Countryman turned back to Drakes, “Permission granted. Sadly I can’t think of a better plan.”
Drakes returned a wry smile, “It’s a shame, I really liked this ship.”
“I’ll build you another one then.”
“I’ll hold you to that, sir.”
Countryman grinned, “I figured you would. Now get your butt over here, and set the Umikaze on automatic.”
“Will do!”
Countryman turned away from the screen as it cut off, then took a look around the bridge. The faces he saw were tense, but not as grim as before. Things did seem to be looking up, but they weren’t out of danger just yet. There was still the matter of getting out of the system.
Minutes later, he watched the Umikaze and Coto break formation just as the lead elements arrived.
“Valorian vessels have entered the system, two hundred twelve cruisers, four battleships and multiple destroyers. Umikaze and Coto are moving to engage.”
“Monitor the engagement and keep me appraised. Status of the withdrawal?”
“Final shuttles are embarking now, we should be ready to break orbit in eight minutes. Richards reports that all reactors are now fully initialized and stable, full power is now available.”
“Excellent,” said Countryman.
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The Coto and Umikaze sailed into combat at full speed. As soon as they were in range the ships opened up with the full force of their weapons. Concentrated beam hits slammed into the nearest Valorian cruiser, her shields flaring.
Then the other ships returned fire. Plasma and particles flew between the vessels with deadly precision, the duel was on. Both ships quickly began calculating and sharing data and determined this action was unlikely to result in the survival of the ship. The use of last-stand protocols would be inevitable, but neither started them up right away. Instead calculating the optimal strategy to inflict as much damage as possible and when the optimal time to activate those protocols as well.
The ships moved in formation, diving into the Valorian fleet formation, limiting the ability of the hostile force to fire freely. This allowed them to inflict more damage, while the other group was forced to limit their fire for fear of damaging their own.
Hits were exchanged, shields flared and buckled. Several ships were torn apart in short order, as the pair of attacking ships unleashed chaos within the ranks of the Valorian Third Fleet. Even as more ships were arriving, those ships were quickly roped into the unfolding battle.
None of them had time to pay attention to the Enterprise and barely noticed when she set sail. Her hangers closed up, as she set course out of the system at high sublight. Yet not immediately going to warp due to several 3rd fleet capital ships deploying FTL jammers to prevent the Refuge force from retreating. The fleet had a significant advantage afterall, although those jammers did force the incoming reinforcements to drop out at the edge of the system, rather than closer to the growing conflict.
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Interstellar News Feed Courier, 1100 hours:
The captain watched the battle on her screens. They’d started recording and broadcasting as soon as all this started. A few government types had tried to shut this down, but the network was eating it up. This was big ratings and they all knew it. Good thing the invaders weren’t shooting at civilian ships and they had a civilian transponder. It seemed to be keeping them out of trouble, but even with that and shields, she wasn’t stupid enough to get closer to that.
Instead she was using probes to get good shots of the unfolding battle. Her face girl was currently speaking about it, acting as the voice of the crew and providing commentary for the viewers.
“Hey? Captain?”
“What?”
“Um, what do you make of this?”
She rushed over to the person who flagged her over, a young woman fresh to the crew who was monitoring the sensors. The woman frowned as she looked over the console, “Looks like some kind of energy build up on both ships, but I’ve never...”
Suddenly the build up spiked on both menace vessels, just as the one took a direct penetrating hit to her saucer. A round punched right through seconds before the entire ship lit up with a burst of light, followed by a massive expanding energy burst that sent alarms ringing.
The face girl commented, “.... they’ve just fucking exploded! Energy readings are off the scale. I’m seeing shockwaves rippling across a quarter of the system.”
The ship rocked as the far edge of the wave hit them. It wasn’t really a quarter of the system, that was the other woman exaggerating but the shockwaves still hit a massive number of vessels.
Turning to the images they were getting, as the dust cleared, she was greeted with a battle that had changed quite suddenly. The inevitable victory of the Third Fleet didn’t look like much of a victory, both menace raiders were gone, but they’d taken with them hundreds of vessels. Everywhere she looked were the shattered wrecks of numerous cruisers and battleships, even a couple of fleet carriers. Thousands were dead, the third fleet had just been dealt a crippling blow. As a core fleet responsible for protecting a vital core world they had nearly ten thousand ships, most of which were destroyers and cruisers, but now just shy of four thousand of those vessels were gone, including the flagship.
“What the fuck was that!?” she voiced. Intellectually she knew it was some kind of self-destruct, but she’d never seen one do something like that.
Behind her, the face girl was reporting what she was seeing with great skill. Even as the captain stood there in shock at the sight. The military seemed to handle it well enough,as they moved to intercept the sole remaining raider vessel, only for it to go to warp. They followed, jumping to warp after her in quick succession. Leaving only the most damaged vessels behind and a system littered with the wrecks of numerous shattered vessels.
It seemed clear to her that this was a disaster for the Valorian Trade Confederation. A clear military embarrassment and a sign that the piracy problem had truly grown out of control. Afterall she’d just witnessed a small pirate fleet conduct a successful raid of a core world for the first time in centuries and not just any core world either but one that was home base to a major fleet.
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1115 hours, EFS Enterprise:
Countryman leaned over the console with Greyman at his side. Displayed on the strategic display in the middle of his bridge were the tactical positions of the remaining third fleet assets. In addition they’d picked up chatter from the Valorian navy. Encoded, but they had enough experience with Valorian codes to break it. They were deploying additional ships in all directions. They were also tracking his current heading, and deploying the fifth fleet in their path. With the Third Fleet behind him and the Fifth ahead of him, this could prove a problem.
They may have a full tank of gas, but they had taken quite a bit of damage, he’d rather not go into battle without time to repair. It didn’t help that they were out of torpedoes. Given the current damages and supply situation they would be hard pressed in any given battle. Losing their escorts didn’t help. Additionally, they’d purloined a fair number of trinkets and interesting items. Evanov had delivered a fair number of things the scientists were already pouring over. None of that was going to help his present predicament however.
“It’s quite the picket sir, and they’ll have plenty of time to close the gaps. Even if we redline the drives the entire way, we will never make it in time. They chose a good area to set a net.”
“Obviously they don’t plan to let us escape. Still they’ve left a few openings.”
“On purpose, they want to draw us to those locations.”
Countryman tapped a spot, “Not here, from our present position we are less than six lightyears from the edge of the Velosa Cluster. I’d rather not go there, but they would have a much harder time tracking us there.”
Greyman nodded, “Right, it’s a dangerous area of space, beset by plasma storms and the dense nebula restricts sensor ranges to just a couple of lightyears.”
Misaki came over, “Risky, but I think we can do it sir.”
Eri looked up from her console, “Leave the navigation to me, I think I’d enjoy a challenge.”
“Aside from the plasma storms, are there any other threats to consider?”
Countryman pulled up the files they had on the region. Mainly from those trade deals they’d made with the Krall four years ago. They’d never bothered to buy more recent information since they’d never planned to enter the Velosa Cluster. The Krall however had sent a few exploratory expeditions into the region. The vast region was flooded with dense dust formations, spatial anomalies, plasma storms and more.
“Well our biggest concern would be the fact that the area is rather lawless, “The weather might be nasty, but we can handle that. Unfortunately the bad weather and poor sensor ranges in the area has made it a popular hiding place for those in trouble with the local law.”
“Wonderful, another Lantaro sector, how fun,” commented Greyman.
Kaori smiled, “I can handle that.”
“It seems we have a plan.”
Countryman surveyed the faces and nodded, “Eri set us a new course for the Velosa cluster, best possible speed.”
Eri nodded, “We can push the engines a little, that will help us get there before they can close the gap on us. Setting a course at warp five point two, estimate arrival in eighteen hours.”
Countryman nodded, “Excellent,” he paused and tapped the comms, “Richards, I need you to keep an extra eye on the engines, we are going to be cruising at 5.2 for the next eighteen hours.”
“Aye, sir. I’ll get on it and see what I can do to keep them running that long.”
Countryman nodded, knowing full well her worries. Normally when they pushed past warp five, they had the luxury of conducting a warp pause to let the engines cool. Normally they wouldn’t push at this speed for more than six hours, but in theory they could handle a day perhaps two. More than enough time to get where they were going, but more importantly they were still faster than the Valorians. They might still be able to get away with a pause, but it would give them time to close the net, so there was a risk if they tried too many of them or for too long.