June 10th, 004 SDE; EFS Enterprise, Valoria Sector:
The ship shuddered, “Direct hit, hull plating is holding.”
“Return fire! Ready forward tubes, bring us to heading one one six mark two eight, target the carrier.”
“Aye, sir!” came the resounding shouts. As the crew went about his orders, Countryman glanced at the screens.
Things had been going rather well, they’d passed the Valorian capital without incident. Aside from a few close calls, the last two months had been rather peaceful. Although they were a bit behind the ideal schedule due to having to dodge more patrols than they’d hoped, but things were still within their margin of error.
At least that had been the case until a few minutes ago. They’d picked up this squadron on long-range sensors and gone dark as usual to avoid them, but evidently that hadn’t worked.
It was a modest battlefleet, with four battleships, a fleet carrier and multiple escort cruisers. Thousands of Valorian strike craft had already been deployed and he was keeping an eye on several squadrons as their own fighters and missiles kept them at bay.
“Message from Coto, they’re taking a beating, hull plating failing!” reported Misaki a note of concern in her voice. Countryman turned and picked out the Coto, she’d been pinned between two battleships and was taking a pounding.
“Divert alpha and beta squadrons to cover her. Increase speed.”
“We’re in range sir!”
“Fire!”
The launchers hummed, sending glowing blue projectiles streaming into space. Several cruisers quickly targeted the projectiles. Red energy bolts streamed in to strike at the torpedoes, as the carrier quickly fired her thrusters. Attempting to reposition herself to little avail. Several explosions appeared on the screen before the torpedoes slammed into the shields of the carrier in rapid succession. Several of which got through.
“Direct hit, the target has taken heavy damage, reading secondary explosions.”
Countryman glanced at the Coto, she was still taking a pounding. The two squadrons were helping but Reynolds clearly required assistance. “New heading four one mark two one. Ahead flank, all batteries on standby, reload forward tubes, standby aft tubes.”
“The Coto has been hit!” reported Misaki concern in her tone, “Reading plasma fires, and multiple hull breaches.”
“Tell her to fall back.”
Countryman noted the ranges and as soon as they had a good angle, he gave the order. The Enterprise opened up with all batteries, targeting the battleship on the left. Her shields flared brightly as a barrage of heavy particle bolts and torpedoes slammed into her shields. They buckled, and the beam arrays fired, slicing into the ship, just as a flight of hostile fighter bombers came into range.
“Hostile fighters on attack run,” reported Kaori.
Countryman nodded, but no orders were required as Kaori skillfully ordered missile fire to take care of them. Numerous turrets rotated to target the fighters and fired tracking missiles to take care of them. Multiple glowing blue energy bolts erupted from the hull and almost instantly found targets.
Some of the ships survived the barrage and unleashed their payloads. Not that they lived long after that, as the second volley finished them. The ship shook, “hull breach deck forty one, section fifteen gamma. Emergency bulkheads in place and holding.”
He cursed and then gave his next orders. They really didn’t need a fight like this, “Target the other battleship, all available batteries. Fire!”
As particle beams and lightning blasts tore into the ship, he took a moment to check on the Umikaze. Drakes had been covering their flank, and from the look of it, he was doing alright, but not much better than the Coto.
“Additional fighters coming in for another attack run. Bearing 118 mark 97.”
“Lock missiles, fire.”
“Already on it,” reported Kaori as she directed the missile batteries. Blue energy bolts streamed into space and quickly locked onto the alien craft with deadly effect. Multiple ships exploded in rapid succession.
Elsewhere the second battleship lost shields and beam weapons tore into her frame.
“We have a kill, target destroyed sir.”
“Status of the Coto?”
“Heavy damage to her hull plating, multiple hull breaches. Aft launchers are offline, minor damage to internal power grid, partial failure of her energy web grid, and fourteen particle cannon turrets are offline. Plasma fires appear to be under control however.
Countryman sighed, that was a lot of damage and they had precious little to fix it. He glanced at the screens. The Valorians still had two battleships and their fleet carrier was heavily damaged but still on the field. “Hard to starboard, ahead three quarters, standby forward tubes.”
As they turned a Valorian cruiser moved into range firing torpedoes at the Umikaze. Drake skillfully evaded half that barrage and then tore into the cruiser with concentrated fire. The ship exploded with little to show for her effort.
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Countryman noted that the carrier had increased speed and was gaining distance. In a few minutes she’d be out of torpedo range entirely, but it didn’t matter. The angles lined up and he leaned forward with a grin. “Target the carrier, full spread maximum yield.”
“Target locked.”
“Fire.”
Blue energy bolts streaked across the void. Once again the cruisers in the formation opened up to defend the carrier, but it wasn’t enough. They found their mark and slammed into the carrier at high speed.
“Direct hit, we have a kill!” reported Kaori
Countryman watched the remaining Valorian ships turn and then jump to warp.
“They’re in full retreat!”
He let out a breath and after a moment said, “Status report!”
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Three hours later, Council Meeting Conference Room:
“How bad is it?”
“Bad enough, I’ve done an inventory. Fleet wide we are down to less than ten thousand torpedoes, and the missile banks are nearly spent. Worse, we are down to fumes now, we don’t have enough fuel to reach Krall space, even with what’s left in the reserve.”
“How far can we get?”
The faces looked around, then Richards sighed, “Twenty, maybe twenty-five lightyears. We don’t have much left in the reserves though and we spent far too much in that battle.”
“Fighters?”
“Barely any fuel, and only enough missiles and torpedoes for two squadrons.”
“In other words we’d be hard pressed if they came back. Especially with the pounding we took. How does the Coto look?”
“She took a beating, her hull plating is just about useless, but her core superstructure is intact and most of her main systems are still online. If we had the parts we could repair her into proper fighting shape, however we don’t.”
Drakes interjected, “The Umikaze is in better shape but not by much. My AIF generators are just about shot, without replacements the plating is just a hair from failing entirely. We also have several hull breaches and nothing to patch them with.”
Williams commented, “Damn machine getting us killed, I told you this was insane.”
“It wasn’t like you had a better plan.”
Countryman sighed, “That won’t get us anywhere. For now we need to find fuel and we need to find it in hostile space.”
Misaki interjected, “I took the liberty of checking for potential deuterium sources within ten lightyears of our present location. The only source would be the Valorian core world of New Valoria.”
“New Valoria?”
“It’s one of their older colonies, one of the first they colonized after reaching the stars. The colony is heavily industrialized and according to our resident Valorians, well fortified. It’s the home base of the Valorian Third Fleet, and the 13th Reserve Defense Fleet. Local protections include a planetary shield, multiple surface-to-space weapons emplacements, an orbital weapons platform grid and there is a large fortified starbase in the system. The headquarters of the Third Fleet. There are also orbital shipyards that serve to service the vessels of the third fleet.”
Williams looked around, “You’re not seriously considering attacking this world?”
Greyman ignored her, “Sounds like a tough nut to crack. Any idea how many ships are in the system?”
Reia commented, “That battlegroup was part of the third fleet, I recognized the carrier. With those close calls we had earlier, fleet command must have been put on alert.”
“So they are looking for us,” commented Countryman.
Misaki interjected, “I’ve seen quite a few groups on long-range sensors, there could be more. Our range is somewhat limited.”
“This is suicide!”
Countryman replied, “We don’t have much choice. Either we strike now, or we die. Now why don’t we discuss a plan that might have some kind of chance of success.”
Greyman pulled out a chart, “If we presume most of the garrison has been dispatched on patrols looking for us, that would likely mean the third fleet would be out of position. That would leave the reserve defense fleet and the local defenses for us to deal with.”
Reia commented, “The reserve fleet, last I heard, had seven hundred cruisers and a number of smaller cutters. It doesn’t have any major capital ships, all the heavier vessels are part of the main third fleet.”
“That sounds like something we can deal with. Now just to make sure,” Countryman looked at Misaki, who smiled.
“On it sir!” she quickly pulled Vera and Neira from the meeting. Reia followed her sister and fellow Valorian out of the meeting.
They turned and discussed the system further, considering the local conditions and footing various plans as they waited.
Minutes later the group of girls came back in, and ran up to the console with new data. Misaki smiled, “Thanks to our resident Valorians, we’ve confirmed it. The Valorian Third fleet is out of the system, the main bulk of the fleet is on the far side of gravitational anomaly M-223-gamma. If we jump now, we can be at the system before they can respond. I calculate at warp five it will take us 81.5 hours to reach the system, but the soonest they can intercept is 88.2 hours. That would give us almost seven hours before the Valorians can respond.”
Countryman smiled, that was plenty of time for a raid, but the timings would be tight. They had done it before, but that was a border world with much weaker defenses. They were going to have to do the same thing on a much larger scale with stronger defenses and less time. Worse, they were almost out of fuel, which meant they were running low on a key resource for battle. Limiting their options.
Kaori looked up, “Well if that’s the case our best bet would be a massive simultaneous strike as soon as we come out of warp. If we can catch the defense fleet off guard we can neutralize the biggest threat in the area. Getting past the planetary shield might be a bit of an obstacle, but if we are fast enough we might be able to knock it out before they have a chance to raise it.”
Countryman nodded and the group launched into planning their attack. Refining the details, what units to use and what they had. This time Richards was able to promise them as many Scorpions and Raptors as they would require, as she hadn’t touched them for spare parts without permission, which was good, since they were going to need them. A raid of this scale with such tight timings was going to require a much more aggressive attack. They had mere hours to land their troops, secure a beachhead, capture their objectives and then ship the critical fuel offworld. Refueling the Enterprise alone was going to require a massive amount of fuel. It was most critical that they secured their target within the first hour of the attack and they were going to need the time to get as much fuel and supplies as they could before booking it for Krall space.