Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen - At All Costs
Day was batting missiles out of the air almost constantly. Charging into the oncoming swarm, cutting off the distance between herself and the missiles, was probably not her greatest idea.
Still, it meant that she was facing them head-on, and could bring all of her point defence guns to bear on the threat. She focused on that, giving more and more processing power over to tracking and taking out incoming targets.
At the same time, she aimed her main guns towards the Accord.
Their fight for the previous few days had been almost entirely executed from maximum range. The time between a shot being fired and its hitting was measured in several minutes.
Now she was basically in middle-range, so close that from the moment she fired it only took a few seconds for her to register an impact.
The Accord cruiser was the centre of the ERF’s attention at the moment. Candle was laying into it with non-stop fire. The surprise aggression seemed as if it had caught the Accord off-guard. They were putting up their magnetic shields now, which were deflecting some of their particle cannon fire.
It was doing nothing for the larger kinetic rounds that Candle was firing as quickly as her guns could shoot.
Day registered multiple explosions going off along the cruiser’s hull, each one punching dents into the ship’s armour, ripping apart anything on the ship’s exterior, and sending the ship reeling back from the force of the impacts.
Lullaby fired again, and the frigate shivered as a hole was punched through-and-through, taking out one of its missile batteries on its far side. Unfortunately, there were no secondary explosives. The chemical explosives the Accord used in their missiles remained inactive until the missile was well on its way to its enemy, which was an entirely sensible precaution.
Day spread her fire out, aimin her cannons at any gun emplacements on the enemy ship that she could reach. It was working, every few seconds a shot landed and damaged the particle cannons or ripped into a laser-array.
It wasn’t going to be so easy, though.
Day winced as the cruiser started to fire at Candle and herself. The first few shots were easy enough for her to dodge. She was more manoeuvrable, and was already going through a basic evasive pattern. Candle wasn’t so lucky.
Her larger friend made for an easier target, and Day--connected to Candle’s systems as she was--registered pinpricks of damage across her hull. Some shots glanced off Candle’s hull plating, but most punched right through and ripped apart her internals.
Day couldn’t do another more than what she was doing already.
Each shot she took was one more bit of damage the enemy sustained, it was one more broken subsystem, one more damaged component.
Lullaby was helping too. A shot came in that rammed into the cruiser’s primary bridge. Air vented from it, and her cameras picked up a few shredded organic forms being ripped out into the void of space.
The ERF had one more win condition than the Accord. If they killed enough of the crew, then the ship would be as good as disabled. Sure, they had targeting systems that would keep on going, but accord ships needed crews in seats to operate.
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Amidst the chaos of gunfire and explosions, Day felt a sudden jolt; a sharp, searing pain that emanated from her starboard side. Her systems flashed in warning, and she immediately assessed the damage.
“I’m hit!” she called out to her allies, immediately diving into diagnostics to assess the damage.
“Where?” Candle demanded, her voice tense.
“Port side, aft section. Damage to manoeuvring thrusters,” Day replied, wincing at the data coming in. “I can still fight, but I’ve lost some mobility.”
“Are you good to keep going?” Candle asked.
“You’ve taken a dozen hits to my one,” Day said. It wasn’t a bad hit. The damage reports compiled to paint a simple picture. One hose punched through, some damage deeper in. She had drones moving in on it already.
“I’m tougher,” Candle said. “Just keep strong, this is almost done.”
It was. The cruiser was listing, falling into a slow spin that it wasn’t correcting itself out of, quite possibly because so many of its thruster banks had been struck. A fire burned along one side, and Day imagined that a stray shot had nicked a fuel-line.
The frigate was in a slightly better state, yet it was taking hits on a constant basis. It had withdrawn slightly, putting more distance between itself and the charging ERF ships. The decision was likely tactical, aiming to give its missile systems more time to lock on and fire.
But then, another explosion rocked Day's systems. This one more violent than the first, originating from her underside.
A missile strike? She reviewed her scans and cursed as she noticed a dark blob of nothing come out of nowhere to explode against her hull. A stealthed missile? She adjusted her scanners, searching for more even as she assessed the new damage.
It was mostly superficial, the explosion bathing her hull in fire and scorching a few sensors, but otherwise, it wasn’t that bad of a hit.
Taking a moment to regroup, Day refocused her efforts, as did Candle and Lullaby. With Candle's superior firepower and Lullaby's precision shots, they began targeting the most vulnerable points on the Accord ships.
Lullaby hit something critical within the Accord frigate. The ship convulsed as internal explosions cascaded through it. Within seconds, its reactors were compromised, and the ship went dark, drifting aimlessly in space.
With a final roar of her cannons, Candle delivered a punishing barrage to the cruiser's side. The blast punctured through the weakened hull and hit the ship’s fuel bunker directly, causing a massive chain reaction. The cruiser lit up from within as secondary explosions rippled through its superstructure. Then, with one last blinding flash, the cruiser's reactor breached, sending a wave of energy outwards.
As the light dimmed, all that remained of the once mighty Accord cruiser was a twisted, charred skeleton of metal, drifting amidst the debris of the battle.
“Regroup,” Day said. “We need to get to Dawn. And away from the civilians. Should we tell them to surrender?”
***