She had just been informed that minimal power had been restored to the defense systems, when suddenly an alien ship appeared in a flash of light. The ship was rugged with numerous bulbous protrusions along her length, and mostly rectangular lines. Almost instantly it opened fire on a cruiser not far from her ship. That cruiser, the SFS Augustus had not yet restored power to her defense systems. Much of her power was still being channeled to the Hyperwarp systems, preparing for their jump. Vibrant violet energy streams tore into the ship’s side. Her hull armor disintegrated, and the ship went up in a fireball.

Someone reported the Augustus lost with all hands, and several more flashes of light signaled the arrival of more alien ships. These ships belonged to the Delkari Imperium. A race that they had only sporadic contact with in the past, and their being here was a bit of surprise. They had been detected approaching this position about ten minutes ago, and it seemed they had chosen to attack the fleet without provocation.

Melia knew that the main guns were still down, the capacitors had yet to charge. Her hull plating was barely twenty percent charged, and the shields were down. However the torpedoes were online, and she ordered tactical to fire on the hostile cruiser that sunk the Augustus. The ship hummed and a series of blue streaks erupted from the hull of her cruiser. Each bolt slammed into the side of the Delkari capital ship and exploded with deadly force. Having just come out of FTL the cruiser’s shields weren’t up yet, and she had no ready defense against the deadly volley. Secondary explosions rippled across her hull, as the ship explosively collapsed.

That was the first kill of the day, and she quickly ordered the helm to alter their course. At the same moment, the operations officer reported to her from below the command balcony, “Sir we have just been given priority orders. We are to protect the Enterprise and Columbia until they can complete the jump to Hyperwarp.”

She had actually expected those orders. Position wise they were closer to the Enterprise than the Columbia. Not to mention that her main engines were still warming up. Meaning she was limited to thrusters until the engines got up to temperature. The same was true of her main weapons. The PPBs that were her ship’s main ship to ship weapon were very powerful, and quite deadly, but they like the engines were plasma-based. They would need time for the capacitors to warm up before they could open fire. All modern weapons needed time to charge, but normally they had protocols in place to bring them online quickly. The sheer amount of power needed to make an intergalactic jump had necessitated taking those protocols offline. Given how rare such jumps were it wasn’t normally a problem diverting power for the few short hours needed to tunnel a conduit between galaxies. This was proving to be an exception to the rule. Even if they had been carrying kinetics they would still have needed time to charge the capacitors. However, most advanced races, and this included the alliance didn’t bother with kinetics. Well, a few did, but they all had access to hypervelocity rounds. The only kind of kinetic round capable of penetrating the advanced armors most of the more technologically capable races have. The Alliance was especially advanced in the area of armor, and not even hypervelocity rounds could reliably penetrate Alliance armor. This is why the alliance preferred plasma beam weapons as they could punch through just about any defense, and do it reliably.

As for the Alliance, they were a vast collection of loosely aligned nomadic fleets ruled from massive cityships. The oldest of these fleets have planet-sized cityships with populations to match and thousands of escorts. The Enterprise is the cityship of the oldest fleet in the Alliance, and is consequently the largest cityship in the Alliance. The Columbia was not much younger, and was the sixth cityship ever built by the Solean people. Both of them were the centers of what were often called “Elder fleets.” So it came as no surprise that between the two of them nearly fifteen thousand cruisers and destroyers as escorts. Not counting the additional thirty thousand Bird of Prey type frigates at their command or the battleships at their disposal. Given the sheer number of ships here, it was quite surprising that the Delkari had chosen to strike. Of course, the numbers were nothing compared to what the Alliance if they unified could field. If that happened they could easily field millions of ships. Putting all of this in perspective, it came as no surprise that she had been ordered to protect the Enterprise and the Columbia. Billions of Soleans called those ships home.

Having ordered a course, she assessed her options and priorities. Her shields were still down, but they weren’t high on her priorities list. The Alliance didn’t really have good shields their shields only performed as well as they did due to superior Alliance power generation. The Alliance was really good with power generation, system efficiency, ship construction, armor and hull integrity, energy weapons and torpedoes. However, what they were best at was stealth. Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to help much in this situation. Not to mention with most of her power output still being tied up by the Hyperwarp engines her options were kind of limited.

Ahead a Delkari battleship emerged directly in her ship’s path. The ship immediately opened fire on several cruisers in her vicinity. Then an idea occurred to her. While not often done with modern ships, her vessel was old and still had the circuitry. When she was built, the engines were designed so that they could also be used as a weapons system. It was called a stellar disrupter array, and it used special projector circuits to make use of the Hyperwarp generators as a weapon. Normally used to disrupt stars, but the intense spatial distortions could cause significant damage to ships or planets. They needed to discharge the energy in the generators anyway, and using it on a capital ship made perfect sense to her. With a vicious smile, she ordered her tactical officer to target the battleship.

Her officer returned an evil grin of their own, and locked the ancient projectors on the ship. Normally a ship commander would never dream of using the projectors as a ship to ship weapon because they took too long to charge, but the generators were already highly charged. It took mere seconds for the energy to be channeled from the generators and into the projectors before discharging as an angry swirling energy discharge.

The projected energy beam slammed into the battleship amidships, and the ship simply crumbled. Her plating just fell apart as every connection simultaneously failed. Modules suddenly crumbled inward, or blew apart seemingly at random. Entire sections of the ship twisted and turned inside out. Plasma erupted from the engineering sections as the conduits failed. The atmosphere exploded outward, and then froze as it radiated what little heat it had into space. Something on the devastated ship exploded and melted a huge chunk of it into slag. It was safe to say that the battleship was no longer a threat, and she shuddered to imagine what happened to the crew.

A glance at a console told her that the generators were drained entirely sinking that one ship, and it would take an hour to charge another shot. Regardless that one shot, as reported by her crew had done exactly what she had wanted it to do. Twelve ships had stopped firing on her defenseless comrades, and were now headed straight for her cruiser. Drawing their attention to her ship was exactly what she wanted to do as it bought more time for her friends. Her own survival was of secondary importance here.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Before the Delkari warships could get into range of her ship, her tactical officer reported, “Main weapons are online sir!”

She was glad to hear that those guns were ready to fire. Now she could actually start dishing out damage to the enemy. A quick glance at her console told her the engines were almost to temperature, and that her hull plating was now charged to forty-nine percent. While the Delkari weren’t yet close enough to fire their shorter range antimatter particle weapons at her ship, they were in range of her PPBs. Well inside their effective range in fact. The PPB was the longest ranged plasma weapon ever developed by the alliance, and no other faction had developed one with similar range and power. She singled out a battlecruiser approaching from starboard, and ordered tactical to fire on it.

Her ship unleashed a full broadside at maximum power as per her orders. Blue-green beams of deadly plasma slammed into the battlecruiser’s forward shields one after another. At first, the shields seemed to hold, but they quickly buckled under the pressure. Streams of plasma punched through the shields, and melted through the hull. In mere seconds the targets battlecruiser was reduced to a melted and burned out husk. The crew didn’t even have time to abandon ship. They switched targets to the two cruisers that had been escorting her. Their weaker shields failed to even hold against the first hits. One of the ships exploded on the very first hit, thanks to a penetrating hit that tore right through the shields, armor, and several modules to eventually strike one of their antimatter storage pods. The antimatter containment failed, and the deadly particles mixed with surrounding matter. The resulting fireball was very impressive. The other cruiser lasted a few seconds longer, and managed to avoid a hit to anything sensitive like the antimatter pods, but was ultimately reduced to an expanding debris cloud.

One of the nine remaining ships closing on their position, a destroyer risked a short-range jump, and in a flash entered knife range of her ship. It immediately unleashed its entire arsenal of torpedoes. A web of angry red lines sprang up like a barrier between her ship and the volley. Most of the torpedoes were harmlessly destroyed when they tried to pass, but some passed through to slam into the hull. The plating withstood most of the hits, but two breached the hull. Fortunately, they didn’t hit anything critical, and no one was in those sections. Automated damage control systems quickly kicked in to seal off those sections. She ordered tactical to return fire.

A single cannon locked onto the destroyer, and fired. A blue-green stream of deadly plasma struck the destroyer amidships, and punched through her shields. The thin hull plating of the destroyer had no chance of stopping the high powered plasma beam. The beam ripped through the entire ship, and passed through the other side. In the process, it severed the mains for the ship, and she went dead. Everything forward of her main engines lost power, and she began to drift. From her wounded center atmosphere leaked violently into space. The damaged destroyer’s damage control systems lacking power were unable to engage. A mistake that the Alliance never would have made. They still used mechanical bulkheads, even though they had forcefield technology.

At that moment the remaining eight ships got into range and opened fire on her ship. Suddenly before she could even give the order to return fire, the largest of them, a battleship, took a barrage of blue bolts. They passed right through its shields, as if they weren’t there. It was a volley of heavy shield penetrating torpedoes. There were only twelve of them, but it was more than enough to sink the ship. It exploded in a massive fireball. The resulting shockwave damaged a nearby Delkari destroyer. Her shields buckled and her hull cracked a bit, but she remained operational.

Someone informed her that those torpedoes had come from the Enterprise. Evidently, someone had gotten the launchers online, and they were now firing on any capital ship in range. A range that was quite considerable in fact, as the Enterprise had the range to fire torpedoes on any ship on the battlefield. Normally the Alliance didn’t use torpedoes so freely, being nomadic replacing those munitions could often be rather difficult. That had not precluded them from amassing a large stockpile of deadly torpedoes. In the distance, she noticed the Columbia had also begun firing torpedoes on hostile capital ships. A glance to her console told her the main engines were online, and she ordered a new course and speed. While ordering her tactical officer to fire at will.

Immediately her cannons were directed at multiple targets, and opened fire. As violent energy bolts washed over the hull of her cruiser draining the energy field that held her hull plating together the ship returned fire. The first of the remaining Delkari ships in this part of the field to go down was the destroyer. She was already wounded, and without shields, she was helpless against the high power PPBs her ship carried. A single beam punched through her thin hull plating, and perforated her engine room. The resultant secondary explosions tore the small ship to pieces. She was quickly followed to the grave by a light cruiser. The cruiser’s shields were too weak to stop the PPBs from punching right through the energy screens, and her armor was too thin to be of much help either against the deadly beams. Especially at this close of a range. The first beam punched through her port bow plate and right through one of the capacitors for her forward guns. Automated safties successfully kicked in but a second beam quickly followed. This one punched through the hull and lacerated several power conduits. In addition, she lost her main forward shield generator to the hit. That proved devastating for the cruiser, as the shields while not able to stop the beam had been mitigating the damage. The following hit to her forward section proved devastating, and this time her damage control systems failed to stop the atmosphere loss. As her crew was desperately trying to contain the ship’s atmosphere, a final hit this time to the port rear, spelled doom for the ship’s crew. The high energy plasma ignited the fuel for the cruiser’s sublight engines, and they exploded. Fire quickly began to spread through the devastated aft sections. Damage control systems were overwhelmed and failed to contain the spread of the fire. On the other end of the ship, someone had managed to get the forcefields to engage, and the atmosphere was no longer leaking at a prodigious rate. Not that it was of much help, as apparently an abandon ship order soon followed. Escape pods began launching from the doomed vessel.

A few moments later as the last ship engaging her was sinking, she requested a damage report.

“Hull plating is at twenty-three percent, sir. We have sustained eighty-seven hull breaches spread across decks six, seven, eight, nine, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-seven, and fifty-six. Emergency bulkheads are in place and holding. Twelve energy web emitters, and fifty-seven defense turrets have been destroyed. Portside PPB emitters are offline, but engineering expects to have them online again in two minutes. We have also taken damage to the port nacelle, nothing major but we did lose a few maneuvering thrusters,” reported an officer. She acknowledged the report, and then requested status on the shields.

“The shield generators are coming online now, sir,” was the immediate reply. She was glad for that. The shields weren’t anything special, but the extra protection would be quite welcome. They should also protect against antimatter weapons better than the armor did. Before she could say anything, a bright flash in the distance signaled the arrival of twelve dreadnoughts and their escorts. All of which were in weapons range of the two cityships. Half these new ships opened up on the Columbia and the other half began firing on the Enterprise.