The SFS Batoruhoku SFR-24 dropped out of warp. She had gone ahead of the main fleet along with a couple of light cruisers. This part of space was wracked by spatial anomalies that had disrupted the wave spreading across space. Their task force had been tasked with trying to find a safe route through this part of space. The anomalies forced them to follow narrow paths at low warp just to get anywhere, but it was still safer than trying to cross the expanding FTL shockwave. The fleet wanted to be as far from the center as they could get when the wave finally dissipates.
As per standard procedure, the ship’s commander ordered a scan of the system. They weren’t really expecting any contacts, but to their surprise, they detected a ship in the system. One that was already on an intercept course. Also not far from their position was a small habitable world with a small but operational shipyard in orbit. The yard had several large ships moored in its slips that were in the final stages of construction. This system was shielded from the omnipresent radiation by the anomalies, and the local star’s unusually strong magnetic field. Not far from the planet was a hyperwarp conduit that was currently closed, but it was likely the way these ships entered and left the system. However, at the moment it showed signs of extreme disruption. As for the other ships in the system, they were naturally Cylovan, and the warship approaching was one of their heavier capital ships, a Battleship. Her bays were already open, and she was deploying her fighters.
She would have ordered an immediate retreat, but a jamming field was already being generated by the station. As such they wouldn’t be able to go to warp, and avoid this battle. Ordering a general quarters, crewman rushed to battle stations while red alert lights flashed, and a klaxon blared. The commander took a mental inventory of what was at her disposal. They were a synthetic manned fleet sent ahead of the main force for a scouting mission. She had three ships, a number that fleet command favored for small taskforces like this one. In addition to her own Battlehawk class heavy cruiser, she was accompanied by two Star Knight class light cruisers. They were outfitted mainly for a recon mission, and armed accordingly. Her ship had been sent along just in case they came across an enemy, but they had not expected any conflict.
All three of her ships were outfitted with Phase Lances, photon torpedoes, and the latest in Overlord type armor plating. Her ship did have a small supply of the more valuable AMF torpedoes. Hopefully, the current Mark III Photons would be more effective than the Mark I Photons they had used five years ago, but she doubted it as they weren’t designed to penetrate neutronium enhanced plating. The Mark IIs that were used in the sole Cylovan encounter in the past five years certainly didn’t fare much better. Then again there was very little improvement in the destructive power of the Mark II or III over the Mark I. All the improvements were focused on reliability, guidance, and range. Those same improvements were made with AMF torpedoes, and in the case of the AMF torpedoes a shield penetrator that was specifically designed to reliably penetrate Cylovan energy shields. Something that made sense considering that they were chiefly designed for destroying Cylovan targets. Regardless she had all two hundred of the AMF torpedoes their fleet had been outfitted with on her ship. In addition, she had 500 AMF style fighter bombs.
She figured it would be enough to destroy a single hostile battleship, and in the process secure an escape route. Those incomplete ships in the docking slips would be a bit of a wild card. They were in the final stages of construction, and were likely operational as well. It would take time to get them running, but they could very well be used to defend the shipyard here or in this case to attack them. Suddenly the conduit opened and three badly damaged dreadnoughts emerged from the conduit. Their hulls showing none of the expected distortions of passing through the conduit. A quick scan revealed that their shields had been reconfigured to allow passage through the distorted conduit. As for the damage, it was all the result of combat. The hull showed signs of heavy antiproton damage and hyperspatial distortions. They had clearly been in battle with someone, but she knew not who they had been fighting.
Just as the approaching Battleship was entering torpedo range, she noticed a second yard enter view. It was about the same size as the first, but it had several empty slips. Naturally, they were large enough to accommodate a dreadnought. With the battleship, in range, she decided to strike first. A quick order to tactical and a volley of AMF torpedoes were careening for the dreadnought.
They streaked across the distance in a matter of seconds, and all twelve fired passed through the shields as if they weren’t there. Two of them penetrated the open forward hanger. One punched into the deck plating and exploded after punching through the plates into the chamber below, the other smashed against the rear wall and punched through it before also exploding. The other ten detonated on contact with the ship’s hull plating. The resulting impacts inflicted massive damage to the dreadnought, and ripped apart entire decks. When the dust cleared the dreadnought was still there, but its forward sections had been reduced to torn, and half-melted scrap metal. Power readings from the ship were intermittent, her shields were down, main drives offline, and all weapon arrays disabled.
Her already launched fighters surged forward to engage their taskforce. She was already giving orders to launch fighters, and her light cruisers were already launching their fighters and corvettes for the fight. Just then the conduit opened again and spat out three more badly damaged dreadnoughts. Evidently she was going to have to deal with reinforcements from that conduit, but hopefully, they would all be as damaged these were.
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The distorted bluish-green swirls on the screen finally gave way to normal space, and the commander was beyond grateful. His stomach, in particular, thanked him for being in normal space. An officer reported that they were now in normal space. An officer reported that they were now secure in normal space, and cloaked.
Looking at the young woman who was his first officer he said, “Remind me next time not to chase a Cylovan fleet through a hyperwarp conduit.” then he addressed his tactical officer, “What do the sensors say? Where are we?”
“Sir, positional scans indicate we are in the Alar system, in the Ikar Radiation belt. And sir, I am picking up weapons fire.”
He didn’t think the Cylovans could have detected his ship already, so he gave the order to put it onscreen. Instantly a battlefield appeared in his view. Three Refuge ships were heavily engaged with a Cylovan fleet. All of the Refuge ships had sustained heavy damage, but were continuing to fight. Not to mention they had dealt a fair amount of damage to the Cylovans. Thirty-seven ships had retreated via this conduit, but eighteen of those ships were missing. A few new ones seemed to be in the mix, but at a glance, he could tell they weren’t finished.
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“The Refuge appears to be engaged heavily with the Cylovan fleet. I am detecting debris from twenty-one Cylovan capital ships. As for the Refuge, I don’t think they will last much longer. Their hull plating has failed, their torpedo bays are almost empty, and it looks like most of their auxiliary craft have been destroyed.” Just as the officer said that he noticed a small corvette fire a few bombs into a badly damaged dreadnought, the bombs struck something critical. The resulting secondary explosions disabled the ship, and a nearby Cylovan ship locked onto the scout ship and fired. An energy beam struck its hull dead on and ripped right through it leaving another ship floating dead in space. Not that there was much left of the ship.
Elsewhere two dreadnoughts opened fire on the Refuge heavy cruiser. Two beams tore right trough her hull and out the other side of the large capital ship, but amazingly she managed to return fire. A powerful energy pulse tore through the nearest dreadnoughts damaged plating and punched through to one of the main reactors. The resulting secondary explosion dealt a fair amount of damage to the dreadnought, and the ship went dark. Her sister ship fired again, this beam struck the secondary hull of the Refuge cruiser. Mere seconds later the entire secondary hull separated from the cruiser, and a half minute after that it detonated as the main reactors lost containment. He had to agree with his officer that they wouldn’t last much longer against the Cylovan fleet here.
He turned to give his tactical officer an order and noticed a frown on her younger face. “Something wrong he asked?”
She nodded, and replied, “Yes, they are clearly in a disadvantaged position, and yet all three of their ships have a massive amount of power stored in their emergency batteries. I would expect those batteries to be heavily depleted at this point. The energy used for their weapons or other combat systems.”
He found that odd as well, but didn’t think now was the time to speculate, so he ordered her to have all weapons on standby. Then turning to the helm, he ordered a course that would take them into the thick of the battle.
In the distance, he noticed two of the refuge cruisers break off from the attack. They fired their beam weapons full force to cover their retreat scoring mostly light hits. However, they were clearly being aimed at important targets. They were clearly trying to render their opponents blind and deaf. Something else he noticed was that not a single Cylovan shield generator was flaring, and he did a quick sensor check from his own console. To his surprise, he discovered that the shield generators on all of the Cylovan ships had been destroyed. The damage patterns indicated that they had been destroyed by Refuge particle beams. Something he found rather impressive.
He was confused as to why the cruisers were breaking off now, however, when suddenly they both let out a high-intensity multispatial beam. Space distorted in front of them, and in a matter of seconds, a hyperwarp conduit opened directly in their path. Both damaged light cruisers entered their conduit and vanished from the field of battle. The other cruiser did not follow them, and instead, she fired everything she had at nearby ships. Including a high-intensity multispatial beam at the most intact Cylovan dreadnought. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but soon intense multispatial distortions began tearing the ship apart. Said ship rapidly maneuvered away from the beam, but not before it dealt enough damage to render the ship a non-combatant. Mere seconds after the ship left the distortion region, a new conduit formed where the dreadnought had been.
The entire sequence of events was rather shocking to him for several reasons, but the biggest had to do with the amount of energy needed to generate a hyperwarp conduit exceeded the known power generation of Refuge ships. Before he could ask, his science officer informed him, “Sir, they are using the stored energy of their emergency batteries to generate those conduits.”
On the screen, he watched as the heavy cruiser, entered the conduit it generated thereby leaving the field of battle. A glance at the sensors told them that the fleet was still out of their weapons range. Looking at his first officer, he commented, “I guess they didn’t need our help afterall.”
She was standing by a console and looking over sensor readings. “I found the debris of what looks to be a Cylovan shipyard complex. It appears to have been subjected to an extensive bombardment, both the spaceside yards and planetside facilities have been destroyed. The weapon signatures are Refuge, it appears they bombarded the facility quite heavily with photon torpedoes, photon bombs, and particle beam weapons. The Cylovans will have to completely rebuild the facility.”
His chief engineer who had been silent up to this point finally decided he had something to add, “I have been looking at the changes in Refuge technology. It seems they used superior energy storage techniques to overcome the intense energy demands of Hyperwarp technology. They also don’t exactly stick to the traditional use of said technology either. Also, my scans showed their ships were more heavily damaged than appearances would suggest. The heavy cruiser appears to have taken the brunt of the Cylovan fleets firepower, and there wasn’t much left of her when she jumped out of the system. I doubt her hull could have taken another hit, and if the Cylovans pursue her ...”
He interrupted at that point, “They won’t get a chance. I want to take care of this fleet quickly, and then we can pursue them to see if they will need aid.”
They were getting close to weapons range, and his science officer said, “We may have difficulty catching up with the Refuge ships. Each of their three conduits are headed in separate directions.”
He decided he would worry about that later, and instead gave the order to decloak and open fire. His battleship didn’t carry their heavier hypervelocity cannons, but the antiproton cannons and hyperspatial torpedoes he had were more than sufficient for dealing with a small fleet of practically crippled Cylovan ships.
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Ship’s Combat log Jan 13th 080 SDE,
It is a painfully day, when a captain loses their ship. She gave as good as she had, but the Batoruhoku has been damaged beyond repair. I am commanding the ship from a secondary bridge, not that there is much left to command. Her starframe is barely holding together, the hull plating is gone, my bridge has been destroyed, the secondary hull is gone. The engines are barely functioning, over half the ship has been vented to space. In fact, it would be easier to list what wasn’t damaged in the fight, which amounts to just about nothing.
At this point, standard procedure would be to scuttle the ship, but I have no shuttles left. There are escape pods that are still intact, but they are short-range craft. Regardless, I have managed to locate a Mars type planet in range. Not exactly suitable, but we should be able to survive there for a few weeks. Hopefully long enough for the fleet to respond to our distress signal and locate us. In the meantime, I have my crew rigging our remaining auxiliary reactors to overload. Normally this would be done, by overloading the engines. However, our power systems are barely functioning and the engines are not only barely functioning but the fuel lines are leaking. We have determined that the reactors would run out of fuel before they could get the engines to build to an overload. Fortunately while less destructive the reactors should do the job well enough.