Chronicles of Sol: The Fall-Chapter 227 - One Eighty-Nine Escort

May 18th, 007 SDE:

"Countryman, my sensors have picked up Raider vessels closing on our course, do yours?"

Countryman turned slightly to get a better look at Felki on the monitor, "I do, we haven't determined the exact force yet, but at least one looks to be about the right size for a battleship, it's hard to tell at this distance, but there might be two."

She grinned, "Seems like I've got the better sensors, we've confirmed two battleships, four heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, a destroyer and fourteen frigates." then her face shifted, "Our friends must have called for help, I highly doubt they'd have a battleship out here otherwise. Certainly not two, those vessels are too valuable to risk without some kind of gain."

He let the sensor comment slide, "I'd generally agree, our intel says they've only got fourteen battleships."

"We have seven, but none of them are in this area. If we reach the Lodge, we'd have the protection of the fleet, but those two battleships alone could threaten the facility. It's not built for a bombardment. Although I do feel slightly better with your ship being present, we could certainly use the help of another battleship."

Countryman frowned, as he watched the plots. They were already on course for the Drifter harbor known as The Lodge. "How many ships do you have in this area?"

"There are two heavy cruisers undergoing repairs at The Lodge and several Light Cruisers of the same caliber as the Stormwolf but most of our local forces are light frigates. We do have other harbors to defend, afterall."

He noted that down mentally as he considered the situation. After spending four days helping the Stormwolf repair her shields and engines, he'd agreed to escort them. The Raiders hadn't showed in that time, but it seemed after being driven off they'd been gathering a larger force. They were already underway for the Lodge, but that seemed to be a fairly large force; if it tracked them to the Lodge, it could mean trouble.

"Those Raider ships are still a fair ways off, we might try scaring them off with a fighter strike."

Felki blinked, "Right... I'm not really used to that as an option. I guess that gives us a tactical edge, I hadn't considered."

"Speaking of tactical edges, is there anything else you think we should keep in mind?"

"Hmm, the Raiders have superior shields, someone in their number figured out a way to improve their shields so that the storm doesn't strain them as much. It means they actually hold up in battle. It gives them a decisive tactical edge, usually in one-on-one combat of the same weight class they win. I'm not sure how well a few strike fighters will tilt the balance."

Countryman frowned, "How have they not beaten you then, from what I understand they have more ships."

"They have other rivals, and we have better sensors. My Stormwolf can usually see them coming. That last group got lucky when they managed to sneak up on us."

Countryman nodded, that made sense. The plots didn't show the other group had seen them either. "Greyman? Get up here, we have planning to do."

The man showed up quickly enough, "I was listening. The shield thing doesn't change much, but if they haven't seen us yet that gives us time to consider our options. If we could avoid the battle I think that would be wise."

"Agreed, and if it was just the Enterprise we could likely retreat, but the Stormwolf isn't as silent as we are."

Felki commented, "I'm not sure you should risk your battleship on our account."

"Heavy Fleet Support Cruiser, the only thing battleship-like about the Enterprise is her armor belt and her beam array. Hmm but our armor would be a real advantage, if most factions here have less advanced armor than you and rely on their limited shields? Mass would be the usual metric of success."

"We did share our armor tech with other drifter ships. It proved helpful for us, but we aren't the only faction using powered armor these days. Even some raider vessels have a secondary belt of powered armor, but why do I have the feeling you find my armor not impressive?"

"From my perspective, it's just dated, we have not used an armor scheme like that in decades. After we moved on from Gen Zero concepts like polarized plating, and started using actual structural fields in our armor, we built some systems quite similar to yours. Since that time, several wars have been fought and we've refined the armor systems several times. The Enterprise employs the gen three concept."

"Well dated doesn't mean useless."

"No, you can still take a few hits before the plating actually fails, but we are wasting time. Do we make a run for the Lodge? Or do we turn and fight?"

Felki leaned forward, "I'm rather partial to giving them a bloody nose, the Raiders have been getting bolder this cycle."

"Let me guess, something about having 14 battleships?"

"Yes, with the recent recruitment, they gained six battleships giving them a decided military edge and they've had time to equip them with combat shield upgrades and ion-disruptors."

Greyman looked thoughtful, "In that case, taking out the two battleships might be enough. If we deploy both squadrons of Sparrows, we just might be able to do enough damage. Pulsar torpedoes to take out the shields, then we can dump a few photons into their engineering sections, maybe get some secondary detonations. We can assign a few 1204's to cover them."

"Hmm, you might be right, and if they do survive, they'd be weakened. We can move in after and tear into the damaged hulls. Once the ships go down, the Raiders would more than likely retreat rather than give further battle."

Felki frowned, "and what would my crew be doing?"

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"Playing distraction, after the Enterprise goes dark to move in, you go active. Make a display of running. I'll leave two squadrons of fighters to cover you."

Felki watched the Enterprise practically vanish from her screens. She'd known the ship was going to go dark, as Countryman put it, but this was a little more than she expected. Her mass shadow was still visible, but in the storm it was hard to keep track of that and easy to mistake for something else. The ship had virtually no active emissions.

Moments ago, she'd been much more visible as she was actively deploying strike craft. Two squadrons of which had entered formation with her vessel. Those two squadrons were easier to track thanks to proximity but they weren't that obvious either. It wasn't active stealth either, these aliens were using passive techniques and they were pretty well versed in them actually. Those raiders weren't going to see them coming. She grinned as she turned towards the helm, the wall still marked by the previous battle.

"Okay, time to make like a spooked Lagos."

"Aye, sir. Bringing engines to full thrust."

After a moment the sensor officer reported, "They've seen us. Their cruisers are increasing speed and changing course."

"The Battleships?"

"Slower but doing the same. They are trying to cast a net, if we reverse course we'll get hit by the big girls."

She glanced at the plot and smiled, that was exactly what she wanted them to do. "Perfect."

Now she just had to wait, so Felki turned to the monitors. All she could do at the moment was watch, as events unfolded. Well mostly, she could still beam sensor data to the Enterprise, the big ship clearly didn't have the tracking sensors she did. Of course the Stormwolf was a light cruiser, a large detection array was common to light cruisers. They often served as the eyes of the fleet after all.

The atmosphere on the bridge was rather quiet with an air of tension, as the crew watched their monitors. Countryman leaned over the strategic master display in the middle of the bridge, Greyman was nearby. Glyphs marked the fighters as they closed for their initial attack run. So far there was no sign that they had been spotted. The Enterprise originally left Earth with five hundred auxiliary space vehicles that included some sixty starfighters, three hundred forty assault shuttles and an assortment of heavy cargo shuttles, dropships and personnel shuttles. However they'd taken on an additional 12 hulls when their escorts Coto and Umikaze sank at New Valoria. Originally they'd just mothballed those fighters in the cargo bay, but with two years and nothing to do, they'd taken the time to transfer them to active stowage at the cost of a few shuttles. They didn't actually need thirty personnel shuttles, hell they didn't even have other ships to transfer people too, so they'd taken the lighter unarmored ones and mothballed them instead. After that they'd done a lot of work to transfer a few of the combat shuttles into other bays and then stowed the now active fighter hulls in the main bays.

Of those 72 fighters they now had in active service, twelve of them were X-1208 Sparrow heavy bombers. Dedicated anti-ship strike craft, and perhaps the most useful for this mission. The remaining sixty were X-1204 space superiority fighters. That gave him two squadrons of Sparrows and ten squadrons of X-1204 space fighters. That was a dozen squadrons all of which were currently on the field, armed and ready to do damage.

Chatter came over the comms, "This is Strike Two, we are in position, requesting position to begin attack run."

Misaki was quick to reply, "Hold on that Strike Two, Strike One isn't ready."

"This Strike One, we are two minutes out from target, can you maintain position Strike Two?"

"Aye, maintaining position."

"Gamma Flight here, I'm getting some attention from the light cruisers. High power sensor sweep, I think they might have picked something up."

"Delta Flight, we confirm, they are definitely looking."

Countryman leaned in, "Strike one, pick up the pace."

"On it sir!"

The Glyphs showed the bomber squadron pick up speed. Additional acceleration and speed however did come with a risk, and he held his breath. Waiting for someone to catch on and open fire.

Yet that didn't happen, the Raider fleet kept moving to close their net, thinking they were the hunter. Not yet realizing they were in fact being hunted. Stormwolf was doing a great job at playing frightened rabbit, the Raiders didn't seem to notice. They clearly weren't the most professional military he'd seen.

"Strike One, in position, requesting permission to go weapons hot."

"Granted, Strikes one and two weapons free."

Almost immediately, the twelve bombers opened up on two ships. Telemetry was beamed to the console, allowing Countryman to view the attack in realtime. Several energy bursts fired from the small ships, pulsar shots. A holo display showed the first battleship, a large bulky behemoth with thick heavy armor and numerous heavy cannons in armored housings and turrets. The bombers almost seemed to emerge from the shadows of the storm before unleashing their payloads, shimmering white-blue energy bolts that seemed to crackle as they flew, and slammed into the ship. Each craft fired thrice, each time unleashing two bolts that slammed into the battleship's shields, before exploding.

The shields flared as energy discharged along the barriers, each one like a crack of lightning, then suddenly the energy barriers seemed to crack then shatter before unleashing a burst of light. Temporarily blinding the optical sensor feed, but it quickly compensated, letting him see a fourth volley of electro-plasma slam into the hull, just as the ship started to return fire with golden energy bursts that sailed harmlessly into the void, the targeting too wide to hit the little sparrows.

The last pulsar hits looked just as ineffective but looks were deceiving. Sure the hull was unblemished, but the charged warhead weren't designed to do hull damage. They were potent disruptors able to knock out shields and disable poorly shielded systems. The pilots on the other hand were quick to notice the shields were down, and switched to standard torpedoes. In addition, they began strafing the hull with their cannons.

Blue bolts slammed into the hull one after another as the ships raced down the length of the hull.

Tearing into the armor with explosive impact, the cannon bolts didn't get very far but they left gaping holes in the plate with each impact and there were a lot of particle impacts. The torpedoes however punched through the plating each time before detonating, leaving a gaping wound in the hull.

Countryman took a quick glance at the other ship, noting a similar story. It was sleeker, with a slimmer hull, the armor not as thick, which meant the cannon shots were tearing much more deeply into the armor belt as the fighters strafed it. Elsewhere, aside from Alpha and Beta flights the other squadrons had opened up on Raider targets as well. They didn't have pulsars, so they had to rely on conventional photon torpedoes and particle cannons. Not that it stopped them from having an effect, some of that fire got through, particularly the torpedoes.

"Strike Two here, out of warheads but the battleship is still active."

"Damage?"

"We've knocked out their dorsal weapons array, their shield generators and starboard engines. Along with heavy damage to their port engines, we estimate that they can restore the shields in about half an hour."

"Noted, Strike One? Status?"

"We've destroyed their main shield generators and knocked out their sublight engines, our target is adrift and losing power. We still have a couple of warheads left, would you like us to finish them?"

Countryman smiled, that was good. One was disabled, the other weakened by the sudden attack. That would make a more permanent solution much easier to pull off. With that in mind, he moved to the next phase of the battle plan.