The Battlelord watched his screens, his warriors maintaining vigil. The Battlemaster had alerted them three days ago to an impending fighter attack. So far there was no sign of it, and he wasn’t expecting it for another day. He based that mainly on previous encounters with human fighter craft. Still, the humans had shown to be quite clever with technology, so he had already deployed fighter screens with what few fighters he had and was keeping an eye out. The fighters likely wouldn’t serve as much more than an early warning, but that warning alone might save them. As it was half the ships in his battlegroup were without shields, and vulnerable to attack. That was nine cruisers that he needed to protect, and those thirty fighters he had deployed might mean all the difference between losing all of them and losing only half of them.
Suddenly, the signal from one of those fighters just vanished. Followed by two more without warning. He blinked, his tail lashed. They were here. He growled, “Battlestations. Full sensors!”
He couldn’t see them, yet. In a few moments that will change. The battle had begun. His blood stirred. He was going to enjoy this fight. The Battlelord relished the challenge that fighting the Humans always brought. This little backwater had proved to be one of the most interesting fronts in recent memory. Forging many a battle-hardened warrior.
The pilot checked her screens. They had split formation as soon as they came upon the Cathamari battlegroup. Nine of the ships were running with shields down, the other ten had them up. A fighter screen was also actively patrolling around the perimeter. Serving as extra eyes for the battlegroup no doubt. They weren’t much of a threat, but a few of her wingmen were already taking them out. Her fighter and one other ignored the screen and slipped into their formation.
If they were going to be running with shields down, they might as well take advantage. Remove them from the fight so that they had fewer guns to worry about when they make their attack runs on the remaining cruisers.
The agile craft responded to her every input with responsive ease. They slipped unnoticed past several shielded cruisers. The first target came into sight. Her hull scarred and breached in several places. The pilot noted the damage and smiled to herself. This ship had taken a beating back at Earth, maybe it had even fired a few of the shots at Earth
She lined up for a strafing run since it had no shields, there was no point wasting torpedoes on it. Her targeting scanners quickly identified key targets for her. Along with identifying weaknesses created by previous hits. The cruiser had lost a few armored bulkheads to penetrating torpedo hits. Damage on the port side was especially severe, and the armor protecting critical systems on the port side was virtually gone. With deft movements she programmed her targeting computer for the attack run. It would adjust the fire of her particle cannons automatically to maximize damage. All she would have to do is fly the ship, and give the order to open fire. The computers would do the rest. There were manual options if she so desired, but modern computers made great assistants. There was no reason not to use them, in fact, the abilities of the modern computer factored into why the X-1204 was a one-man craft.
Under her fingers the ship sailed into a run on the port side. The particle cannons unleashed a series of vibrant blue energy streams into the already scorched hull of the cruiser, as they sailed mere meters from the hull. A few cannons fired wide of her ship as she zipped by faster than they could track her. Small explosions marked her passage as the energy bolts tore into the unprotected hull.
As the ship broke clear of the cruiser and came about, her sensors informed her of secondary explosions. Her single run had hit several vital targets, including several systems responsible for maintaining the containment bubbles around the antimatter fuel pods. Matter and antimatter were now freely mixing on the hostile cruiser. The result was an impressive fireball, one close enough that her ship’s hull warmed from it. She was far enough however that the defensive systems could easily handle what energy reached her fighter. It did make her more visible briefly but that wouldn’t matter.
The Battlelord felt insulted, and his tail lashed the deck plates as he stared at the fuzzy sensor returns. Human ships were notoriously difficult to detect, especially the small ones. It was the damn distortion fields they generated. They made getting a clear sensor return on those ships impossible. The warrior at sensors had managed to locate the attacking fighters. A mere six ships. A single squadron of attack ships, that was all the humans had sent to attack his battle group. That number was insultingly low.
Yet they had already destroyed half his fighter screen, and destroyed two cruisers. All in the short time it took to compensate for their distortion screens and locate the enemy. He glanced at the weapons master, and said, “Alert all gunners, they are free to fire at will.”
The weapons master went to work. While he considered how to keep those six ships from destroying his fleet. The number might be low, but they were the most agile fighters he had ever seen from the Humans. A clear step above any ship they had employed before. This was going to be more of a challenge than he thought. He could feel his blood pumping.
Plasma bolts sailed past the hull, and harmlessly into space. The ship twirled and dived out of the line of fire like an elegant dancer on the stage. The plasma little more than fireworks to delight the eye. A rapid barrage of blue bolts were let loose and slammed repeatedly into the hull of a nearby cruiser. Each one tore into the unprotected hull with fury. Chunks of metal disintegrated and the hull ruptured. Small objects that weren’t properly secured, and air blew out into the void. One of the bolts tore into a magazine, and a small explosion lit up the stars. When the dust cleared the front half of the ship was nothing more than mangled duranium, while plasma fires were erupting from the rear.
One more ship had been removed from the battle. The fighter that killed it, under the deft hands of its pilot slipped away from the wreck. A Cathamari fighter sailed close and unleashed a barrage of plasma. Several orange-red bursts of plasma washed over the hull with no apparent effect. With swift movement, the 1204 flipped without changing flight direction and unleashed a burst of charged particles in retaliation.
The hostile Cathamari ship exploded an instant later when the bolts perforated her hull. Allowing the other fighter to slip away into the void. Avoiding a hail of plasma from the nearby cruisers. One of them launched a few plasma missiles, aimed at the fighter.
In response the ship accelerated shooting right past the missiles. Towards the firing cruiser. Twirling out of the arc of several guns, she unleashed a powerful glowing blue burst. The firing cruiser’s shields flared an instant later, and then an explosion struck the hull. Her shield grid then flickered, and a small arc failed. The 1204 sailed right through the freshly opened gap in the shield grid, and unleashed another barrage of charged particles. Rupturing the hull violently as she flew past, and frying shield emitters in the process as well.
Seconds later the ship broke away from the cruiser, which had already lost half its shield grid on the starboard side of the ship. A second fighter was already taking advantage of the broken shield grid to unleash a devastating second strafing run on the hull. Violent charged particle bursts tore into the wounded hull. Several small explosions marked the strafing, as the ship zipped past the hull.
A couple more elsewhere, marked the missiles launched earlier detonating while still in flight. They had been unable to catch any of the agile fighters, and had lost containment of the plasma. A fiery fireball was all that marked their end.
While in the distance a much larger fireball overshadowed those of the missiles detonating. Another cruiser elsewhere had just lost containment. A brilliant fireball lit up the sky in a glorious display that marked her end.
The Battlelord growled. The battle was going poorly. The damn humans were mocking him, they had sent a mere six ships. Their strategy was also predictably textbook of them. After crippling his fighter screen, and taking out any cruisers without shields as the opening act, they moved on to the cruisers with shields. Working in pairs they were targeting the shield grids with their torpedoes. The goal being to create an opening so that they can slip under the screen and strafe the unprotected hull. That was textbook for them, and that was what they were doing here. The only oddity was that they didn’t have a capital ship nearby waiting to open fire the moment the shield grids failed.
You would think with this being textbook that he would have a ready counter. He did not. The best counter was missiles. A coordinated barrage of heavy missile fire had proved most effective in the past. Fighters would have been preferred, but frankly, since shields at least Cathamari shields could not be made small enough to fit on a fighter. He did know of races that could mount shields on fighter craft, both the venerable Krall race and the cowardly Valorians possessed the technology for it. Both races that the Empire had poor relations with. Otherwise, they might have considered trying to purchase the technology from the Valorians. The Krall were not an option for that, since they closely guarded their technological secrets.
On his screens he watched another cruiser go up. At this rate, they weren’t going to last. They had scored a few hits on the fighters attacking them, but nothing particularly damaging. At most they had scored a few glancing blows that did little to actually damage the attacking craft. The problem was that they were too agile, his gunners simply couldn’t adjust the turrets fast enough to track them. While the missiles, most of these new fighters could simply outrun them. Worse he didn’t have many of them in the first place. Most of the ones he had previously carried had been used during the battle at Earth. That forced him to rely primarily on his gunnery.
He shouted new orders. He had an idea that might change the course of the battle. Suddenly his ship shook. The Battlelord growled. He glanced at engineering. “Keep those shields up.”
There was some grumbling from the engineer. Then the ship shook again. A shout from on of the consoles, said, “Shield failure, port side shield number six.”
The engineer shouted, “Already on it!”
He growled, his tail lashing the ground as he knew what that would mean. As long as that gap was open they were vulnerable. A violent shaking and loud groaning merely confirmed his fears. Glancing at a nearby display console entire sections were rapidly turning orange. His ship was dying, worse the spreading grouping of orange lights was heading right for the bridge. A sudden his, and creak was his only warning before a particle bolt passed right in front of his face by less than 10 centimeters.
The bridge lights flickered as emergency forcefields engaged. The Battlelord glanced up, at the armored bulkhead the bolt had passed through. Along with four other decks, and the plating on the outer hull. The penetrative power of the alien particle cannons was impressive, although thankfully they weren’t as destructive as a concussive plasma pulse. If they were he would have been dead. No question about it. That was the least of his worries at the moment though. The blaring alarms behind him were more worrisome. As the screens started flashing engine overload warnings. He shouted more orders just as the ship shook again, and his world went black.
As the command cruiser went down the battlegroup broke up. The fighters moved to chase them down. A couple of them had taken hits during the fighting so far, but nothing major. Nothing that penetrated the armor. The four remaining cruisers were nothing more than targets for these advanced fighters. It was shaping to be an impressive first debut for the X-1204. It helped that this battlegroup was lacking in proper anti-fighter weaponry.
Elsewhere other battlegroups were being attacked with similar results. Although one of them had fared a little better. That group still sank, but they did have a light cruiser with plasma flak arrays which proved better able to score hits on the 1204s, and even managed to inflict enough damage to force one to return to base. The others destroyed the cruiser before it could do more damage to the squadron. That one fighter however would be down for the rest of the fight though. As chances were that by the time the engineers back on the Enterprise were able to fix the damage the fight would be over. Even if it wasn’t it might not be able to make it back to the line before the Cathamari were able to make the jump to warp. Once they did that, the fleet would never be able to catch them. While they could run circles around them on sublight, the same could not be said for warp. Cathamari ships had been observed regularly moving faster than warp four, a speed they hadn’t yet cracked. While in theory, the engines on the Enterprise could briefly reach that speed no ship not even in tests had yet reached warp four. It was a barrier they were still working on.
Regardless the hunt was still on, and they had more ships they planned to hit before the Cathamari made it past the debris fields. It might have been pointless, but each ship they sank helped morale after the pounding they had taken at Earth.
