The ship captain shifted forward, as her frigate came around a large asteroid bringing into view the wreck of the carrier Profit’s Bounty. The ship was nothing more than expanding debris. Beyond that wreck, somewhat shrouded by the prevalent dust clouds was the dark black and silver hull of a massive alien capital ship. Easily on par with a mega freighter in terms of size, but clearly designed for battle not trade. Her shields were still strangely down. The hull was armored, but she didn’t think much of that. If they did end up fighting, her pulse cannons should be able to shred that pretty easily. It was a well-known fact that armor meant little to plasma weapons. Her sheer size on the other hand might provide a defense, especially since pulse cannons weren’t that potent. They were fast firing, had good range, and were very efficient weapons, but compared to other plasma weapons they did leave a little to be desired in terms of firepower. Thankfully that only ever came into play when the opponent had a decent shield system or in this case, so much mass that their size became protection in and of itself.

It took her a moment to spot, the single lancer fighter in proximity to the alien capital ship. The ship had an open hangar bay, which if her sensors were right didn’t even have an active bay shield. Not even an air shield. It was simply open to vacuum. She didn’t dwell too much on that, as her focus was on the several deployed tractor projectors locked onto the lancer. The lancer’s shields were flaring brightly in response to multiple tractor beam locks. Her engines were burning hot, fighting the beams. However it was a losing match, the projectors were pulling the struggling fighter into the bay at a slow, but steady pace. Not only that, but she was informed that the fighter’s engines were overheating, they only had about two minutes before they were forced to shut down the engines or risk them burning out. That didn’t count the worse possibility of course. Overheated engines also had a chance to overload, which for the poor pilot would be instant death.

Her orders were to attempt contact, but seeing this sight made following those orders hard. So instead, she ordered a targeted strike on those projectors. In her mind, the pulse cannons would burn through the armored casing, and free the fighter. That would give the pilot a chance to get away, and she could always try hailing the aliens later. What happened instead contradicted all her assumptions. A series of red plasma pulses sailed across the void. Cutting through the distance between her tiny frigate, and the massive alien battleship. Scoring multiple strikes against the active projectors, and a few splashes against the open hanger deck. Not a single plasma strike so much as scratched the alien plating, and the projectors continued reeling the captured lancer in. As if the whole incident hadn’t even happened. To add insult to injury, the alien vessel ignored the attack. Its only action being to start moving away slowly. She had seen mega freighters moving more quickly, so she doubted that was the limit of its sublight engines. Even with shields down, they didn’t even rate her tiny frigate a threat. She would prove them wrong. 

An instant later, she and several other frigates launched plasma torps at the alien battleship. This evoked a response, but not much of one. She had again targeted the exposed hanger, but more specifically the tractor projectors. In response, the alien ship began a lazy roll. She watched as its starboard side raised in the roll, and quickly vanished as the ship revealed its massive armored belly. Where its side had been rather narrow, its belly was a huge target. A target her torpedoes splashed against moments later, again with no evident effect. Then several turrets popped up out of the belly and spat blue energy at the nearest frigates. Energy that didn’t simply splash against shields, but punched right through with enough energy to then pierce the entire hull before striking the opposite shield from inside.

Seeing that, she ordered immediate evasive. Unfortunately, it was too late. A pulse was spat at her ship, and her helmsman was a hair too slow. Her ship shuddered under the impact, the lights flickered, and alarms blared. The damage reports poured in. “Direct hit, sections thirty one through forty-two, decks one through eight destroyed. Main power is out, shields and weapons are offline. Life support is out on deck two. Emergency systems on deck three not responding. The crew reports they are manually sealing the bulkheads. Plasma manifold failure on deck four, we have lost all but emergency power on decks four, five and six. Emergency force fields have responded, and bulkheads are dropping automatically on those decks.”

In addition, she was receiving casualty reports from those decks. By the time those finished pouring in, she had thirteen dead, and nine more injured. Two of those seriously. That was 22 casualties out of a crew of 79. That was not going to look good on her record. Worse that had happened from a single hit. A single hit with enough force to rip right through her ship with the shields at full power. Granted, they were weakened by the cursed dust that fills this system, but still. Worse she felt like they were playing with her. It was painfully obvious that this was a complete mismatch. They were outgunned, the alien armor was somehow able to resist plasma weapons. A fact that boggled the mind. Worse, thanks to the local conditions her shields offered no real protection against the alien vessel’s weapons.

On screen she watch the ship’s lazy roll continue. Before long it returned to its previous orientation revealing her hanger doors were closing at a fair clip. The lancer was now securely nestled in the bay, her shields no longer even flaring while several beams continued to hold it. No further shots seemed to be coming her way.  That was a good thing, they couldn’t take another hit, not like that one. Glancing to her ops officer, she ordered, “hail them.”

After a few moments the younger officer replied, “I’m not getting anything on the standard frequencies. Not even a simple receipt acknowledgment.”

Processing that, she turned her attention to the alien vessel for a moment. It was moving slowly out of view. In a few more moments it would be out of visual range. “Try the non-standard frequencies. Perhaps they aren’t using the usual subspace frequencies.”

“Aye, sir.”

A few more moments passed before she was informed, “Still nothing sir.”

The ship slipped out of sight as an asteroid drifted between her ship, and the alien vessel. Her mind was already working on the lack of response. Either the aliens used some other means of communication or they weren’t worth talking to. She didn’t know which was worse.

Several hours later, VCS Salari’s Treasure:

The ship shuddered. Something groaned, and the grav plating flickered. They had been hit, she knew it. Seconds later came the report, “Shields critical! Hull breach deck seven.”

She wasn’t ready for this. Hell she shouldn’t have even been in command. Unfortunately, her captain was now in the medical bay with severe burns. Plasma burns to be more specific. A cursed plasma fire had erupted on deck seven and unfortunately spread to the bridge before it could be contained. Decks five, six, seven, and eight were all scorched from plasma fire, and that wasn’t the worst of things. Still they were in better shape than some of the other ships in this formation. Those ships were nothing more than flotsam.  As for that new hull breach, she didn’t much care, that deck was already thoroughly destroyed. Not to mention sealed off, no one was on it. So in many respects that was the best place to take a hit right now.

She ignored the hit, and instead ordered, “New heading, zero one seven, mark one zero nine. Increase speed.” she paused, “Tactical return fire, aft tubes.”

The ship’s frame shuddered thrice a moment later as the aft plasma torpedo tubes fired. Normally you wouldn’t even feel those launchers firing, but with all the damage they had taken. It was little surprise to find that little things like the inertial dampers were malfunctioning. In fact, she could even feel the ship accelerating somewhat. Thankfully the dampers were still partially nullifying the force of the ship’s engines. 

She kept an eye for a moment on the display before ordering, “Hard to port full burn!”

An instant later four blue streaks rippled out of the clouds, just as she expected. They streaked by their previous position and then curved around. One of them closing on the nearest unfortunate ship, the VCS Bounty of Urko. The projectile streamed towards the ship at high speed, bypassed her shields like they weren’t there, and slammed head-on into her bow. The projectile detonated with a massive photon burst, the hull simply disintegrated in the blast. The flash cleared to reveal the front half was simply gone, while the rear was reduced to mangled metal. There were no survivors. 

An instant later there was a second detonation, this time it was a frigate. Nothing was left, except a few bits of mangled metal. Those accursed projectiles were damn deadly, and utterly terrifying. They could pass through shields like they weren’t there, and a single hit was often fatal to the unarmored hulls of their ships. As such she was more than happy that none of those were hitting her ship. She would much rather take another hit from those cursed particle weapons. At least they weren’t one-shot wonder weapons.

She gave another order, “Starboard turn, twelve degrees one-quarter thrust.” At the same moment, she noted her tactical officer order fire on one of the missiles. Pulse cannons were fast firing and fairly accurate, but those projectiles were slippery. As such it was little surprise that most of the shots were wide. Only a couple of them actually got close. Neither missile actually took a hit. Thankfully for the crew of the VCS Jewel of Neyla the missile closing on her actually detonated on her shields, and not her hull. Her shields flared like a small sun before collapsing, but the ship was alive. Her crew was not yet dead. How long that would last was anyone’s guess. At the moment it wasn’t something she had the time to waste on considering. If anything her whole focus was on keeping her damaged cruiser alive. How things had come to this, she wasn’t entirely sure. A part of her mind was however still working on their inability to establish contact with these aliens.

Ahead the clouds of dust parted enough to reveal an alien vessel comparable in size to her own cruiser. Actually, it was a little smaller. She barked out another course correction this time a dorsal correction. The commander knew her ship was no match for that alien warship. A ship she believed to be a heavy destroyer. Its weapons certainly matched that kind of role. It was heavy on torpedoes, armed with a limited array of pulse particle cannons, and a deadly beam weapon. The first two she had answers for, the third not so much. It would be great if she could take them out before they fired, but there was no real chance of that. A factor underscored by the total lack of effect her plasma torpedoes had on the other one. The one that was chasing them.

A glance back, showed the torpedoes had hit, but scored no damage. Her attention shifted quickly back to the new threat. Her mind already trying to work out a solution. Good news the new ship wasn’t targeting her. Bad news, it was targeting the VCS Jewel of Neyla. That ship had been built specifically for Neyla of Clan Urko, and was the flagship of their fleet. If that ship went down... She didn’t want to think about it.

Elsewhere she saw a bright flash light up the clouds. The source of the burst was outside of her sensor range, but she had the sinking feeling that another ship had met its end. How many more would die in this ‘battle’ she didn’t know. All she knew was that they were just poorly equipped to face this foe. Not even their plasma torpedoes seemed able to pierce their armor, which was ridiculous. She ordered yet another new course, and tactical was ordered to continue defensive firing on any torpedoes. The commander just wasn’t sure what else she could do. If only they could communicate. Perhaps then they could stop this bloodshed. She blinked. 

Communicate, that was it. The aliens had to be communicating somehow. Their actions certainly seemed coordinated, not to mention they had fighters. Everything they did pointed to actions done in concert. That required complex communication, there was no way around it. So how were they doing it? Why couldn’t they detect these communications? Perhaps the answer was simple. Maybe they just weren’t listening in the right range. The question then became what range was the right one? She just hoped she could find it quickly. Another flash on the screen signaled another ship going down. They were dying too quickly. The commander quickly relayed her ideas to the ops officer.

As for the Jewel of Neyla. She noted the vessel engage in several maneuvers that helped shake off the majority of the fire directed at her. Returning fire with several ineffective pulse battery barrages, and a few heavy pulse cannon shots. None of it seemed to have an effect. These aliens just seemed unstoppable. One of the alien destroyers fired her beam weapon just then. A blue beam lanced across space, and raked the hull of the Neyla. Her shields flared brightly, but thanks to the dust were unable to fully stop the beam. As it tore a deep rent into her hull from bow to stern. The ship thankfully survived, but that was more thanks to her size than anything else. The Jewel of Neyla was a heavy cruiser, and outfitted accordingly. Unfortunately, the damn dust rendered her best defense rather weak. 

She decided to buy more time for the Jewel of Neyla. She gave an order to come about. Soon locking the forward tubes on the first alien destroyer. It might not have been the best idea, but it did have an effect. As soon as they had a good angle, she gave the order to fire. She emptied the last of her plasma torpedos into a single barrage. Angry red streaks of superheated plasma streaked out of the launchers, sailing across the distance, and then for the first time in this fight since it broke out fully four hours ago, she actually witnessed a shield engage. A red bubble of angry lines appeared around the destroyer, and six of her ten torpedoes detonated against it. Their fragile containment fields being disrupted by the barrier. The other four penetrated to splash harmlessly against her armor. That made her blink. She had not seen them use shields of any kind before. What had changed? Unfortunately, she had no data to answer that question, and no scan was going to help. The alien hulls were sensor shielded, and that shielding was far superior to what their mines had. As such they were unable to compensate for that. It was just a case of where they were lacking information they needed, and could not obtain it.

Not that she had much time to wonder about that. The alien ship retaliated firing several bursts of particle fire from her main batteries. Her own shields flared, and her ship shuddered under the barrage. As her helmsman initiated a series of rapid evasive maneuvers. She could feel each shift as her malfunctioning dampers strained to deal with the changing vectors. Vaguely she noted the reports, as they took multiple hits.

Suddenly someone shouted, “Shields have failed!”

The ship shuddered, hard an instant later. Throwing an unfortunate technician to the floor. Her own harness kept her, and anyone in one where they were. Not that it was much help, her shields were gone. There was nothing else between her ship, and death. Several more shudders, and shakes told her they were taking hits. With each one damage reports poured in. So many she was quickly losing track of the damage. Despite their best efforts the port side of her ship was ravaged. Numerous bolts tore into her hull, leaving entire decks in shambles. If not outright destroyed.

Moments later, the hits stopped coming, and the ship moved off. Targeting several frigates that were trying to use the debris as shields. It didn’t seem to be doing much good. As the alien weapons easily tore through the debris and still had enough punch to hit hard. The limited shields the frigates had were not much help either. That dust didn’t help things at all. Not that she could much worry about them. She had more immediate concerns.

The ship may have moved off, but she had taken a lot of damage. At least this had given the Jewel of Neyla the chance she needed to escape the combat zone. As for her own ship, she was effectively out of the fight. Hell, she wasn’t even sure what was holding the ship together. She just hoped whatever it was didn’t give out. Not only were all her primary systems down, she had taken major hull damage. Several decks were effectively destroyed, and half the ship was vented to space. Luckily her emergency systems were miraculously still working. Her biggest worry were the plasma fires on the engineering level. Damage control teams were already working to contain those, but if those fires reached the main reactor they wouldn’t have a ship. A similar issue would happen if they reached the antimatter fuel pods. There were also some other items that would be problematic if the plasma fires reached them.

As such she turned her energy to helping direct the damage control efforts. Over the next few minutes, they vented certain sections and shut off fuel lines. Preventing the fires from spreading too far. Before too long they were able to contain the plasma fires, and keep them away from anything that would explode, or in the case of antimatter react with matter in mutual annihilation which was effectively the same thing. Thankfully while plasma fires were known to burn very hot, and wreak havoc on anything they touch, they also burn out quickly. Once cut off from fuel, they quickly went out. Often leaving lesser fires started by the rampant plasma fires, which quickly cooled and starved after the sections were vented.

Just as she was starting to sigh in relief, feeling that her ship was out of the worst, her operations officer suddenly looked up from her console. A look of excitement on her face. “I have it!” she shouted.

“Have what?”

“I found it, the frequencies they use.”

The commander smiled. That was exactly what they needed. The battle was going poorly. Sadly she had a feeling this was her ship’s last mission. It was likely headed for the scrapyard after this. It likely wasn’t the only one headed there. The battle had moved on from this part of the system, but her ship wasn’t the only one left adrift here. A few of which were now smoldering wrecks. There were also a number of escape pods floating around the area as well. Not that she could do anything about that. Her engines were out, and her hanger bay had been slagged. A plasma fire had burned through the main hanger and destroyed the few shuttles she still had. As for the handful of strike craft she had, those had been lost earlier. It didn’t seem anyone else could do anything either, but they would be fine. Escape pods were designed to keep their occupants alive for a while. Several months actually. Although the life support would run out before they ran out of food or water. As they had supplies for about six months, but the life support would deplete in about three months. 

Elsewhere flashes of bright light continued to light up the clouds. Be they from mines or torpedoes she could not tell. It was a sign that the fight continued. Now that they knew what frequencies the aliens used perhaps, she could put an end to this. Although it wasn’t really her place to do that. “Send them to the Jewel of Neyla.”

“Done, sir.”

The commander felt some relief hearing that. Then she asked something. “What do they use anyway, and why did it take so long for us to find it.”

The operations officer replied, “Turns out they were using sublight communication bands. Primarily tight beam high-frequency radio. Not something we normally use, much less monitor. Outside of laser comms, we don’t really use any form of sublight communication. Our alien friends however don’t seem to use any form of FTL communication.”

She blinked. That explained everything. Suddenly the alien silence made total sense. They were silent because they couldn’t reply. Worse her own people hadn’t even thought to listen to the sublight channels. They had merely assumed that the aliens also had faster than light communications. An error that had likely resulted in this battle. One they clearly hadn’t been prepared to fight.

Her line of thought was broken moments later, when she was informed that a ceasefire was now in effect. A glance to her screens showed the bright flashes come to a sudden end. It was quite suddenly, eerily quiet out there. Nothing but smoldering ships, floating wreckage, and the occasional disabled ship or lifepod. That was all that existed within the scope of her sensors. Not one source of wreckage however belonged to an alien vessel. Everything here was of Valorian origin. This was the most one-sided skirmish in living memory. So much so that she had a feeling the council would not believe it even happened. While many would likely try to cover this up. Idly she wondered how many lives were lost here? How many lives were wasted in a battle that likely could have been prevented? How many would not be remembered? Duty made her put aside those questions. There were still things she needed to do aboard ship. If she could, she was also going to recover those escape pods, and she certainly needed to figure out how since she had no engines and no shuttlecraft. That was going to be interesting.