Captain’s Log January 1st, 001 SDE,

After months of debate, we have implemented a new calendar, that marks the years since our homeworld was lost. We are currently on the final approach to the Beta Six system. Initial scans indicate the system contains 7 planets 1 of which lies in the habitable zone. The star is M Class so this zone is very close to the star, so if the planet is life-supporting it will probably be unlike Earth. This would be the 7th system we have visited since Alpha Centauri and I am hoping this system is better suited to our needs. Unfortunately, I have a strong feeling this system will turn out to be a battlefield like the last one.

The ships warped out into the middle of a debris field. Several damaged cargo containers floated pass and in the distance weapons fire was being exchanged between two ships and a space station.

“Scan the area,” ordered Countryman

“I am picking up two small ships attacking a Cathamari Outpost, their configuration is unknown. seven other small ships are combing the debris of a Cathamari freighter 200,000 kilometers from our position. Another fourteen ships are harassing a trio of freighters and their two escorts about 1.8 million kilometers out from the station. The debris around us is what's left of another  Cathamari freighter and a cruiser, sir,” reported Misaki

“Scan the debris”

“The freighter appears to have been carrying food, most of the surviving containers are filled with organic material high in protein.”

“Sir it seems we are beginning to attract attention, three of the ships are now heading toward us at high speed.”

“Scan the ships”

“They are lightly armed with some sort of plasma weapon with twelve confirmed gunports, their engines are fairly powerful for their size granting class II maneuvering and high speed, they have thick armor, but they don’t have shields. Analysis of their weapon indicates a rapid fire-rate but low yield.”

“Sounds like an easy fight then, arm the cutting beams.”

Moments later the ships entered weapon’s range and opened fire on the Enterprise. Orange-red bolts of plasma sailed across the void and struck the Enterprise’s hull armor only to absorbed harmlessly by the hull plating. Bluish light rippled across the Enterprise’s beam arrays and condensed on three points. Light blue particle beams lanced out across space and struck the alien ships. Each beam was targeted on the same system for each ship, but the ships were struck in different spots. The first ship was hit amidships her armor only held up for a fraction of a second before the beam punched through the plating and tore into the hull. The beam ripped through dozens of systems including the reactor control systems before punching through the armor on the other side of the ship and out into the void. The second ship had been turning and was struck in tail section, the armor being thinner there was pierced almost instantly. Allowing the beam to rip into the hull and devastate her fragile systems before ripping out the other side of the ship and into space. The third ship was hit dead-on in the front with the beam tearing through the bridge and crew quarters before lacerating the engineering section and again piercing the hull armor on the other side of the ship and into the void. Seconds later the three ships exploded in an impressive fireball as their damaged reactors overloaded.

In the distance, the fighting continued the damaged freighters returning fire as the pirate ships hounded them. One pirate ship came onto the flank of one freighter her hull absorbing a few plasma bolts from the freighter’s defensive armament. The ship then fired her forward guns, orange-red plasma ripping into the freighters weakened shields. The shields already heavily saturated from previous hits failed under the barrage and plasma bolts ripped into her unprotected hull. Her hull ruptured under the blast and the freighter went dark as one bolt ripped into her primary power distribution node. From the rips in the hull atmosphere and cargo were venting into space. One of the pirate ships came up alongside and launched her boarding pods into the ship.

Elsewhere on the battlefield, the pair of cruisers fighting the station stopped firing. After their last missile tore apart the station’s sole remaining plasma cannon battery. With that battery silenced the station was now defenseless allowing the raiders to easily land their assault forces.

“How’s the station?” asked Countryman

“She has taken quite a bit of damage, her weapons are down and she has lost shields. Sensors indicate heavy fighting aboard the station,” reported Misaki.

“Well, it's a Cathamari station no point helping them out. Run a comprehensive scan of the station I want to know its purpose,” said Countryman

“Most of the station appears to be given over to large docking ports, extensive cargo handling systems and large cargo bays. Judging by the large number of freighters in the area, it is most likely a transfer station,” replied Misaki

“Sanchez, set course for our next destination, warp four.” “Course set, sir”

“Engage”

Moments later the three ships came about and were soon moving along at a hundred times the speed of light toward the next star system on their list.

Half an hour later, the officer council had gathered to discuss the recent encounter. In the center of the conference room, a holographic scan of the new alien ships they had encountered was displayed.

“The alien ships we encountered at Beta Six aren’t all that impressive. All of the ones we scanned are in various states of disrepair. Internal configurations also vary, but all of them are built to be fast with large cargo capacities. Most of them are clearly raiders, while not much of a threat individually a swarm can be deadly. Most of them are armed with either low yield lasers or plasma cannons as their primary armament and a few of them carried ion weapons. The ones that were attacking the station are clearly cruisers and are outfitted with several outdated missile banks, low yield plasma cannon batteries, and ion cannons. Light energy shielding and heavy armor are their primary defenses. Just one of our escorts is more than a match for both cruisers, and their shields are too weak to withstand a barrage from our particle cannon banks,” said Ruri briefing the gathered officers on the scanned ships.

“Sounds like we encountered some alien pirate ships. Do these pirates have any weapons that can penetrate our armor?”

“Not while the plating is charged, but a few of the pirate ships were carrying some low yield Cathamari torpedoes so it is possible that we may encounter pirate ships with weapons capable of penetrating our armor,” replied Ruri.

“If we are seeing pirates attacking a transfer station, the Cathamari fleet must be stretched thinner than we thought. Our recent engagements can’t account for how thin their fleet is, the last three times we have seen them, their battlegroups have been lacking in heavy elements especially cruisers. I’m guessing their wars have something to do with this. Either their losing or they are gathering ships for a massive engagement. Then there's that wrecked cruiser in the beta six system, it should have been more than a match for that pirate fleet and yet its floating wreckage was found not more than 400 kilometers from our jump point. I’m curious how these pirates managed to sink it since their weapons can’t penetrate their shields,” said Drake

“I’m pretty sure it was hit as soon as it came out of warp, we already know from experience that Cathamari ships are vulnerable to flanking attacks immediately after coming out of warp, since they focus their shields entirely to the forward quadrant, while at warp. We made good use of this during the early months of the war before they got more cautious about using in system FTL,” said Countryman. A large portion of Cathamari casualties during the war came about from torpedo ambushes. Hidden ships usually light cruisers with special stealth devices would lie in wait, and when a fleet jumped in they would dump their armament on them. This tactic was very effective in crippling enemy fleets. Naturally, the lighter cruisers would retreat, and heavier warships with destroyer escort would move in to finish the crippled fleet off.

“Scan data is also fairly consistent with that theory. Damage patterns on the sunken cruiser indicate she took a barrage of missile into her sides crippling her systems. The ship was ultimately sunk by a barrage penetrating her torpedo bays which tore the ship apart,” said Ruri

“Anyway if the Cathamari are having pirate problems, it's good for us. Perhaps we should find and make contact with these pirates, maybe we could get something worth the effort,” said Williams.

“Maybe, but we have plenty of fuel and food. There isn’t anything in particular we need, but if there are pirates there will also be a  smugglers enclave around. Making contact with the local smugglers would be lower risk, and could be useful later if we start running low on supplies,” said Drake.

“Useful, but let’s not go out of our way to find them. We should focus our resources on exploring new systems in search of a new homeworld. Speaking of a new homeworld, what do our preliminary readings of the next system tell us,”

“It’s a K type star, with three confirmed planets. One of which lies on the far edge of the habitable zone. The system’s mineral readings are on the low side, so it may be difficult to establish an industry there if the system pans out.” said Ruri

“Not a very promising system is it,” said Williams.

“No, it is not. If the one planet proves habitable it would be cold, with the only viable farmland being near the equator,”

The discussion continued for another half hour before the officer’s adjourned.

Across the stars, the High Warlord of the sector was sitting in his office, internally grumbling about his bane and nemesis, paperwork. Then he heard his door open and a young female walked in holding a datapad. He thought, “this better be interesting.”

“High warlord, we just received some new reports from intelligence. Including the report about the recent attack on the transfer station at Dedra, and we have found our missing battlegroup. Well, what’s left of it anyway,”

“Dedra, that was just a cowardly pirate attack, right?”

“Basically yes. However, sir. The Human warp-capable fleet appeared about an hour before our fleet arrived to engage the pirates. They didn’t attack the station, but they did briefly engage the pirates before conducting a system-wide scan and several focused scans on the station and the pirates. Then they made another warp jump. This incident has revealed that the human FTL engines are more efficient than previously believed, we also got a clear reading of their warp signature. There is a partial Cathamari component to their signature,”

“Cathamari component? Does intelligence have any theories on why?”

“Yes, the Dredal, when it was attacked, was stripped to the bulkheads, intelligence had long suspected they had stolen engine parts from the ship but had no proof until now. Unfortunately, we can’t be certain of their exact capabilities if they solved our field regulation problem they could be much faster than us for example.”

“So they dared steal from us!? Can we use their signature to track their ships?”

“Unfortunately no. Our strategic sensor arrays aren’t designed to track warp signatures, it will take a few months to refit them to do so. Fortunately, we got a general heading and the only thing out the way they are going are systems with known pirate strongholds. Hopefully, they do us a favor and wipe the scum out for us,” said his aide.

The warlord was familiar with why only a handful of races actually used warp drive. Most used other methods for crossing the stars with hyperdrives being very common, it was simply easier and more reliable to track ships in FTL based on their power signature instead. Tracking ships in hyperspace was a tricky proposition in the best of circumstances, fortunately, ships in hyperspace created energy fluctuations in normal space that could be tracked. Unfortunately, this only gave you a location, number, size, and configuration were all left as unknowns using this method, and the location was not exact either with an error range of plus or minus two lightyears. 

“So what happened to our missing battlegroup?”

“They were sunk in battle with the humans. There wasn’t much to salvage but we did recover a fully intact data module. Its data was damaged, but we were able to recover a good chunk of the battle record,”

“Anything interesting in it?”

“Yes,” replied the young woman as she inserted a data chip into a data port. Moment’s later a playback appeared on a screen. “As you can see, our battlegroup found them while patrolling the Ferosa System. The Humans were conducting high-intensity scans of the system primary. Their escorts were not with the flagship and were scanning the third and fourth planet. Our battlegroup ambushed their flagship at the system primary. Unfortunately, the primary star’s radiation worked against our battlegroup. Our shields were heavily taxed just protecting our ships from the solar radiation, the humans on the other hand simply remodulated their shields to ignore our weapons.”

“Shields? I thought Human ships don’t use shields.”

“Human shields are weak, and not very sophisticated either. Their shields are utterly useless in battle, they can only mitigate incoming fire and they don’t do that very well either. Normally the human’s don’t raise them in battle, but Human starships have been observed using them to protect against environmental hazards,” said the young woman. At the same moment, in the images the Human starship fired a particle beam, which ripped across space to strike a nearby destroyer, the destroyer’s shields flared and a significant portion of the beam pierced the still active shields and then lacerated the entire side of the hull. Then the destroyer went silent, her shields failing and then her hull started melting.

The warlord surprised, rewound the video and made it display additional data. The extra data revealed that beam pierced the destroyer’s shields because they were already heavily saturated and struggling to mitigate the star’s radiation.

“They don’t seem to be doing a lot of damage and the radiation seems to be harming our battlegroup more than aiding it, just look four destroyers and a cruiser are already dead in the water. An additional three destroyers and another cruiser have been sunk, why isn’t our commander ordering a retreat, there is no tactical advantage to continuing this battle?”

“No idea, sir,” replied the woman. A few moments later, one of the cruisers making a torpedo run was hit by a lightning-like discharge. The pulse ripped into the cruiser’s shields, then a pulse of light radiated from the cruiser and the ship went dark.

“What was that,” said the High Warlord.

Looking through her pad the woman replied, “That was some sort of charged ionic plasma beam. The high-intensity energy pulse overloaded the cruiser’s shields, generating a high-intensity electromagnetic pulse in the process. The moment the shields failed the remaining energy from the beam went straight into the hull and overloaded her primary systems.”

“Any defense?”

“Not yet, but the weapon is short-range and energy-intensive, it will take them time to charge the weapon, but as you can see it has a decent fire rate once charged,” said the young woman as a second ship was struck by a lightning-like discharge. Lightning like discharges propagated all across the shields before they ultimately failed. Seconds later the other ships in the battlegroup came about to put distance between themselves and the Human flagship. 

Just as the ships were getting close to clearing the gravity well, the Human destroyers came out of warp directly in their path and opened fire with their particle batteries. The remaining battlecruiser, flagship and the four destroyers that were left in the group, were rapidly shredded and reduced to a cloud of debris, and then the recording cutout as the ship the data module was from took a fatal hit.

“Send this video to all commands and make sure the commanders are advised not to engage the Humans in close proximity to a star,” ordered The Warlord.

 

“Aye, sir,” replied the aide as she rushed out of the room.