Fallout 18

Ronnie

Sixth Fleet crashes out of subspace into a picket force comprising six Birds of Prey. They don't last seconds.

As per Gref's plan, I peel off. Virtue is lead ship for a semi-independent flanking group, clearing the starboard flank of the main force as it bores in towards the orbital fortress at Aznetkur. Besides my Chimera heavy destroyer, I'm supported by the star cruiser Hippolyta, each of us with three frigate groups tied into our tactical nets; further support from the escorts Endymion, Scaramouche and Hippogriff, and the science vessels Niels Bohr and Ytsay... the latter being named after some Andorian savant, who... discovered ice, or something like that, I don't know.

It's a reasonably effective fighting unit. It's not a tenth of Sixth Fleet's overall firepower, but who am I to complain? */*2/12, 2ndry adjunct unimatrix 07*/*

Not any more, I'm not.

"Status?" I ask, more for form than anything else.

"All systems ready at your command!" Ahepkur announces.

"Ship is at battle readiness," Tallasa reports. "All frigate groups reporting in; telemetry online to fleet command; at red alert, all stations manned and ready. Configured for offensive mode." The Chimera can switch between a defensive mode and an offensive one that deploys its wide-angle phaser lotus array. It's a weakness, really, all the machinery for changing configuration takes up space and is vulnerable to combat damage; so, I tend to pick one mode and stick with it. Three guesses which I prefer.

"Scanning system," says Saval. "Multiple energy sources already detected consistent with KDF military units. Transferring data to the tactical display." I lean forward and peer into the screen.

The tactical situation, as people say in their war memoirs, is a challenging one. There's all sorts of KDF military junk in orbit around the planet, but our biggest concern is the fortress in geosynchronous orbit, a massive facility, larger than a Class V starbase, nearly the size of Earth Spacedock, and armed to the teeth. It's surrounded by free-floating shipyards and other industrial units, each one of those with cannons and torpedo tubes. Saval's scans have already picked out the larger of the patrol ships in the vicinity, now barrelling out towards Sixth Fleet with weapons hot.

The plot maps out the killing zones of the ships and the bases in gradient-shaded KDF red; the map looks covered in bubbles of blood. There are enticing-looking gaps in the coverage, corridors reaching deep towards the fortress, clear of Klingon weapons. Those, of course, are where the Klinks have their cloaked patrol ships. Klinks are many things, but they ain't dumb.

I study the display, and I start to get that itchy feeling - the one that tells me something is wrong about this setup.

*/*inaccurate---
---observed deployments consistent
---species 5008 military strategy
---no visible deviations*/*

Shut up, Two of Twelve. I'm the expert around here.

"Signal to flag," I say, "moving to intercept Klingon battle groups at zero four niner mark seven, then proceeding as directed to target facilities designated Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike. Battle group, all ships, formation Echo, proceed at full speed to engagement range. Let's do it, people."

Virtue leaps forwards, towards a battle-hungry V-formation of KDF raptors. I'm running through the angles in my head, trying to figure out what's bothering me, even as we come into range and the Virtue's phaser cannons burst into life.

So far, it's textbook stuff. The lead raptor slows and veers off course, heavily damaged and under continual harrassing fire from our frigate groups. The escorts peel off to take out the other raptors, while Virtue and Hippolyta pound them with heavy weapons and the science vessels work their witchcraft. The KDF ships are all crippled or dead before they can so much as irritate our shields.

The next battle group, though, is bigger and tougher. It's between us and the four outlying space stations we're designated to attack, and it's not going to let us through easily. Two Negh'vars, two cruisers, four raptors and a flock of fighters, a whole load of fighters -

"Phaser lotus!"

The lotus is meant for situations like these: a wide-angle, multi-target attack that will sweep the sky clear of fragile targets like To'Duj fighters or even Birds of Prey. Burning golden light sprays out from Virtue's saucer section, and space fills with explosions and fragments of ships. But there are so many fighters -

"Target lead Negh'var, cannons rapid fire!"

So very many fighters, even though we've blasted a good number already -

"Scaramouche, take that K'tinga before it comes about!"

The commands come to my lips automatically, while I figure out what's been bothering me. So many fighters, and where are the mother ships?

Something slams into our hull; a Klink torpedo breached our shields. I check; damage is within limits. Virtue spits cannon fire back into our attacker. Still too many fighters, and the phaser lotus is cycling -

"Saval, scan for Klink transporter signatures. I've got an idea."

Saval does the Vulcan */*species 3259*/* eyebrow-quirk thing, but he complies. Ahepkur is snarling at the damage control teams. "Four more raptors decloaked and inbound," Tallasa reports. OK, Ronnie, I tell myself. You are not outnumbered, you just have a wide selection of targets - and all that guff. Damage control lights flash yellow.

And the phaser lotus flashes green. "Hard about, one niner seven mark zero," I order, trying to bring as many Klinks as I can into the lotus's killing arc. "Saval, when we fire, watch those transports!" Virtue slews in a tight turn. "Fire lotus."

Again, the phasers fire, and the Klink fighters burn. I try to figure the Klink's next move. They do so like their cloaked ships, and once my lotus is down, I will have weak spots in my firing arcs....

"Emergency evasive power, hard to port! Cannons ready!"

The raptor decloaks just about where I'd guessed. Warning lights flash on my board as the RCS assemblies protest, but the cannons are just about in range while the raptor is still shimmering. Disruptors flash at me; phasers flash back. Our shields hold. The raptor loses a nacelle, rents open along its flanks, and it staggers away trailing atmosphere and debris.

"I have high levels of transporter traffic," says Saval, "detected between this region and... facility designated Target Oscar." He looks faintly surprised. If he wasn't Vulcan, he'd be gobsmacked.

"That's not a high priority target," says Tallasa, adding, "Target Juliet now in range."

"Hit it. I mean, battle group, commence attack run, Target Juliet." I hit my comms panel. "Virtue to flag. KDF has configured orbital stations to act as fighter launch bases; confirm Target Oscar one such, Target -" think, Ronnie, think "- Target Sierra shows similar configuration. Expect intense fighter assault. Am moving to engage Target Oscar. Virtue out."

We live in a post-scarcity economy, machines are cheap. The expertise, the people, to run those machines - isn't. Fleet carriers, like Shohl's King Estmere, are not so much carriers as floating industrial facilities, their launch bays holding industrial replicators which can quite literally build a fighter, in seconds, around its crew. But the crews are precious. So, flight deck officers include specialist transporter experts, capable of tracking a fighter through a battle, peering through the fog of war and maintaining a transporter lock no matter what, so they can snatch the crew to safety even as their ship explodes. The Federation uses a lot of Caitians */*species 5847*/* in this job, because of their superior reflexes. Cat-like, you might say.

So, Target Oscar is plucking KDF fighter crews out of the battle while we burn their ships away underneath them. And will refit them, and send them back out into the fray.

Our problem is... a fair-sized carrier like the King Estmere can support a dozen fighters at once. A stationary base can be bigger, doesn't need to drag a warp drive around with it... it might support hundreds.

Target Juliet, an auxiliary station providing flanking support to the fortress, is in our sights, and our beams and torpedoes slam into it. Disruptors fire back. The frigate Adderbury, caught in a sudden barrage of cannon fire, loses her shields, burns, shatters, explodes. My first ship loss. There will be more.

Under our fire, the station's shields fail, its armour plating delaminates and fractures. Flames blossom from sudden rents torn through the hull; the return fire from the disruptors slackens, then stops. My ships pour fire through the gaps in the armour, and the massive structure crumples and implodes in on itself, its internal atmosphere escaping in a tremendous rush of fire.

"Target Juliet down," Tallasa reports flatly.

"OK. Change of plan. Battle group: all ships reform into pattern Delta, steer three seven one mark two eight. We are attacking Target Oscar. All guns to independent fire for fighter interdiction."

Two of the remaining frigates have taken heavy damage, and the Niels Bohr is leaking air. My force is still mostly intact, though. But, as we come up on Target Oscar, I can see that's about to change.

"Infinite help us," says Tallasa. "How many launch bays?"

Too many. "Hold fire till they launch fighters," I say. "Then take down the first wave, then smash the station while they're prepping the next." I'm such an optimist.

"We're taking flanking fire from Target Lima," says Tallasa, "and there's another heavy patrol group closing... range three-two."

"So we don't have much time. Let's use what we've got. All ships commence attack run on Target Oscar."

We close in, and they launch. Every one of the launch bays spits out a To'Duj fighter, and there are too many to count -

*/*64*/*

- well, thanks, Two of Twelve, for telling me exactly how stuffed I am.

"Fire!"

Every gun in the group opens up - including my phaser lotus. At this range, with the fighters bunched up on their initial launch, the damage is telling; as many To'Dujs perish in the explosions of their neighbours as die directly from our guns. But there are so damned many left, each one blazing away with its small but potent disruptor cannons - swarming around us, as our turrets and beam arrays try to target them and swat them.

"Shields down to thirty-eight per cent," Ahepkur reports.

"Get us in closer," I say. Target Oscar was designated low priority because it looked like some kind of orbital warehouse, not an armed target. My guess is, the Klinks made it to look like that - and it wouldn't look convincing, unless it really does lack heavy armour and military-grade structural integrity.

"Steer one-niner mark six. I want us looking right down those launch tubes."

If I'm wrong, I'm going to get sixty-four Klink fighters in my face in about twenty seconds. At least I won't be alive long enough to be embarrassed.

"All forward cannons, all torpedoes, rapid fire!"

Virtue's guns open up, straight into those inviting-looking tubes. And I'm almost tempted to breathe a sigh of relief, as I find out I'm right.

The force fields protecting the launch tubes go down under our cannon fire, and the torpedoes race in. Inside, the flight decks are choked with machinery, with ordnance supplies, with volatile fuels... the first detonations set off a chain reaction, explosions racing through the structure, the mouths of the tubes belching forth, not more fighters, but clouds of smoke and burning gases -

The station collapses in upon itself, then explodes in a white-hot glare and a shower of fragments. Some of them slam into Virtue's already tattered shields. Others, though, take out vengeance-driven Klingon fighters. Those pilots know, now, they are dead men; the Klingon warrior ethic makes them determined to take as many of us with them as they can.

"Klingon patrol group is in range," Tallasa reports, "and we're still taking fire from Target Lima."

Two more frigates, the Waterfield and the MacArthur, are dead. The Bohr is in bad trouble, leaking air from a dozen hull breaches. The To'Dujs are dying, but that other patrol group is racing in, guns blazing from a Negh'var and its flanking raptors -

"All ships, steer one six niner mark two. We're going to keep that patrol between us and Lima." I'm hoping the gunners on Target Lima won't risk firing through their own ships.

The exchange of fire with the patrol group is short, savage, and brutal. At the end of it, I have red warning lights on my consoles, and both Hippolyta and Endymion are reading heavy damage. How bad, I can't tell, because the scans are fogged with Klingon wreckage... and Target Lima is firing again.

"Hard forward, coordinate all fire on central axis!"

Target Lima is a free-floating shipyard cluster, clawed fingers of docking bays reaching out from a central post that holds all the main facilities - including a heavy disruptor bank that is currently tearing Hippolyta's shields down to nothing. Our fire smashes back, reducing the shipyard's shield, reaching that central pillar. The armour scars and glows, then the pillar suddenly erupts in a blast of flame. We must have hit an unshielded power generator. The shipyard's guns fall silent, its shields drop. Our next volley of torpedoes smashes the central linkages, and the docking bays break away from the dead centre and spin lazily off into space.

"Message from flag," says the comms ensign. "Confirm reallocation of target priorities. Portside flanking element under dreadnought Warspite will move to engage Target Sierra; assist if possible."

Gref is showing some sense. "The main body of the fleet is engaging Target Echo," Tallasa reports. This is good news, I guess; Target Echo is an outlying battle station, after it, there should be nothing between the fleet and Target Alpha - the orbital fortress itself.

"Nearest Klink patrols?" I ask.

"Nothing within range one-zero-zero. They're concentrating on the main fleet," Tallasa replies.

"Get me some proper scans of the damage," I say, with a sinking feeling.

The details start to come up. The Bohr is half wrecked, Endymion's saucer section has a bite taken out of its port quadrant - a bite that takes out almost a fifth of the disc. And Hippolyta's starboard nacelle... isn't there: the pylon ends in a tangle of jagged metal.

"Give me voice comms," I order. "Hippolyta, Endymion, you guys are looking too asymmetrical for this fight. Crack out of here, best speed to the fringes of the system and the support group. You'll need an escort, so, Niels Bohr, you're with them. Hippolyta, pass control of your remaining frigates to my tac net."

"Aye, aye, sir," Captain Anderson of the Hippolyta sounds relieved. "Permission to recover escape pods from our destroyed craft on the way out, sir?"

"Recover as many as you can, on a straight-line course out of the system. Understood?"

"We'll keep it as straight as we can, sir. Godspeed. Hippolyta out."

OK, Ronnie. Don't think of it as losing half your force, think of it as simplifying your table of organization. "Remaining ships regroup behind Virtue. We're going to cut across the low orbitals to support Warspite at Target Sierra. Watch out for fire from ground installations. Course, two niner seven mark three niner four. Let's move."

Virtue streaks across space at the head of the diminished task force, close enough to the planet to skim its high ionosphere. I'm looking at the damage lights on my console, and starting to worry a bit. */*functionality impaired---starting efficiency low---assimilate---download structural files from central archives and reconfigure vessel*/* - no thanks, Two of Twelve.

Fire from ground stations comes up at us; desultory and inaccurate. Getting good targeting locks through the thickness of a planetary atmosphere is hard, particularly when the space above is jangling with explosions and energy bursts. Still, a ground gunner might get lucky, it's something to watch out for.

Ahead of us, a line of golden light shoots out, visible for hundreds of kilometres in all directions: Warspite's phaser lance. If that hits Target Sierra, it'll make one hell of a dent in it. I check the data. Good news: Target Sierra has the same looks-harmless construction pattern that Oscar had. Bad news: it's more than twice the size of Target Oscar.

"KDF fighters on scan," says Tallasa. "A lot of them."

"All guns to independent fire. Ahepkur, can you do anything to speed up cycle time on the phaser lotus?"

"Lotus is already overheated," the Klingon renegade grumbles. "We shall do everything possible."

"We've got to try and keep them off Warspite." The dreadnought is designed for slugging matches against capital ships; the swarms of fighters will overwhelm her. "Flank speed to engagement range. As soon as we can get a target lock on a fighter, start shooting."

Virtue surges forwards. The other ships in the group keep pace, all but one frigate, Mountbatten. Engine damage. Another ship down. "Signal Mountbatten to break off and head outsystem. Everyone else -" there are contacts on the sensors "- open fire."

Virtue shudders beneath me as her weapons open up. The phaser coolant is perilously close to its red line, the EPS grid is protesting under the load. Beside me, the rest of the task group is firing too. The cloud of Klingon fighters scatters, regroups, some continuing to hit the Warspite, some coming about to deal with our new threat. Again, golden light flares from the dreadnought's phaser lance.

"Checking," says Tallasa. "Checking - confirmed! Target Sierra is down!"

"Take out what's left of those fighters!" I yell.

"Sir," the comms ensign says, in a panicky voice, "signal from fleet - flagship in distress." "Awww -" I bite down on a very bad word. If we lose the firepower of the Taras Bulba - not to mention Gref's command and control, or the morale effect on the whole fleet - if the flagship is down, I don't see how we can win this fight. */*centralization of assets leads to inefficiency---distribute command cycles across multiple nodes---collective endeavours will overcome*/* - oh, belt up, you Borg idiot. "Get me a read on the Taras Bulba."

The flagship is spouting a white-glowing plume of plasma from a starboard nacelle. Ruptured manifold: looks spectacular, but can be quickly corrected - if your enemy gives you the chance. There are KDF ships inbound that look like they're not planning on giving Gref a chance - the largest and closest being a Bortasqu' tactical cruiser, already perilously close to firing range.

"Emergency evasive! Flank speed towards the flagship! Ytsay, follow me, target engines on that cruiser!"

Red lights flash on the RCS consoles as the Virtue comes round in a tight turn. The science vessel follows. The Bortasqu' is still not within weapons range of the flagship. I check. We can catch it, but the timing will be tight. Behind us, the rest of my task group is still tangled up in a furball with the surviving Klingon fighters. If the Warspite pulls out of that and follows us in, life will be a lot easier -

"In range," Tallasa reports.

"Fire!" The forward cannons blaze. Ytsay joins the fray with precisely targeted phaser blasts, using the science vessel's superior sensors.

The Bortasqu's rear weapons return fire. One moment, the Ytsay is there; then, there is a white glare in space, and the science vessel is gone. I curse freely.

"Get us in close!" The Klingon ship's guns are hammering us, now, stripping our forward shields to nothing. The flash-bangs of transient EPS overloads are a constant background noise on the bridge, now, and the ship shudders as something bad happens to our forward hull.

"How close?" Tallasa asks.

"Legally married in twelve jurisdictions close! I'm going to cut in the phaser lotus, and I want that ship filling its arc of fire!"

"You would need to be within metres!" Ahepkur yells. "The feedback on the beams will -"

Virtue lurches as another volley hits us. Ahepkur never finishes telling me what the feedback will do, she's too busy hanging onto her console and trying to manage the damage reports. Well, I'm sure it wasn't going to be anything fun, anyway.

"Get us in there!" We have maybe seconds before the Bortasqu' can open up on the Taras Bulba, and the flagship is still immobilized.

Virtue's cannons fire directly into the Klingon's rear shields, and they go down. A smaller ship, I could finish with the cannons alone, but the Bortasqu' is just too damn big. My ship closes in until the screen fills with grimy Klingon metalwork. I override the safeties, and the lotus fires at zero range.

Alarms scream. The Virtue bucks and shudders like a leaf on a gale; the lights and the gravity flicker. There are fires on the bridge... there is nothing but flame on the screen: vaporizing armour plate and escaping air combining into a billowing inferno. The phaser lotus dies, its status lights shining solid red on my command console.

"Hard about and get us clear!"

We blow an RCS assembly as we swing the ship about, but we manage to get out of the blast radius when the Bortasqu's warp core goes up. Just. Two heavy Birds of Prey and a half-dozen fighters aren't so lucky. Their secondary explosions mean that the Virtue is, at the very least, impressively backlit as she screams towards an oncoming Klingon cruiser. The cannons are still working; a sustained burst severs the cruiser's slender neck and sends the decapitated hull spinning away.

But there are more Klingons coming in, and my damage control boards are scarlet with warning lights, and, all told, things are starting to look a little hairy -

And then the Taras Bulba's forward phasers open up, smashing a hole in the approaching Klingons. And, off to one side, a Negh'var dies, impaled on a beam of golden light; Warspite has come up, and is still in the fight.

"Phaser lotus is burned out," Ahepkur reports. "We are at fifty per cent maneuvering capacity due to RCS and inertial dampener damage; unable to change configuration due to mechanical failures; hull breaches on all decks; EPS systems on emergency backup due to distributed conduit failures; structural integrity at fourteen per cent."

I grin at her, through the smoke-filled air of the bridge. "Well, yeah," I say, "but you should see the other guy."