[Inspectre]

/ooc My apologies for posting the same thing again, but I just noticed that for some reason, my first combat post has disappeared. Since I had the thing saved to my hard drive, I'm reposting it now, to make sure Bakan doesn't think I've gone AWOL. Just ignore this one and look below for my second, and latest, battle post. ooc/

“Sh*t. The latest wave of Swarm ships just broke through the outer perimeter. That makes three separate fleets heading our way.” The tactical officer reported, stating the obvious as the Tactical Screen displayed the real-time movement of all those red dots, slowly moving to encircle the Bilibrige shipyards, and squeeze them to dust, along with the Federation’s last hope. Joseph would be twice d*mned if he let those b*stards have it all their way.

“Well sir . . . while I suppose we could kill every last one of these f*ckers, I somehow doubt that we have enough time to do so.” Thomas quipped, prompting a prideful smirk from most of the bridge crew.

“H*ck, sirs, we could kill all of the Swarm single-handedly, but it would take us long after the heat death of the Universe!” One of the ensigns, manning an auxiliary Helm station, shot back, prompting even more knowing smirks and quiet snickers.

Joseph was never in the mood for idle banter, but for once he forced himself to participate. “That long? Well then, we’d better get to work and stop wasting precious seconds!”

The fact that their captain was joining in on the fun stoked the bridge crew’s morale a bit higher, and his jest was met by more than one handclap or loud guffaw. Gesturing for silence, Joseph then began his litany of orders.

“Helm, detach us from Bilibrige Dock. Weapons Officer, raise shields once we are safely away from the docking cradle, and being powering up weapons. Security, make sure your Marines are ready to fend off any possible boarders that might decide to sample our hospitality. Communications officer, get me a channel to Bilibrige Control.”

The bridge crew hurried to fulfill their captain’s orders, but a moment later the Communications Officer turned back to face his captain.

“Sir, Bilibrige Control is already contacting us. It would seem a Rear Admiral Hoste wants to have a word with us.”

“Well, put him on!”

Joseph listens calmly to the admiral’s orders, and bows his head in thought for a moment after the transmission ended.

“Alright people, it would seem a last stand is not called for here. However, we’ve got five Motherships to protect, all the way to the hyper-slipstream gate. Knowing the Swarm, they’d rather give the Shipyards another hour of life, than allow any ships to escape. Make no mistake: even though the way to the hyper-slipstream gate is open at the moment, we’re going to have to fight our way out. Helm, chart us a course that will place us in escort formation, port-topside of the 3rd Mothership. That should give us enough space to maneuver around to counter a threat from any direction. Tactical, in your best estimate, which of those three Swarm task forces can we expect to engage?”

The Tactical Officer consulted his screen for a moment, and then turned back. “Sir, I would place my bets on the Swarm task force incoming from Bilibrige IV, designated Task Force Three. They’re not quite blocking our path to the hyper-slipstream gate, but they’re so close that it would take little more than a course correction to put them between us and the gate.”

Joseph digested the information for a few moments, and then popped the question. “Alright then, what exactly does Task Force Three consist of?”

Again, the Tactical Officer consulted his screen, before reporting, “Task Force Three, according to current sensor readings, consists of: 3,546 Coralskippers, 573 CoralDevtators, 24,563 Multalists, 4,653 Guardians, and 868 Devourers.”

“Oh, is that all?” A newly recruited ensign replied, and opened his mouth to spew more sarcasm, before noticing Joseph’s glare and wisely keeping his mouth shut. Joseph mentally marked the ensign down for a demotion off the bridge to, say, Waste Disposal, once they were clear of Bilibrige. If they got clear.

“Alright, sounds like we’re going to have a fight on our hands. Time until we reach the hyper-slipstream gate, Helm?”

“Twenty-nine minutes, thirty-two seconds.”

Joseph winced, and sadly nodded. Oh yes . . . they were going to have a fight on their hands. However, that fight would not be soon coming . . . it would take time for the Third Swarm Task Force to turn, if it did turn, to engage the fleeing Motherships. Speaking of time, and long waits . . .

Joseph turned to the bridge engineering officer, curious to see if repairs were still being carried out, even away from the shipyard.

“Aye, we’ve got repair crews patching up what they can by hand and what equipment we have on-board.” The bridge engineering officer replied, and then checked his console for more information. “Hmm . . . it looks like the Forward, Top Rail Gun might be possible to fix. I’ve got a team working on it at the moment, and they say that the power relays to the Rail Gun’s capacitor are blown. If we had another hour in Spacedock, I’m sure it would have been fixed. Now . . .” The bridge engineering officer gave a helpless shrug.
“I’d give it fifty-fifty as to whether they’ll get the gun working in time for it to be blown apart again in this battle.”

“Well, that’s some good news . . . I guess.”

His question answered, Joseph settled down in his command chair to wrestle with something every combatant had been forced to deal with throughout history: the waiting. With little to do, and little to talk about, many of the bridge crew simply settled in to wait for the Swarm to come in silence, or perhaps in silent prayer.

One of the bridge crewmen, however, chose not to await his enemies in silence. A proud human hailing from the militant planet of Nietche, and also a new addition to the Thanatos’s bridge crew, began instead to sing: softly at first, but then growing louder as the crewman grew bolder and more confident. The song was clearly one sung by soldiers marching off to war, and detailed the brave deeds of a hero born long ago in Nietche’s past.

Joseph usually ran a tight ship, but nowhere near as tightly as he once did as a Federation captain. Still, while he ordinarily would have objected to singing right before going into battle, for some reason it seemed to be raising the abominable morale of the bridge crew. The last few battles the Thanatos had seen were especially brutal, and more than stripping the ship of most of its weaponry, it had also robbed the bridge of nearly half its previous crew. The abundance of new faces around the bridge, and the general grimness of the war in general, had caused morale to reach an all-time low.

Therefore, anything that could raise morale even a small amount of viewed as good, and so Joseph allowed the crewman to finish his song. Before Joseph could announce that any further singing might be a bad idea if the singer didn’t want Kitchen Duty,
Thomas broke in.

“That was an excellent song, crewman. I assume you learned that on your homeplanet?”

The crewman nodded, and Thomas continued. “Well, I have one of my own to share, if possible. It’s more of a poem than a song, actually, but I’ve always liked it, despite the rather dreary subject material. If I may?”

Joseph, not one to spoil his old friend’s fun, nodded and waved for Thomas to continue. Thomas grinned, cleared his throat several times, and then began.

“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.”
Thomas paused for a moment, gauged his audience’s reaction, and then continued.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.”
Thomas was about to begin the fourth stanza to the famous poem, when the Tactical officer’s console beeped.
The Tactical Officer looked down at his console, double-checked his screen, and then paled slightly.
“Sir . . . you called it. The Third Task Force just turned.”
“Bloody h*ll!” Joseph snarled, although he had been expecting it; waiting for it.
“They seem to being moving onto a course that will place them directly in our way, sir.” The Tactical Officer added, furthering the gloom that had suddenly dropped over the bridge.
“Well, I believe that puts an end to the entertainment for now . . . everyone look lively: it’s time for us to earn our pay.” Joseph said.
“D*mn art critics . . . freaking bugs have no sense of culture.” Thomas muttered darkly as he moved over to his chair and strapped himself in.
Joseph took a breath, and was about to bark out his next series of orders, when the Tactical Officer shouted, “We have Incoming! They’re coming up from behind!”
“The Swarm? How’d they get behind us?” A bridge crewmember shouted, to be quickly silenced by the person sitting next to him.
“Scanning now . . . they’re ours, sir. Fighters, apparently from Bilibrige.” The Tactical Officer reported after another few moments of reading the sensor screen.
“Bilibrige Shipyard sent its entire fighter compliment against that Task Force? I can understand them wanting to throw everything they had into protecting the Motherships, but this . . . it’s suicide for those fighters to attack that task force unsupport –“
“ADDITIONAL INCOMING!!” The Tactical Officer suddenly reported, and looked back down at his sensor board.
“One MAC round, from the Shipyards . . . it heading directly from Task Force Three . . .”
On the tactical display, the purple dot that was the MAC round continued to close with the mass of red contacts . . and close . . . and close.
“A hit!” The Tactical Officer cried as the purple dot plowed into the flank of the red mass, and dozens of red contacts disappeared as the purple dot moved deeper and deeper into the red. Finally, the purple dot vanished, although with one final large red dot, signifying a CoralDevtator. Following close behind the purple dot, however, was the horde of green dots identifying the Bilibrige fighters. They tore through the hole that the MAC round had punched, and immediately began ripping and tearing at the heart of the Swarm formation.
“Alright!” Thomas shouted, and several of the other, less-experienced crewmen cheered as the arrowhead of green dots pierced the red formation. Joseph simply shook his head at the rash celebration, and said, “Keep this in mind, everyone: the Swarm doesn’t give a d*mn for single ships, and that entire task force’s objective is to destroy this convoy. Now tell me, who thinks that those fighters will be able to single-handedly kill that entire task force?”
The cheering abruptly died, and the grim mood returned to the bridge. Joseph nodded at his success at restoring reality, and then continued. “Those fighters are a useful distraction: nothing more. We aren’t even close to winning yet. Now then, we’ve got at least another fifteen minutes to go before those Motherships manage to reach that hyper-slipstream gate. We have a distraction in those fighters; let’s use it to our advantage.”
Once again, Joseph settled into his customary role, as he began to reel off orders.
“Helm, plot us a course that will take us a short distance “above” the Mothership fleet, and a fair distance towards that Swarm Task Force. Take us there under 75% engine power: we’re already as big as a beached whale, let’s move like one. Weapons Officer, shut down power to half of the operational point-defense turrets, all but two of the Graviton beams, the three Heavy Tachyon beams, and all but one of the Plasma cannons. We want to appear helpless enough to be not worth the Task Force’s time, but dangerous enough that at least a few Vong warriors will want to bag us. Keep the Stellar Converter charging; with our shields at full power it will appear to be more like a self-destruct powering up than a weapon. That should certainly keep most of the b*stards back.”
At one point, the Swarm’s eagerness to convert or destroy a vessel, any vessel, had caused ships without any actual weapons to be quite dangerous. The Swarm would move in, and the ship would activate its self-destruct just before it succumbed to the overwhelming assault. Soon enough, the Swarm learned not to be too-overeager, and blindly attack a weak vessel with everything it had. This also, sub-sequently, scraped a desperate Federation plan to build empty husks of vessels, equipped only with an engine and a self-destruct device. Otherwise, the Swarm’s losses would be much higher than they were even now . . . not that they seemed to care too much.
Joseph’s orders were quickly carried out, and soon enough the Thanatos was a short distance away from and above the rest of the convoy . . .a big, fat, juicy target to any glory seeking Vong. The Swarm Task Force, as uncoordinated as it was with a swarm of Federation fighters ripping away at its guts, was still under orders to destroy those Motherships, and so almost all of its ships continued on their path to block the Motherships’ way.
However, a handful of glory-seeking Vong coralskippers and a single Vong CoralDevtator broke off from the main task force, and moved to engage the lumbering behemoth that had ponderously broken off from the rest of the convoy. The ship certainly looked like a threat, but almost all of its weapons were gone, and so its purpose was clear: to distract the Task Force from its assignment, and possibly inflict hideous losses on the task force with a self-destruct explosion. Still, it was a big ship, and was bound to bring some honor to the pilot that brought the technological insult down.
“Looks like a couple of suckers have taken the bait.” Thomas muttered as he watched the handful of Vong craft break off and close with the Thanatos.
“Patience, Weapons Officer. Keep those other weapon banks ready to be brought to full power, and those turrets to be manned, but don’t activate them yet. We want our prey to be a bit closer before we launch our trap. Also, begin loading our operational Omega Torpedo Tube . . . since the Swarm seems to be ignoring us for the most part, they need a good kick in the teeth to remind them never to let a threat get onto their flank.”
The Weapons Officer gave a nod of acknowledgement, and then fired off his “only” two operational Light Graviton beams at a closing coralskipper. Although doval basins were able to generate black holes capable of absorbing almost everything thrown at them, the little beasties had trouble dealing with gravity-based weapons. The black holes were, of course, far stronger than the graviton beams, but the graviton beams had enough of a pull to hold the black holes in place, at least momentarily. Since coralskippers often carried only a single doval basin, they couldn’t effectively deal with an attack from two separate directions, especially when the attack weapons slowed the basin’s ability to respond.
The first Graviton beam slammed into the front of the lead Vong coralskipper, and was harmlessly absorbed by the dovil basin’s blackhole. An instant later, the second Graviton beam stabbed in, raking the underside of the coralskipper. The basin was unable to shift its blackhole around quickly enough to block the second Gravity-weapon, and a force of a thousand Gs tore the bottom out from the coralskipper, causing it to fly apart a moment later.
“Nice shot, Weapons Officer . . . just don’t make it too hard on them and scare them away.” Joseph cautioned, and the Weapons Officer grinned.
“Nah, I just don’t want them to think this whale doesn’t have any teeth left.”
Then the Vong craft responded with their own weaponry. The coralskippers hardly packed sufficient weaponry to destroy a ship as large as the Thanatos, at least with the current number attacking, and the merest of shivers ran through the deck as the coralskippers made their first run.
“Port shields down to 97% . . . little buggers pack a punch.” The Weapons Officer reported, and then added, “Uh oh . . . here comes that CoralDevtator . . . it has entered firing range, and predictably, it’s firing. This might be a bit worse . . .”
This time, a bit worse of a shiver ran through the deck as the large plasma bursts fired from the Vong cruiser slammed into the Thanaots’s shields.
“Port shields down to 94% . . . and this b*stard is just getting started.” The Weapons Officer snarled as he fought back with his two Graviton beams. Far better armed and protected than a coralskipper, the CoralDevtator easily absorbed both Graviton beams with black holes, and then fired again.
Joseph allowed for the mismatched slugging match continue for another minute, and then said, “Is that Omega torpedo loaded yet, Weapons Officer?”
“Loaded? Heh, it’s been loaded for fifteen seconds now!” The Weapons Officer grinned, and on the tactical screen another Vong coralskipper vanished as the four solitary Rail Gun point-defense turrets finally wore through the dovil basin’s defenses.
Joseph’s feral grin matched at of the Weapons Officer’s, as he said, “Good. Then bring all of our weapons on-line, and let’s take care of these unwelcome guests.”
“Yes sir!” The Weapons Officer replied as he restored power to all of the weapons at his command.
“Oh, and Communications Officer . . . send a memo to all turret gunners that for each confirmed coralskipper they bring down, and every ten Mutalisks, I’ll personally buy them a drink.” Joseph added, as the deactivated Rail Gun turrets were now displayed as active on the Weapons Officer’s console.
The turret gunners, given even more motivation than they already had, and giving a competitive edge to their job, tore the surprised coralskippers apart. Meanwhile, the Weapons Officer took great pleasure in introducing the Vong CoralDevtator to the Thanatos’s full weapons armament. Five of the Thanatos’s eight operational light Graviton beams were brought to bear, as well as four of the Thanatos’s six plasma cannons. The plasma cannons were designed for more of short-range combat, due to the dissipating nature of the plasma rounds. However, the Vong CoralDevtator, seeing no reason to hang back, had closed to quite a short distance away from the Thanatos. The captain of the CoralDevtator had only seconds to angrily regret his mistake, before all of those weapons fired. The five Graviton beams stabbed, and the four plasma rounds hammered into the CoralDevtator’s hull. The dovin basils did what they could, but they couldn’t block that much firepower, and after the brilliant flash of weapons fire had faded, the burnt and blacked husk of a Vong CoralDevtator slowly spun away from the Thanatos.
“Well . . . now that those pests are out of the way . . . Weapons Officer, pick an outstanding target out of that mass of enemy contacts a short distance away, and fire our Omega Torpedo.”
“Sir . . . from our current position, I can’t get a good target lock on any of the larger Swarm craft. More than likely a coralskipper or Mutalisk will take it out, one way or another.”
“That’s not a worry. Oh, and make sure the torpedo’s warhead is armed immediately after exiting the tubes.”
The Weapons Officer did not seem to understand, and activating a torpedo’s warhead immediately after it had exited the ship was often dangerous, but the crewman knew how to obey orders.
“Torpedo away!” He announced a moment later, and Joseph’s eyes narrowed as he watched the blip slowly move away from the Thanatos, and slowly approach the Swarm Task Force.
Joseph allowed the torpedo to close a few more clicks, and then gave his next order.
“Weapons Officer . . . I want one of our point-defense Rail Guns to achieve a targeting lock on that torpedo, and then, on my order, fire on it.”
“But . . . aahhhh!! I understand now, sir!”
“Good. Then follow my orders.”
The Weapons Officer did as he was told, and soon enough one of the Rail Gun turret crew reported that it had a solid lock on the torpedo. Joseph allowed the torpedo to close enough more with the Swarm task force, and then, as a single Mutalisk broke off to engage the torpedo, Joseph gave his order.
“Fire.”
The point-defense Rail Gun fired several high-velocity iron-nickel slugs in rapid succession, and the third round solidly struck the torpedo. However, seeing as how the torpedo had been manually armed immediately after leaving the tube, instead of moments before impacting the target by the torpedo’s computer, the torpedo detonated instead of flying apart. The resulting explosion, so close to the outer edges of Task Force Three, was catastrophic for those ships serving as escort. The immense energy released by the Omega torpedo’s detonation caused the nearest coralskippers to simply vaporize, and the Mutalisks to explode like bags of boiling blood. Those ships not quite near enough to the epicenter of the blast to be instantly destroyed suffered a worse fate. The shockwave expanding out from the blast was enough to tear the wings off of Mutalisks, sending them careening into their fellows, and shatter coralskippers into razor-sharp fragments as the dovil basins couldn’t possibly protect their ships from a wall of unrelenting force.
Still, the explosion took out only a small part of the Task Force, but it was enough to clear away the outer layer of escorts protecting the more vulnerable members of the Swarm fleet.
“Weapons Officer, lock onto whatever large Swarm ships you can through that gap in their escort screen. Quickly, before they close the gap again!”
The Weapons Officer quickly tapped in the necessary commands, and then reported “I have a Devourer and Guardian locked-in, sir.”
“Good. Then give them a taste of Heavy Tachyon Beam.”
The Weapons Officer was only too happy to comply with Joseph’s latest order, and a trio of heavy, high-energy beams speared out at the distant Task Force Three. Next to the Stellar Converter, the Heavy Tachyon Beams were the weapons with the longest range and most power aboard the Thanatos. All three of them hit their mark, and the Guardian simply vanished as the high-energy beam cut it in half. The Devourer, made of slightly sterner stuff, managed to remain in one piece, but reeled and began to spin end-over-end as greenish-black ichor floated out of the large wound in its side.
“Well, they certainly should take notice of us now.” Thomas observed as a group of Mutalisks began to boil out of the Swarm Task Force at them.
“Indeed. Hopefully our Stellar Converter will be fully charged by the time they get here . . . they we can give them a really warm welcome.”