Pegasus, Confederation Flagship
“We aren’t sticking around for this. All ships to commence to start plotting emergency jump coordinates.”
“Aye sir.”
“Engines are back to nearly normal efficiency; the LEs did it sir.”
“Firing missiles sir.”
A volley of Starflares, with their jammers engaged, surged forth from the silver wedge dodging and weaving among the fire vectors of both ships. They abruptly arced at breakneck speeds towards the tractor beams of the SOb that had locked onto the Pegasus. Entering the beam itself, they not only broke the lock, but accelerated right into it. With the beam pulling it and its own engine power, the missiles surged forth at an otherwise impossible speed; straight into the emitter’s themselves. Not all of the missiles made it, as a few direct, haphazard hits from the SOb’s weapons demolished them. But most did through a combination of speed, jamming, and reinforced nose and armor. They impacted, their reinforced heads piercing or shattering the emitters, and letting their fusion warhead payloads directly into the hull itself. Brilliant shades of blues burst out from those areas into the internal workings of the Imperial ship itself. Aside from the explosions ripping the ship from the inside out, the warheads, like other pure fusion weapons, releasing large quantities of neutrons throughout the warship, killing the nearby organic automation of the warship.
The EMPIRE’s maneuver had not been without its faults, and while it had temporarily shielded itself by placing the Pegasus between it and the Audacieuse, in doing so, it had placed itself between the flagship and the Confederation vanguard of Seraphs and Juaires, which quickly pivoted around to meet the new threat, pouring out streams of ion and turbolaser fire into the craft; those ships packed more firepower than the Audacieuse. Ionic energy didn’t pierce the molecularly hull, but instead used it as a conduct to travel across the external hull to burn out weapons, sensors, and other external subsystems. The blue energy sprawled across the SOb’s hull, shutting down nearly all of the external Imperial weapon systems, not by accuracy, but by sheer volume and rate of fire. The swift Audacieuse cut over her sister ship’s hull, unleasing her ventral batteries of turbolasers and ion cannons immediately onto the hull as she maneuvered her bow downwards to bear down her topside weapons on the Imperial ship.
And even as the bulk of the fleet’s heavy units bore down onto the increasingly disabled Imperial vessel, the Confederation’s “Cavalry” swept forward in their pincer movement, the starfighters from the port, the Cavaliers from the starboard. The SOb’s maneuver had slowed and even partially stalled the maneuver, but the Confederation had used it to rally the S9s to form up with the A3s for their converging attack. And they fired. Just as the Defence-class Cruisers of the Imperial fleet had critically damaged a star destroyer, the Cavalier’s struck, sending solid and ionic slugs directly into the SOb’s exhaust port. Most stopped there, crumpling the engines into a myriad of distorted variations of their original selves and the ionic slugs pumping ionic energy directly into the engine systems of the advanced ship, overloading nearby circuitry, cutting off the power flow to those systems. But one pierced farther, piercing into the drive reactor of the vessel, spilling the contents into the rest of the ship and into space itself. Simultenously, the horde of Kashan-built starfighters released a hail of converging missiles and bombs rather indiscriminately onto the hull, saturating the vessel with a myriad of explosions among the continuing blue fire of the ion cannons, which began to increasing pierce the armor of the vessel. The fleet’s Cavalry passed each other overhead of the SOb, most of whose weapons, including the STLs, were offline from the ionic attack.
Amidst the Confederation storm of fury and onslaught, the Pegasus surged forward to safety and away the Curaisseurs and SOb, as the latter Imperial warship’s tractor beam locks were broken under the missile barrage and subsequent ion barrage.
----------------------------
Pegasus-class Star Destroyer Liberty, Metalorn Defence Fleet Flagship
“Damage report.”
“Moderate sir,” reported the Audacian lieutenant, who continued to tap buttons on his console, “one of the shells was explosive. It’s a wonder that it wasn’t immediately disintegrated by the heat generated the engines. It was according to our sensors, but some of the shells fragments continued on and cut a few cables. Weren’t so lucky with the solid shot.”
Captain Tywe nodded. The Pegasus-class was exceptionally well-armored in the engine section. When the ship was designed, its creators had realized that its most important abilities would have to be both well-armored and well-maintained. Aside from thicker than normal armor, the engines had dedicated repair crews of Cybot Galactica’s LE Repair Droids, like most of the more modern Kashan-designed vessels. Still, the damage was extensive: for most of the explosives had been detonated before hitting the hull by the massive amounts of heat generated by the engines, the solid shells continued on unfazed by the heat. They had struck in numerous places, shearing through plating and system, including an auxiliarly power system of the star destroyer; enough to partially cripple the vessel’s sublight propulsion. Enough to make the craft slower than average. But it still had some thrust, not enough for good combat performance, but enough to allow it so that it could slowly plod through space as a wounded Bantha stumbled across the plains of any of dozens of worlds. LE repair crews and mechanics desparately swarmed over the rear area, fixing it as best as they could. But it would still not be enough to escape the pursuing Imperial vessels.
“We’re being tractored, just as planned.”
Those ships whose engine systems that had been damaged by the Imperial onslaught were not alone in their struggle; the rest of the fleet, composed of undamaged ships, had grabbed a hold on their comrades-in-arms with tractor beams, pulling them along at slightly substandard speeds compared to normal at the cost of their own speed. But it was still enough, as most Imperial ships were designed for firepower and defence, rather than speed and defence as with most of the Confederation vessels.
“Excellent,” nodded Max, “Did I say to concentrate our shields, both shield types to our rear?”
“Yes sir. All shields are at full rear now, as opposed to how we formerly had them split up.”
“Sir, we have escaped the enemy’s gravity-well.”
“Jump.”
Confederation ships made the jump into hyperspace, whether their own power or by being towed along by their cohorts. Viewports of the entire Metalorn Defence Fleet were soon flooded with the familiar, soothing colours of hyperspace. The ships dropped out of hyperspace aside of enemy sensor range, and abruptly made another turn before disappearing and traveling once more through deepspace.
----------------------------------------
Metalorn
A new kind of war: Insurgency.
“Give those frakker’s hell, Ed.”
The S10 pilot squeezed the trigger, sending a supercharged plasma shell into an unwary Tie cockpit. It slammed into the craft, piercing it and killing pilot besides damaging the ship. And the pair of S10s abruptly swept over and away from the doomed Imperial. A familiar situation for most of the Confederation pilots. The entire Metalorn Defence Fleet, down to the last corvette, had safely jumped away with no capital ship losses, leaving their fighters to play a new game; an old, yet startling different type of warfare: guerilla warfare adopted to space. Confederation starfighters swept across the battlefield, picking off members of the Imperial fighter patrols at random before vanishing like wraiths into the night. The Imperials had deployed Surveyor-class Scout Cruisers equipped with Crystal Grav Traps; usually a useful sensor against stealth and cloak ships. But this was instance where their were not, as not only the planet’s mass shadow produced inconclusive readings to the sensor, but also because of the gravity-wells generated by the Raptors further scrambled the readings.
The hit-and-fades continued, striking down and damaging Imperial fighters before the Empire’s vessel could respond to the attack. While the attacks did inflict losses to the Empire’s fighter force, that was not their goal. Instead, the attacks were designed to whittle down Imperial morale by creating an apparently undefeatable enemy and raise Confederation morale in the same way; half of every fight is in the mind. And while the S10s continued their hit-and-fade strikes, the S9s and A3s, which had intentionally not engaged any of the enemy fighters, readied themselves for the attack. Most of them continued to spread out surrounding Metalorn, but several daring squadrons converged on bigger fish: the Surveyors. It wasn’By approaching singly and in pairs, the approaching fighters were nearly invisible on their target ship’s screen, due to the sensors being scrambled by the masses as well as the minute size of the fighters in comparison. This was further enhanced by the Stormfires’ raids, which undoubtably distracted some of the Imperial crewmembers. They weaved through the Imperial flotilla, staying as far away from the enemy ships as possible; and then they struck. Two squadrons of Nemesis Bombers spearheaded the silent, invisible charge on each ship, with each squadron launching a full payload of stealthed space bombs, nearly 150 per Surveyor, into the cruisers from all matter of angles; enough firepower to completely demolish the cruisers. Enhancing this was the nearly point-blank range at which they were launched and the lack of anti-missile systems onboard the scout cruisers. Fires erupted across the target cruisers as bomb after bomb expoded. If by some miracle they were not completely demolished, it was doubtful that any of its dedicated sensors or communications equipment would work. As the two squadrons of bombers diverged into vastness of space, the other accompanying squadrons set themselves up for a follow-up run in case the first attack failed.
