Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

EFS Coto, Deep Space, November 15th 001 SDE:

Reynolds shifted in his seat, as he copied his log onto the ship’s computer. They had made reasonably good time over the last week. This was their first mission without support since launch, which meant they were on their own for this. A fact that made the crew a bit uncomfortable, but it was a distress call they were investigating. Given the distance there was a good chance that they would arrive too late to actually assist, but it wasn’t so far out of their way as to not be worth it. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest move, however, it was the moral option. Not to mention many among their number felt that there was no point to survival if they forgot their humanity. That was why Countryman had dispatched him ahead of the fleet. Balancing morality with practicality the correct move had been to send the Coto alone. Reynolds knew full well why. Captain Drakes had far more combat experience and was the superior battlefield ship commander when compared to Reynolds. As such if the Enterprise came under attack, Drakes would be the better captain to have on hand to help defend their most valued vessel.

Reynolds had also followed the orders, and pushed the engines a little to exceed warp five. They did make several warp pauses on the way to allow the engines to cool, and prevent them from overheating. As such they ended up cutting only a mere four and a half hours off a week long trip. That wasn’t much, but it might mean all the difference for a ship in distress. They were still reading the distress beacon, but that wasn’t necessarily a good sign. It was entirely possible that they would arrive to find a dead ship, and that the beacon was merely an automated distress beacon. It would not be the first time, that had happened nor would it be the last. Even in that case, the trip was often still worth it, as it would be an opportunity to collect alien artifacts. Artifacts that could prove the key to unlocking alien technologies, and opening new doors to their endangered race. On the other hand if the arrived early enough to help it provided a chance to make friends, potential allies that they sorely needed. As such while this was a risk, he felt like many on his bridge, and like many on the Enterprise that coming out this way to answer a distress call would benefit them far more than simply ignoring the beacon.

His log loaded, and his thoughts organized the captain focused his gaze onto his side console. They were mere minutes from their last warp-out point. He had chosen their final drop-out coordinates to be some distance from the beacon. That would give them a chance to assess the situation from afar, as the distress call gave them no details on the nature of the problem. However he didn’t want to be so far out that they would need another warp jump to reach the target in short order. With that in mind he had chosen a position a hundred thousand kilometers from the stricken ship.

A moment later his helmsman informed him that the were dropping to sublight. As they did, the stars resolved themselves, and he came face to face with a battle. One Valorian cruiser venting plasma was dead ahead. Eight ships of various configurations and armaments had engaged them. The cruiser seemed largely dead in space, but her shields were up, and her crew was shooting back. It did not however seem like they would last much longer.

The commander coughed, smoke was billowing into the bridge from somewhere. She had ordered someone a minute ago to lock that down. It was from a fire that had erupted on one of the lower decks. It was just her damned luck that pirates had found them first, a whole squadron of them.

Someone shouted, “Aft shields twenty percent!”

That was much better than any of the other shields. Thankfully the pirates weren’t focusing on any one shield, but they had brought most of her shields down to minimal levels. The deck plates swayed under her, as a torpedo slammed into the port shield bringing it down to eighteen percent. She turned to tactical intent on barking her next order, only to pause at the sight on screen.

From seemingly nowhere an alien cruiser materialized sweeping in from her port flank. A beam of blue energy leapt from her hull and raked across the largest of the pirate vessels, a massive cruiser in the two thousand meter class. Something most pirate groups wouldn’t have, a sign of how successful this one was. The beast of a pirate ship dwarfed every ship here, including the newcomer. Yet that didn’t seem to matter, as the violent energy tore into her shield. It flared brilliantly as the beam raked over the defensive barrier. It flickered briefly, but that was enough for a portion of it rip into the hull of the cruiser. It cut through the hull plating as if it wasn’t even there. Punching through several decks, and tearing deep into the ship. Numerous power disruptions, and grid failures rippled through the ship, and the shield failed. As the beam was still raking across the hull. Without the defensive barrier the ship was bisected in seconds.

As the alien cruiser zipped by the wrecked pirate cruiser, she fired four quick bursts of light from her aft weapons array for good measure. Each slammed into the stricken pirate vessel in rapid succession, and erupted into brilliant flares of light. She recognized the hits instantly. Those were photon torpedoes, a type of warhead that used cascade detonations to unleash massive photon bursts. A very deadly type of warhead, with much greater range than plasma torps, and better accuracy to boot since they could be guided.

The alien vessel didn’t stop with that cruiser. Her beam array fired again this time targeting an unfortunate converted frigate that happened to be nearby. The poor ship didn’t even last five seconds before the beam had bisected the ship. Unlike the cruiser, that frigate didn’t even have the shield strength to stop the beam. Only weaken it a bit, if it weakened the beam at all. As the stream of energy had simply burned right through those shields in an instant, and sliced though the hull like it was nothing.

Simply watching this reminded her of the one time she had seen a Krall ship in action. It had been a lot like this, an engine of destruction simply sweeping anything aside as if it was nothing. That Krall vessel hadn’t been any bigger than the alien cruiser here either. In fact it had been smaller. Her previous order lay forgotten as she simply starred at the screen. It took another hit to the shields to remind her she was in a battle, yet words continued to escape her as the alien cruiser cut down another pirate ship in mere moments.

On screen she watched as two of the remaining pirate ships turned and fired their weapons upon the alien cruiser. One of them fired ionic pulses from a series of ion batteries they had acquired somewhere. A useful weapon, especially against civilian vessels who often didn’t have hardened shielding. The vibrant energy pulses found their marks, slamming into the alien hull with little apparent effect. Not even the flaring of a shield to deflect the ion bolts. An instant later the plasma rounds fired by the other ship struck with equal effect.

The cruiser responded by firing a focused beam on both ships at once. Two intense streams of blue energy split from either side of the alien saucer. Raking the hulls of both pirate vessels, and in seconds two more ships were gone. In minutes a battle that had lasted a few hours already had been drastically changed. Half the pirate vessels had been destroyed. When moments before they had seemed likely to be the death of her, even if normally they would never have been a threat to her ship.

The effect of four ships dying in so spectacular a fashion proved to be just enough to frighten the remaining pirates to flee. Four flashes of light signaled the abrupt departure of the remaining pirates. It seemed her ship may finally be safe.

She slumped into her command chair. As the tension left her bones for a moment. Her gaze never left the alien ship as it came to a rest in front of her ship. At this point it would be most appropriate to open a channel. Unfortunately, her comm array was still in tatters, and she didn’t even have the main comm dish. The secondaries? They were intact, but unfortunately, no power was getting to the system. Damage to the power grid was responsible for that. That didn’t mean she was without options for communication however. She did still have the option to attempt signaling. How well that would work was up in the air.

The captain sighed, and turned to her engineering officer, “Reset the sh....”

Several flashes of light signaled the sudden arrival of three company vessels. All of them uparmed light cruisers of the same type as hers. Which meant larger torpedo bays, and more launcher tubes. Along with a few other optimizations to make the ships better suited for combat. The base model Ophera was in her opinion rather underpowered. The hull had excellent potential, but it just wasn’t being fully utilized. Of course that was just because of how tiny the military budget was. As a company they had much more money to outfit their ships with, and thanks to their government contracts they could obtain military grade equipment.

In some respects it was nice to see them, but she wished they had not shown up at quite this moment. Earlier or later would have been better than now. This could be a problem. “Signal the lead ship!”

Her operations officer nodded, and attempted to signal the lead. Only before any acknowledgment of the hail could be made, all three company ships opened fire on the alien vessel. Red plasma pulses sailed past her damaged hull, and splashed over the alien hull. The alien armor held up against the barrage remarkably well.

She watched them increase speed, and return fire. A powerful stream of blue energy zipped past her hull, and slammed into the lead cruiser of the company task force. Unlike the pirate ship’s that vessel's shields actually seemed to hold. The beam was maintained for a surprisingly long time, however, nearly a minute as the company vessels continued to bombard the single alien cruiser. She did not join them in opening fire.

Instead she focused on trying to signal her allies. Yet they kept ignoring her. Merely continuing to attack the alien cruiser, which luckily only seemed to be armed with that strange beam weapon, and a few torpedoes. At least that seemed to be the case, until suddenly a number of turrets popped up on her armored hull. Dual-mounted energy guns swiveled about on their armored ball mountings and opened up unleashing a barrage of rapid-fire blue energy pulses. Bolt after bolt of blue energy slammed into the lead cruiser’s shields with visible effect, but they were holding.

The lead cruiser increased speed. Closing into torpedo range, and fired. Angry red bolts of plasma sailed out of the launchers at high speed. They stayed compact for a few seconds before the containment began to fail, and the torps swelled in size. Only to abruptly balloon in size when they got close to the alien ship, and engulf it entirely.

A beam of blue energy erupted from the fiery cloud, and slammed into the lead cruiser as she was coming about. Her shields flared brightly, but held. In the background, she idly noted one of her officers report that the cruiser’s shipwide shield strength had dropped below 75%.

That number put into perspective how strong that ship was. It was heavily armed, and seemingly immune to plasma weapons. As it sailed out of the plasma cloud without so much as a single scratch on her black and silver paint. She glanced at the operations officer, who shook her head. Still no response to their signals.

The alien cruiser came about, and suddenly it spat out several bolts of light. She recognized those. They had fired torpedoes. The lead ship was the target. A ship that ignored the projectiles, and opened fire with a barrage of plasma from the pulse cannon batteries. There was no discernable effect on the alien hull plating, but the effect of their torpedoes was shocking.

The projectiles struck the shields of the lead cruiser, but one of them actually got through. It slammed into the hull amidships and detonated with deadly force. A massive flash of light dominated her screen, and when it cleared she was staring at the shattered hulk of what had once been a company cruiser. Now it was a lifeless mangled wreck, blown into multiple large chunks of floating wreckage. It was a shocking display of power. One that seemed to have worked, as both of the other ships ceased fire immediately. Even signaling their surrender.

She sighed, and turned back to the engineering officer. Feeling much more comfortable now that people seemed done shooting at each other, “Reset the shields, and ready the port shuttlebay to receive guests.”

The officer nodded and executed the command. In moments her shields dropped but remained in a hot stand-by ready to be raised at a moment's notice.