Chronicles of Sol: The Fall

The station commander studied her screens, as several ships came into range. Beam weapons fired to deter them, with the predictable result. A couple sustained moderate damage, and pulled back. The rest continued into the teeth of their defenses. She had every reason to be worried however, that explosion had knocked out the main shields. The station had armor, and the hull was reinforced, but those capital ships had enough firepower to destroy this outpost now that the shields were down. There were secondary shields to protect vital areas such as ops and the docks, but they had also been sabotaged. As such there was no safe place left on the station. It might be safer to relocate to either the IKS Teketh or the EFS Enterprise, but there wasn’t time to reach either ship. If there was she would have preferred the Enterprise right now. The Teketh had superior technology and defensive systems, but she was in bad shape. Not to mention, her engines were non-functional. The Enterprise on the other hand was over-engineered so even without shields, she could easily withstand a barrage of plasma torpedoes. Even better she had functional engines.

Of course, there was a reason for the EFS Enterprise being so over-engineered. Her armor and structural systems were that way because her builders had evidently never heard of a deflector. As such in order to withstand the rigors of star travel they needed a robust hull, and armor able to withstand those translight impacts.

The fact they could make such armor was downright impressive, and at the moment it meant right now that the Enterprise was the safest place to be. With the Teketh following in second place. As while damaged the Teketh still had a functioning shield grid, and right now those shields were up. With a small gap to allow entry via the dock gangway. People were already evacuating to the ship, but there were Cathamari interfering with that operation. Elsewhere internal screens showed that similar attacks were occurring near the few civilian ships docked at the station. Her own security forces were pressed defending those docks, and key areas such as ops. As such the Cathamari pretty much had free run of the station. Although there were a few firefights elsewhere, and the Humans were defending capital ship dock four themselves, freeing up a few security units to defend other areas.

Glancing at the monitor, she noted that Tika was at that dock now, and a few human marines were heading off into the station. She glanced back at the ships approaching and wasn’t sure that was a good idea. She doubted the Cathamari would actually try to destroy the outpost while they had people aboard, but that wouldn’t preclude them shooting at it. Not to mention the station was crawling with Cathamari soldiers. Although it seemed some of them were starting to pull back towards the docks. Why she wasn’t sure.

Her attention went back to what was happening outside the station. She was worried about that, especially since most of their defense picket was occupied protecting the civilian ships in the area. The rest had been forced to pull out of the combat zone to make repairs or had been destroyed. On the flip side, they had destroyed about a third of the attacking Cathamari fleet so far. They would likely win the battle, but they might lose the outpost. That was a thought she didn’t relish.

That thought fell from her mind, moments later. On her screens, she noticed that the Enterprise was opening her gunports, turrets were deploying across the hull, and focusing on the approaching ships. She had previously noted the particle cannons on the Enterprise. Although she knew little about them, beyond what they could discern from sensor scans and what had been reported by the Teketh. They were somewhat different from other designs she had seen, but they still drew from familiar principles. Although she couldn’t be certain of their exact capabilities. The reports only told her so much. To be truly certain more data was needed.

In seconds rapid pulses of focused blue particle energy began to flood the void. As the Enterprise started firing on the Cathamari ships, which were not yet able to fire back. Her own station weapons had been hiting them and inflicting some damage. The Enterprise focused her heavy barrage of particle fire on one of the lead ships whose forward shield was starting to fluctuate.

The bolts slammed into the forward shield with a veritable hail of heavy fire. The first hits were absorbed, but she could tell that they wouldn’t hold long under the strain. As the sustained volley was quickly straining the shields. For nearly a minute the weakened forward shield held under the strain and then buckled. Blue energy punched through the shield and tore into the hull. Ripping right through her armor as if it was tissue paper. More followed, as the shield collapsed entirely. In seconds the once-proud dreadnought was little more than a floating wreck, her hull pockmarked with holes and heavily charred. The Enterprise shifted her fire to a second ship, one her own guns quickly started to focus on. She blinked, and glanced at her battle-leader.

He said nothing, but clearly noted her look. She trusted he knew what he was doing. Glancing back at the screens, she noted the ship was already dead, and their combined fire was striking a third. That third ship was taking heavy damage, her shields buckling, and bolts were tearing through her hull as if it was tissue paper. However, the Cathamari were now entering range to shoot back. Something they promptly did with focused concussion plasma fire. Clearly aimed at her station, or to be more precise her main gun batteries. They weren’t even firing on the Enterprise, not yet anyway.

At the same moment, the Enterprise lobbed another volley of photons at the Cathamari. This time aimed at a battleship, that had the misfortune of wandering into her firing arc. She watched the plots, taking brief glances at internal security. Where she noted that the Cathamari were intensifying their attacks on the human held capital ship dock four, whereas they were pulling back in other areas. The only other area they were concentrating was freighter dock twenty three, which was a few levels above capital ship dock four.

The station shuddered as the Cathamari plasma projectiles struck the hull. The damage was thankfully rather contained, but she watched as numerous weapon emplacements were knocked offline, and power was disrupted to several key systems. The tractor beams, and internal security grid were among the systems affected. In seconds her station had been rendered toothless, and the Cathamari suddenly had access to areas that had previously been secure. Not that the grid had prevented them from reaching secure areas before. The loss of the shields underscored that fact quite nicely.

Now toothless, there was nothing left her battleleader could do, not that she could see, but the Enterprise was still clearly fighting. Although the Cathamari were lasting longer now that the station was no longer coordinating its fire with the human capitalship. Already she could see them vectoring towards the docked capitalship. When her battle-leader suddenly said, “The Enterprise, we need to release her.”

Turning she frowned, “What?”

“The Enterprise, needs to be free to maneuver. Release the docking clamps.”

“Huh, but what about...”

“They will be fine. Right now that ship needs to be free to maneuver.”

Tika stepped off the lift, into a dimly lit corridor. She had not been to this part of the ship before. Countryman had said they were heading to the bridge, but this didn’t look like the bridge. All she saw was a short corridor. At the far end of the corridor, she could see two armored men gaurding an armored blast door. There were two other doors in the corridor, that also looked like security doors, but not as heavily armored. Even so the doors seemed substantial, at least in the dim light.

Countryman and Eri made for the door on the other end of the hall, rather than those in the middle, and she followed. They came up to the guards, and Countryman spoke briefly. The guards nodded, and activated something. A scanning beam went over the three of them. It lasted but a moment, and then the guards opened the door.

The armored door slid silently into the floor. It took only a couple of seconds, but she quickly noticed that the door was actually rather substantial even for a blast door. It was perhaps a meter thick, and clearly it had been reinforced. It would be no easy task to cut through such a thick door. Thankfully the mechanisms could open it fairly quickly, it only took seconds, and after stepping through she noted it was just as fast to raise it back into place. She felt no need to ask about what she had seen. It was clear that she had just been brought into a secure area.

Looking around, she noted that she was on the upper level of what was clearly the ship’s command center. From here she had a commanding view of the bridge, there were a few controls up here concentrated at the only station up here. At eye level in every direction were a series of view screens that provided the illusion of a three hundred sixty degree window. Looking around, she could see the battle in the distance. The station, and the ships moving in to attack. It seemed there was more going on than just the soldiers on the station. Exactly what she didn’t know, given that she was largely out of the loop. She did notice that at least her ship looked alright.

Countryman approached the chair, where a man had been sitting. He stood up, and handed Countryman a padd. Something Countryman looked through quickly, a smile briefly graced his face. He took the chair, while briefly conferring with the other man, while Eri made her way down a series of steps to the lower level. The man followed her down a moment later, and Countryman took command of the ship.

She stepped up just behind him, just as it was reported that the Cathamari were firing torpedoes. Tika could see it on the screens, and to her it looked like they were unleashing the entirety of their payloads against the Enterprise. Great swaths of angry red bolts were careening towards the ship. It was a frightful display of firepower.

Countryman was immediately giving orders to the crew. “Divert all available power to the hull plating, and structural integrity fields. Secure all turrets. Alert all hands to brace for impact, and set energy web projectors to in-dock defense mode.”

He didn’t seem all that worried, but that was a lot of firepower. They were clearly firing as many warheads as they could at the Enterprise. Countryman turned to her, and said, “You might want to brace. I’m afraid the Enterprise is about to get its first real test of her defense systems.”

“You don’t seem that worried about it.”

Countryman chuckled, “largely because I’m pretty sure of the result. The ship will survive this volley, your dock might not be so lucky. I’ll do what I can to make sure it remains intact.” Then he pointed behind her, “there are some seats hidden in the walls over there, you can brace yourself there”

She turned around to see two benches folding out of the wall on either side of the blast door. She even noted the presence of a proper shock harness. Glancing back, she noticed that Countryman was securing himself in one, while giving additional orders. Including some very detailed orders about what to do with the structural integrity field generators. Some of which went beyond her understanding of the system. It seemed he was better versed on the technology than any male she had met before, and most females as well. Tika wasn’t sure what to think about that. They hadn’t really known the humans long enough to really understand their culture. Besides, while gender roles were rigid and strong in Krall society, that didn’t mean they would make the same sense for an alien one.

She pushed those thoughts aside, and secured herself in one of the available seats. The harness required some adjustment, but thankfully Krall and Humans were similar enough in morphology that she could use the harness. The design while different was also somewhat familiar. No real shock there, races with similar morphologies developed similar tools. This was especially true of simple tools. A harness definitely fell on the simpler side of tools.

That line of thought fell quickly to the side, as the enemy torpedoes began hitting the screen. An angry web of high-intensity particle streams projected safely away from the hull, and in a manner that avoided damage to the docks. The ship began to rock, as shockwaves struck the hull. Wave generated by the torpedoes losing containment, and suddenly detonating on contact with the energy web. Thankfully they were in space or the rather minimal rocking they were feeling right now would be far worse. The lack of an atmosphere took most of the force out of those premature detonations.

Tika observed from her seat as the alien point defense grid, intercepted and detonated the Cathamari torpedoes kilometers from the hull. Some of them got through, but it was a fraction of the truly massive number. The ship rocked all the harder with each one that got through the interception grid. The number that got through was quite small at first, but the numbers quickly rose. Each time one got through the resulting hit rocked the ship hard, and she was quite thankful for the shock harness. It helped keep her in her seat. Although she wished the humans would invest in better inertial dampers. Not that anything could be done about that. Not right now anyway.

Down below she heard someone shout, “AIF integrity at thirty percent, and falling!”

She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she doubted it was good. The Cathamari were continuing their rather heavy bombardment, and she didn’t see an end to it in sight. At this point the screens were so clogged with hits, she couldn’t even see what the Cathamari were doing, but she had a feeling they had fired more torpedoes.

Countryman gave a few orders, including an order to return fire with the main beam arrays. That made some sense to her, especially since one of his previous orders was to secure the turrets. That likely meant retracting them back beneath the main belt of armor where they would be better protected.

The result of those orders, she could not really see. However from what she could see, it seemed the ship was holding up fairly well. At least until another shout reported that the AIF had fallen below twenty percent.

Moments after that shout, another reported, “Hull breach! Deck nine, section 33 alpha! Emergency bulkheads, responding. No casualties reported!”

That was the first. Several more followed in the space of a few minutes. Countryman shouted a few orders, and then he turned back to her. “Don’t worry we are fine. I suspect their tubes will be empty soon.”

She thought his words were mostly empty assurances, but it was nice to hear someone say that. Especially since she was beginning to worry about whether or not the ship would hold up. Afterall, the officers below were reporting a rather regular stream of new hull breaches. However true to his word, the bombardment let up, and came to a stop moments later. Revealing the Cathamari capital ships, at close range. Now firing only their main cannons.

One of them seemed to have lost shields, as a sustained beam of blue energy tore through her hull. One of the local defense cruisers came into view firing on the ships from the rear. The Cathamari returned fire with limited effect and began moving off. Countryman gave the order to deploy the turrets, and open fire. Moments later, she saw a few flashes of light flash, as they warped away.

Countryman sighed, “Well, I think that could have gone better.” He turned to her, and said, “In the meantime, we might as well lick our wounds, and figure out what they went to such trouble to steal.”

“Steal?”