Play date: March 18, 2018
In-game date: April 21 EY219
Location: Aiscapo
Previous events: Striking at the D'vor-controlled fleet in Aiscapo and saving some Grob
After disabling the two Grob ships and a stealth ship, the Scorching Raptor decides to wait for the Aerikin mothership and Resplendent Dragon before engaging any more of the D'vor-controlled fleet. No sense in pushing their luck without backup.
Once all three ships are together they pursue the fleet, waiting for the Daebak ships to close before they engage again. At least that's the plan, but when the Juche frigate Kyeongbuk starts to have drive troubles and falls behind the rest of her fleet she's too tempting a target to leave alone. Going over their sensors with a fine-toothed comb to make sure this isn't a trap for stealth ships -- Juche's navy has at least one still on the loose -- they close on their prey.
Neet, always a bit (ok, more than a bit) of a shipspotter, gives everyone the rundown on this frigate's capabilities. It has torpedoes, which shouldn't be a problem for anything smaller than the Aerikins' mothership: torpedoes can only track larger ships. It also has two gunships, one of them piloted by the famous Kam Den Duk, who won the Maurice Clegman Memorial Run twice. Malcolm frowns at the mention of Clegman -- hero worship dies hard! -- and Jillian twitches at the mention of gunships. Her last run-in with them didn't work out so well, after all.
The Aerikin want to see what the humans can do and opt to hang back while the Raptor and Dragon deal with the frigate and gunships. They agree to let the more powerful Raptor take on the Kyeongbuk while the Dragon deals with the gunships, to Jillian's relief. Since these human ships are being piloted by Songed crew they'll do their best to take out their space drives and leave the crew alive, as they did with the Grob and stealth ships.
As they close the frigate turns to fight and launches its gunships, as expected. The Dragon draws off the dangerous gunships and engages with them. The odds are two to one but the Dragon's skilled and confident. The first gunship goes down pretty quickly but the second, indeed piloted by Kam Den Duk, gives them huge issues and even lands a rocket hit that does some damage. Sabine manages to patch things together but the gunship's ripple firing of rockets keeps Neet on his toes and doesn't let Olivia get a decent bead on the gunship. If she could just go for a kill shot things probably would have been over quickly, but trying to cripple and not kill the gunship means a lot of missed opportunities and drags things out, risking their lives.
The Raptor likewise has some issues with the frigate. No one's still totally comfortable with the advanced controls and they overcompensate, firing wide and almost catching a salvo in the side on their first pass. A panicky Jillian calls the Aerikin mothership to request help, but the captain refuses to intercede and insists that they're doing fine. There's some more skirmishing and a hit on the frigate manages to do some damage to the space drive, but the size of the ship and its heavy armour prevents it from being enough. Finally Bishop manages to get a shot through the drive and the frigate's dead in space, to the Raptor's great relief.
With their main target down the Raptor goes to help the Dragon. With two ships taking on one gunship even Kam Den Duk's skills aren't enough and Olivia finally manages to take out the gunship's drive with a well-placed shot. All in all it hasn't been the best audition in front of the Aerikin. No one's hurt but when one of the ships you're fighting has run out of rockets to fire at you before you finally manage to deal with it you know you could have done better.
Everyone recognizes that going out of their way to only cripple and not outright destroy ships is taking their edge off and making things much more dangerous. As much as they'd like to save as many lives as they can they're going to have to kill to save the system. They also agree to attack in a group to be extra sure, especially when they go after larger ships.
At this point they'll catch up to the D'vor-controlled fleet right around the time when it meets the Daebak fleet in combat. Xao insists on his ship getting the first shot against the Nehru as revenge against it destroying Labrys City. He and his crew don't really care that the crew is being controlled by the D'vor, they want to kill the ship and be done with it. Neet reminds everyone that the destroyer's captain, Kamakshi Singh, was the captain of the Chempil Arayan when she captured Nanda Reddy, leading to her torture by Hoax. He also gives a less emotionally loaded rundown of its abilities. Like all destroyers it's heavily armoured and tough, with lots of weapon batteries. It's well protected against small fighter craft and torpedoes, which no one in the attacking force has, and carries three squads of marines for boarding events, which are likewise not going to come into play here.
Once the Nehru is dealt with the three ships will go after the large alien ship that's constantly in a cloud of smaller structures. Contact is made with the Daebak fleet and arrangements made for the fleet to isolate and ignore those two ships and concentrate on the rest of the D'vor ships.
When it's time for the attack run on the Nehru the Resplendent Dragon takes the lead. Neet knows its (relative) blind spot and angles into that. As the large guns on the destroyer try to track the nimble ship Olivia lays into it with a sustained burst from her overpowered cannon. She's served on destroyers and Neet has set things up so that she can fire where the armour plating is relatively thin for a destroyer. Her cannon would normally do moderate damage to the much larger ship, but her rapid-fire cannon lets shell after shell hit the same location; she punches through successive layers of armour and the interior of the ship until her shells reach the normally well-protected magazine, which detonates with a blinding flash. The destroyer is cut in two, the sections sailing away from each other from the force of the blast. Anyone who survived the initial explosion would have been killed by the acceleration or the massive venting of atmosphere all over the ship.
The Aerikin express their admiration for this feat and seem to have more respect for the human ships. The Hummingbird is shocked at how Olivia took out a destroyer with a single burst of cannonfire and express their admiration at the Dragon's skill. The Dragon is fairly quiet and neutral in tone over comms; they've just killed a lot of people, and even if they feel it was necessary it isn't anything to cheer about.
Next up: the large skeletal alien ship. This time the Raptor will take the lead. Getting closer, they can make out a large number of mines and fighter craft of two different sizes in a cloud extending far from the ship itself. There is an enormous number of fighter ships, about a hundred or so! The Aerikin mothership releases combat drones to dilute the fighter cover but keeps its fighters in their bays; they'll likely get chewed up in this whirling storm of ships and mines. Drones are much more expendable.
It's best to take the least cluttered path and to be here for as short a time as possible. Plunging into the maelstrom, Malcolm is guided by Jillian's readings of ever-shifting areas of lower enemy density. Volkova's pushing the engines -- sans Khnuta -- to provide stronger shields and go faster to enhance their chances for survival.
Without Malcolm's skill, without the ship's technology, without his crew providing support, the Raptor would never make it through to her target. She manages to not set off any of the mines on the way in, but there's no way to completely avoid the alien fighters and they descend upon the ship en masse. Going through sensor readings afterwards it looks like that area had roughly sixty ships engaging with the Raptor at once. Twisting and dodging, the Raptor never lets them get a clear shot and the glancing hits are numerous but never direct enough to get through both shields and hull armour. Inside the ships it sounds like a small army is pounding away with hammers, but everything holds together.
Finally they're close enough to the large alien ship to get a good look at it. It's best described as being spindly, with long curving arms or ribs extending from a central spine. A deep blue-black in colour, it looks like a cross between a skeletal hand and a fern frond. All along the arms are knobs that look like attachment points for the mini-armada surrounding it.
It doesn't look like it's got a central crucial location, but it also doesn't seem to have any armour. The surface is visibly covered with machinery, cabling, pipes, and other systems that would normally be protected by hull plating. With no single vital point to target Bishop takes a chance and fires the Raptor's plasma weapons in short pips along the length of the central stem. The alien ship bursts along its length like a series of blisters, explosions flowering along its hull as it's torn apart.
Once it's obvious that the ship is done Malcolm kicks the Raptor into full speed and engages the afterburner to get out of here before their luck runs out and the mines or fighters get a decent hit in. He manages to clear the swarm with a supercharged space drive thanks to Volkova. The small fighters are understandably in temporary disarray from their carrier being destroyed and Bishop's plasma bursts into the crowd of ships keeps them from mounting any real pursuit as the Raptor flies off.
The Resplendent Dragon and the Aerikin mothership were following the Raptor and taking advantage of the fact that many of the fighters were taking on the first ship to attack to launch their own follow-up attacks, but once the alien carrier is destroyed they pull free. Not really entered this particular field of battle in the first place, they're undamaged.
As the three ships reassemble, the battle between the two fleets rages around them...
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Bishop's Bedpost Notch Count: 1 (running total: 38)
Jillian's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 5.5)
Malcolm's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 17)
Volkova's Bedpost Notch Count: 0 (running total: 7)