Interlude Damage Report (Patreon)

Smoke filled the cabin, the man coughed as he took a look over the engineering boards. A moment later his engineer gave him the news. “Things could be worse, sir, for the most part the armor held. We lost one of our primary engines though and the main shields are fried. I think I can coax the backup generator into working again, after I patch the thirty or so plasma conduits that overloaded.” She sighed, “Weapons are a completely different story, the main batteries are a mess, worse we lost the B-6, B-7 and D-3 turrets.”

“Lost?”

“They aren’t there anymore, alien photons blew them to bits.”

He glanced at the formation, noting the wreck, what had once been the proud hull of the Fang of Li’aous was nothing more than broken and burning plating. The very storm tearing apart what little was left. Losing her was a terrible blow to this endeavor, but they would have to press on. The Lodge was rich in materials the Raider Alliance desperately needed.

“Do what you can to get us going again. How much time are we going to lose from this?”

“A few hours, I think I can make up for it, but keep in mind we are down an engine. I won’t be able to fix it until we get back to port.”

“Wonderful, get on it,” then he turned to tactical, “Now do you have any good news for me?”

“We drove off the fighters,” replied the officer.

Somehow that didn’t feel right, “Did you sink any of them?”

“Afraid not sir, our missiles were ineffective, and our drones failed to score any...”

“I get the point.” he replied a bit testily, as he leaned over the console, “I thought these weapons were supposed to be effective against small craft.”

“They were, sir, and against cooperative drones they are. These phantom fighters however? Well it turns out we didn’t know enough about them. They are well armored and practically immune to the low-yield rapid fire cannons mounted on our drones, our missiles might do more damage but the alien point defense system is far more advanced than anything I’ve seen.”

“Right, what exactly happened, those missiles should have hit, why’d they blow like that?”

The tactical officer, replayed the scene, in slower motion with the storm’s swirling gasses stripped out, “As you can see it wasn’t a point defense array as we understand it,” just then seconds before impact a web appeared around the phantom fighter, the missile hit one of the strands and exploded instantly. “Instead of firing an energy bolt to intercept, they instead interposed a web of high intensity laser beams between them and the ship.” 

He noted something, “What about those red streaks sailing out?”

“Particle flak, high speed particles fired in the path of the missile, that’s the other element of their point defense, and one we actually understand.”

“Weakness?”

“I have no fucking clue. Only thing I could suggest is firing more missiles, maybe the system can be overwhelmed?”

“Right, well in the meantime I want constant drone flights, I don’t want the phantoms sneaking up on us again.”

“Understood sir.”

_________________

Felki took a moment to relax, since the Enterprise had relayed her tracking data things had been hectic. The Lodge was getting ready for the arrival of a large fleet, transports were being readied, defenses fortified and battle plans being laid. Hylix had every intention to give battle, but he was covering his bases.

If they couldn’t hold the base, he was prepared to abandon it. Felki had a feeling they wouldn’t be able to hold. There were just too many ships, and what were they going to do against THREE battleships?

Hylix had put a team on putting together a hypervelocity electromagnetic railgun, they’d scrounged up some high-yield photonic charges, and stuffed them into tungsten coated iron shells. More or less a poor man’s missile system, not that they’d get many shots. Railguns were notorious for rendering themselves useless after a few shots, and they had that same issue here. Only it got worse, the makeshift railguns had their own problems but there were also issues with the shells, the intense forces involved caused the rounds to disintegrate.

Basically the damn things were limited to about forty thousand kilometers. At that range the enemy would be right on top of The Lodge, which was spitting distance. Of course they should do a fair bit of damage, it was a lot like hitting a battleship with exploding plasma charges. Felki figured it would do something if they got a hit, but then the guns would be blown up by the other battleships

Pushing herself up, she made her way down the hall. She had more work to do and only so many days before the Raider’s got here. Reaching the command center she stepped in and blinked, did the mood seem improved?”

Hylix noticed her, “Felki! We’ve got some good news from our friends.”

“Huh? What happened?”

“At 1400 hours their time, twelve of their fighters ambushed the raider fleet and successfully sank one battleship and wounded another.”

Felki felt a weight lift from her shoulders, the battle suddenly seemed not so hopeless. “That’s a good bit of help.”

“Unfortunately they are still coming, but we’ve got a couple more hours to prepare now. That could make all the difference.”