Dramatic SFB: GWO Turn 7

Tue Sep 14 00:26:35 PDT 2021

Hi Matt, (only just found this email), and glad I have.
That is a nice write up, a good read.    On Saturday, 4 September 2021, 03:33:49 pm AEST, Matt via SFBdrama <sfbdrama at lists.mattnet.org> wrote:  

 "Drop out of high warp, Navigator." The captain of the light strike cruiser Taranto said. 

"Aye sir. We have dropped out of high warp. Now traveling at warp three point zero", the navigator replied smartly. Now that the main sensors weren't addled by the energy required to travel so fast, other stations around the bridge were reporting.

"270,000 miles from the Hydran colony." A gaseous planet with a green atmosphere, rich in methane, hung in the display at the captain's elbow.

Fire control signals began to wash the metal-hulled Jindarian ship. "Sir! Several orbital defenses are present. I see half a constellation of defense satellites, a small commercial base, and a ship."

"Sir, the ship has the warp signature of a cruiser -- she appears to be a command cruiser!"

"The base is hailing us. It's a system activity base, and we found our target planet."

"Give her no reply" The captain said.

"The ship is speeding up, sir."

"So much for a quick in-and-out raid", the captain thought and then he smiled. Time to dance among the stars.

The captain began laying out his plan to the crew manning the stations around him. "Helm", the captain said. "I want high speed until we get to about 150 K-miles, then slow down and pop the drogue." "Tactical, that ship is going to make a lot of trouble for us. Hydrans like to charge. I want you to hit it in the nose and keep hitting it. Stay off the flanks." "Sensors. I expect them to make a lot of noise. Particularly that base of theirs. For this approach, I want you to cut through it. Give tactical their edge. We'll see if they have the power for it later."

The bridge was briefly filled with a chorus of "Aye." "Helm," the captain returned to her, "Stay out of overload range. That ship is going to accelerate like a space banshee. Stay ahead of it so tactical can smack them around. Don't you let them smack us around."

The Taranto kept up just a touch below her entry speed while the Hydran swung wide around the planet and then took on a bearing to intercept the raider. The Jindarian ship curved around to centerline the system activity monitoring base. The Hydran ship also curved her course to come in ahead of the Jindarian.

Just as the Taranto reached 150,000 miles to the base, she slowed down to warp 2.3 and a tethered drogue slide out of the hatch. The base activated it's specialized sensors to blanket the Taranto with subspace static. The computers on the drogue analyzed the patterns in the static and were able to pull the truth from the randomness. Feeding the signals-analysis back to the Taranto, fire control firmed up again.

But the Hydran ship was getting to close. The Taranto swung steeply across the defender's bow. One of the orbitals spat a hellbore at the raider and a pair of phasers lanced out from the defender. The hellbore arrived half a second before the phasers and warmed the shields without finding a weakness to focus on. The phasers created the weakness on the Taranto's port flank, but only for later shots. The Taranto bucked as she fired a rail gun at the defender, hit, and scored half damage against the forward shield through the reinforcement.

Now the two were far to close for the captain's plans. The helm officer had waited a second or two too late to perform her swing away from threatening the orbitals, and now was well within overload range with the Hydran. Fortunately, the Hydran captain must not have expected the Taranto to engage as closely and had not pumped the extra power to the torpedoes.

Nonetheless, the raider did not care to be so close to so powerful an adversary. She brought in the drogue and sped up a touch. Another orbital fired their hellbore while the defender added another pair of phasers. The Taranto bucked as the weakened shield became moreso. Making the best of the unexpected range, the raider returned fire with her full phaser array and further damaged the Hydran's forward shielding.

The two ships were engaged in a furious knife fight as moments later, the defending ship fired a hellbore and more phasers. The hellbore missed but the phasers continued to weaken the already-damaged shield of the Jindarian. The raider kicked again as a second meteorite streaked out and collided with the Hydran's nose. Moments later, another ship-borne hellbore struck the fleeing raider. That weakened shield was down to half strength but the Hydran's forward shielding was down to a third of it's original strength.

Both ships accelerated, nearly doubling their speeds but keeping a rough parity in distance. The defender was hampered because she was in orbit a few minutes ago, which allowed the raider to match  the known acceleration curve. The Hydran ship was spending her power lavishly on recharging the weapons systems used moments ago and on her engines. This was seen by the raider when the Hydran could no longer maintain her jamming. The Jindarian, on the other hand, couldn't keep full reserve power and left the phasers uncharged. Both ships were breathing heavy, in their own ways.

The Hydran turned slightly, to bring her last hellbore into play. The Jindarian ship shuddered as three hydran phasers played along a new shield and then the hellbore struck again. Only the use of reserve power was keeping the Hydran fire from knocking down that shield. The jindarian weapon's officer was doing a good job, though, as yet another rail gun sent a collection of rocks into the Hydran's front. That shield was now a hair's breadth from folding.

Both ships had exhausted their weapons systems and streaked out-system. The Hydran was trying to keep up with the Jindarian, who was trying to open the range. Very quickly, the Jindarian was approaching the point where the defending ship would chase her right out of the system!

The Hydran accelerated again, to warp 3, while the Jindarian pushed her speed all the way to 3.15. At these speeds, the Hydran only loaded one weapon so that she could protect that faltering shield. The Jindarian could only load half her rail guns and could not reload the phasers. To make up the lack, the Hydran launched her Stinger fighters  and tried to bracket her quarry. The Taranto reached as far as she was willing to go from the planet and begun to swing around.

As the opportunity allowed, she fired another rail gun at her adversary, but the energy was completely absorbed by the reinforcing energy. Later, the raider was able to repeat the attack and scored a hit. Rock at superluminal velocities sliced through the protective energy field and slowed only enough to keep the resulting collisions from being catastrophic. The Hydran took hits on all of their forward weapon systems. Overloads in the power grid damaged the warp engines. an instant before, the Hydran fired her only charged hellbore and hit the Jindarian with a flare of energy. Reserve power again slowed the erosion of the Jindarian's weak flank shield.

The two ships streaked along at about 450,000 miles from the planet that anchored them together. For many seconds, the two were maintaining a distance of about 100,000 miles. Suddenly the Taranto pulled into a wrenching turn that put her pursuer going the wrong direction to keep up. Knowing that the Hydran could not perform the same trick at the speeds they were going, the Jindarian opened the range again and forced the defender to sweep around. For a moment, the helm officer of the Taranto played with staying on the Hydran's flank. She was reminded otherwise when the Hydran fired several phasers into the Jindarian's weak shield. Afterward, the Taranto flew away from the defending ship, which took them into range of the long-suffering and wholly-abandoned Stinger fighters. Those fighters had their day, firing a full alpha-strike at 100,000 miles and severely weakening the Taranto's front shield. Without the phasers to deal with them properly, the raider simply allowed them to be left behind the speeding ship. 

The Hydran slowed down, having expected things to go quite different than the sharp turn the Jindarian made. The raider used her speed to keep the distance comfortably outside of overload range and traded shots with her adversary. The hellbore hit and the rail gun did not. This time the mushy medicine-ball feeling of the shields absorbing another smothering hellbore was punctuated by an explosion in the right engine-deck. A moment later, the Taranto fired another rail gun at the Hydran and missed.

With her shields beginning to fail and facing a ship that is technically two ship-classifications larger, the light strike cruiser Taranto reached for the orbital limit. Having achieved it, she dropped into high-warp and was gone. At the end, she failed to raid the colony but succeded in harassing the Hydran forces. The defending Hydran ship is going to spend a couple of weeks in the dockyards, getting her weapons repaired.
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