This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Spooker0 on 2024-11-01 17:28:26+00:00.
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TRNS Bali, Terra (0.2 Ls)
POV: Jakub Fiedor, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Captain)
“Captain! CIC reports that the Corsica took a hit, midsection to rear! They’ve got at least two modules open to vacuum.”
“How bad?”
“They’ve lost primary comms! But sensors show they’re still cruising at 85% of maximum acceleration. We’re the second closest ship. Should we cancel our attack run and burn to assist? We can reach their position in twelve minutes.”
Jakub looked at the damaged friendly ship on the battlemap, noting their severed connection from the datalink network. In the maelstrom of thousands of incoming and outgoing missiles — mostly incoming — they weren’t going to stand much of a chance without assistance from the myriad of electronic countermeasures coordinated by the destroyer squadrons, trying their best to confuse the enemy sensors. Without connection, the damaged ship had minutes before it was exposed.
He glanced at the other side of the battlemap. Hundreds of enemy space superiority ships. With most of the command structure crippled, the remaining enemy ships were operating on autopilot — a few of them literally. But they could still hurt. Hurt the people he was responsible for.
Billions of them.
He had a job to do.
“Negative,” he replied, “They are on their own. Continue the attack burn.”
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TRNS Corsica, Terra (0.2 Ls)
POV: Ozawa Akane, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Captain)
Ozawa ignored the pain in her bruised ribs as she coughed. “Sitrep, XO?”
“We took another proximity hit! Outgoing comms are busted. CIC says we’re out of the EW network, but we can still read backup signals. We’re trying our best to shadow our decoys, but it’s a matter of time before the Buns find us in this—”
“What about our missile bay? The fire—”
“The fire’s vented. Missile bay doors are still jammed. Damage control two is working on it.”
“Tell them to get to it. We’ve gotta get those warheads out!”
“Roger, Captain. They’ve got—”
BwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwah. Incoming. Incoming. Incoming. BwahBwah—
Ozawa tightened her grip on her seat restraints in one hand, her armrest in the other. There was a deafening, ripping sound as the ship’s point defense hardpoints engaged the incoming threats.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr— Bang.
She looked at her exec, relieved that they were both still there. “Sitrep—”
“Another proximity hit! We’ve lost four woodpeckers in the top-aft quadrant!” he read off his console in rapid-fire. “Six casualties in the engine room, situation stabilized. Uncontrolled fires in two unoccupied rear modules. Automatic venting—”
“What about our missiles—”
“Damage control says they can blow the bay doors now, but that’d be a permanent remodel—”
Her trained instincts kicked in. “Do it! Blow it!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ten seconds later, there was another loud blast in the belly of the ship as the broken missile bay doors were forcibly ejected from their mounts. At least this one was intentional.
“Let the missiles out,” she ordered.
“Which targets?”
“They can figure it out on the way! Atlas Command will—”
“Yes, ma’am. Launching!”
The missiles separated from the ship, and Ozawa let out a mild sigh of relief as she watched their signatures disappear into a cluster of friendly outgoing signals on the battlemap.
At least we got another two out. Who knows how many lives that is?
“Now burn us out of here back to safety, somewhere in low or medium Terra!”
“No service docks available for us,” he replied. “All occupied for rearm as far as we can tell. And we’ve put ourselves out of range of all friendly assets with that last burn course—”
“Never mind that! Just displace us out of this volume! Where’s the closest blue ship to us now?”
“Propulsion says we might be able to get in the point defense bubble of the Mojave in eight minutes.”
“The Mojave?” Ozawa looked at him quizzically as the name temporarily eluded her in the adrenaline. “Is that—”
“It’s one of the new Pythons, Captain. Squadron 11. Just christened last week.”
“Ah, as long as her woodpeckers and EW work. Get us into their—”
BwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwah. Incoming. Incoming. Incoming. BwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwah.
Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Another pair of Znosian missiles flew by, missing the Corsica by just a few dozen kilometers as they ran out of propellant.
“How close are we?” Ozawa asked impatiently.
“Still eight minutes from the Mojave, ma’am.”
Time sure moves fast when we’re having fun.
“I don’t think we have eight minutes! Tell CIC to throw out whatever we don’t need — dump fuel if they need to — see if they can make us a little bit faster—”
“Ma’am! There’s a fresh cluster coming straight our way! Sixteen vampires! EW network adjustment missed our last burn!”
Ozawa slumped down a little in her chair. She’d been here before. Mostly in simulations and not the fun ones. “They found us,” she said, her mouth dry.
“Incoming! Sixty seconds!”
“All hands, abandon all efforts at damage control, and get to your armored modules! Brace for hard impact! Cut the engines on inertial device failure…”
BwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwahBwah. Incoming. Incoming. Incoming. BwahBwah—
Brrrrrrr— Bang.
The incoming missiles hit the ship near simultaneously. The rumbles in the ship hull were loud, and whatever the incoming munitions trashed, the ship finally had enough. The engines cut out. The dim lights on the bridge went out, replaced by the dim red emergency lighting. There was an unsettling crunch in the rear of the ship. And everything that wasn’t strapped down went flying… Which wasn’t that much; the Corsica was a disciplined crew.
Ozawa coughed again in her sealed helmet. Her ribs hurt, and there was blood in her mouth. Ignoring the discomfort, she glanced to the seat to her side. “XO, you there?”
“I’m still here, Captain. We’ve lost propulsion, reactor ejected…” he grunted. For a second, he turned his ears to listen to the hum of the machinery. “… And no APU, it sounds like.”
“Any other ideas?”
“Negative, ma’am. We… we did our best.”
“Then, I think… that’s all she wrote for us,” Ozawa said calmly as she flipped up the emergency panel on her now-battery-powered controls. Removing a safety hatch, she held down the large red button for two seconds.
The ship’s general alarm sounded seven short trumpet blasts and one long one on the reserve batteries.
Abandon ship! This is not a drill. Abandon ship! This is not a drill.
They undid their seat restraints and propelled themselves over to the bridge escape pods in zero gravity along with her officers in somber quiet. There were a couple of minor injuries on the bridge being attended to, but the armored module had been protected from most of the incoming fire. The hull began to thump as pods and shuttles from other sectors of the ship ejected into vacuum, away from the doomed Peacekeeper.
Ozawa waited at the status panel, making sure that the last pods from medical bay reported their successful launch before activating her own evacuation sequence. Her XO murmured to her as they strapped themselves into the seats, “The battle. Do you think we’ve won?”
She sighed. “I don’t know.”
“There were a lot of the alien ships.”
“All I know is one thing, XO.”
“Yeah?”
She pointed out the virtual windows of the escape pod, down towards the near-pristine blue marble occupying a good chunk of its view. The one they were fighting to protect. “It looks like they haven’t won yet either.”
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TRNS Sonora, Terra (0.1 Ls)
POV: Catarina Ibarra, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Captain)
The Sonora’s executive officer reported the latest fleet update to the bridge. “They’re firing again, but it looks like Znosian fleet discipline has broken down even further after their first few volleys. And their missiles seem to have extra trouble with our Raven-6 dazzlers, so we’re going to bring more of those in our next countermeasure load. Ship computer is reprogramming to optimize itself for the new loadout—”
“Casualty update?” Catarina asked.
Kyrylo glanced at his console again. “Several additional hits on our other ships after the initial volley. Two ships damaged in Squadron 4, three in Squadron 5, two in Squadron 6. All Peacekeepers so far. Those old ships are tough; good damage control, thank the Red Zone experience for that… They’re all still in the fight. Ah, actually, I think 5-3 — the Corsica — she just called it quits; they’ve launched escape shuttles and pods.”
The lifepod signals from the dying Corsica flickered on the battlemap as even the sensitive sensor suite of the Sonora struggled to track them. Like much of the frontline equipment in the Republic Navy, they too had been upgraded and coated in low-observability material. That particular design requirement had been controversial: the Navy weighed the risk of missing spacers against the possibility of capture or destruction by the Republic’s less-than-h…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1ghawxe/grass_eaters_orbital_shift_67_broken/
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