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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/KamchatkasRevenge on 2024-11-16 01:53:51+00:00.
Sharon
“Alright people, we’ve got our marching orders. Run out the guns, but hold the fighters for a bit longer! What’s the status of the Gutshredder?”
“Waiting for the Admiral’s signal to pounce, looks like he wants the fighters held back too until the pirates enter the kill box.” Elyria notes from her comm station.
Sharon nods.
“Glad to know I’ve graduated to reading Jerry’s mind. Simple enough. Weapons, ASMs for the corvettes and lighters, and a stealth torpedo for that converted carrier.”
Wichen clearly was working solutions already, it’s not even a full second from Sharon giving the order to Wichen calling back;
“Solutions ready, weapons ready, stealth torpedo is in tube one!”
“Shoot tube one!”
“Shoot aye!”
One of the external cameras switches to the non-descript chunk of hull that was the forward torpedo tube and vertical launch apparatus on module one, and an armored cover slides away, revealing a gleaming missile in its tube that immediately leaps into the void trailing plasma flames in its wake.
“Torpedo away, running hot, straight and normal.”
“Sensors, how long till the pirates hit the kill box?”
Evie spins in her chair slightly.
“Skipper, they’re maybe thirty seconds from the designated line.”
“Alright. Party time ladies and gents. Launch all fighters. Hold the ASMs for now, we’ll see if popping their carrier makes them grow a brain stem.”
“Conn! Intell! Signals says they’re getting launch reports from enemy fighters. Sounds like about a dozen.”
Sharon nods.
“Good, we’ve got them in numbers. Comm, order electronic warfare to begin interdiction. I want those corvettes to have a hell of a time shooting anything but empty space. Pass the word to CAG that I don’t want any of their fighters to make weapons range.”
“Aye aye. Passing the word ma’am!”
“Tactics, what’s Audacious doing?”
“Ma’am, Audacious is under orders from the admiral to play goalie until Gutshredder pops the trap he’s laying or the first corvette gets turned into slag.”
“Very well. Data link is live for all ships?”
“Yes ma’am! Inevitable has also been tied into our net.”
“Good, don’t want the boys to miss the show now do we?”
Sharon smiles as she leans back in her chair a bit. Time to show the Inevitable what galactic warfare was all about.
“Weapons, at half range for our lasers, you may fire at will. Prioritize the smaller targets. Let the gunships get their light torpedoes off at the corvettes.”
Wichen grins wickedly, her fangs gleaming in the bridge’s emergency lighting.
“Can I open up with the particle cannons?”
“Go for it, just hold the plasma till they hit half range for the primary plasma cannons. I don’t want to waste fuel on misses.”
“Aye aye. Stand by. Firing.”
Up on the dorsal side of modules one, two and three, the heavy laser turrets align themselves with various targets and begin to unleash bright lances of light. Under the right conditions laser beams could strike targets on the other side of a solar system, limited only by the speed of light itself. The pirates were much closer than that, making the travel time damn near instantaneous.
One of the pirate lighters turns into a fireball as the capital scale lasers punch through its shields like tissue paper and burn into the drive core, turning it into the briefest star before Wichen’s gunners pop two more vessels.
“Status of the stealth torpedo?”
Wichen’s clawed finger tips fly over her console.
“We’re having trouble tracking it. We’re so close I shut off telemetry to not give it away. One of the fighters might have found it and is trying to make a run.”
“Damn. Comm! Tell CAG to get someone over there so we can drop that carrier in peace!”
Sharon uses her implant to dial in to the fighter’s command and control frequency and is rewarded with;
“Storm three! Bruiser! Torpedoes in the void!”
“Storm four! Torpedoes away!”
“Raven to Geirr one, priority target, there’s enemy fighters potentially attempting to interdict the stealth torpedo!”
“Geirr one, already on top of it Raven!”
“Geirr two, splash one for me and two for leader!”
Sharon makes a mental note to investigate how in the hells Varya’Nelkn manages to come through so clearly on the comms… and how she manages to make a life or death combat encounter sound like a Sunday stroll in the park with her new boyfriend.
“Confirm splash three. Geirr one to Raven, the stealth torpedo’s clear. Geirr five, form the rest of the squadron up for an attack run on the corvette Storm isn’t attacking right now. Hold two torpedoes back in case the stealth torpedo doesn’t finish the job with the carrier.”
Diana starts moving sensor feeds around with her mind until she finds a good optical feed of the enemy ‘carrier’.
It was actually a fairly clever design if she was feeling generous. It had started its life as an actual bulk cargo hauler. Its dozen fighters and gunships, which were rapidly getting chewed up and spat out by the Tear’s starfighters if their traffic was anything to go by, lived in individual hangar bays that had once been cargo bays or indeed cargo containers. Not the most elegant solution, and some of the pirates likely needed to wear pressure suits to get to their rides, but quite functional for all of that.
It was almost a shame they had to blow it up.
“Storm six to storm five, Cutlass, are you okay?”
The masculine tone of James ‘OUTLAW’ Carson, a human fighter pilot from Colorado, was laced with actual concern for his wing woman, Samantha ‘CUTLASS’ Hancock. The duo were notable as being two Human aviators who’d rotated in from the Dauntless. The concern though has Sharon’s immediate attention. Was one of her pilots in trouble?
“Keep your shirt on Outlaw, I’m fine. That heavy fighter cooked my shields a bit but we’re good. Check your sensors, I should be… one three five from base plate from where I think you are.”
The confident, dulcet tones of Samantha Hancock relaxes Sharon instantly. Cutlass was an old hand and a former US Army helicopter pilot who’d made a habit out of saving her tanker husband Doc Hancock in action in the Middle East, before they’d gotten married. If she was calm there was nothing to worry about.
“Got you, reforming.”
“Outlaw, did you get the one that nearly got me?”
“Yep. Fried him with the gun.”
“Nice. I bet Doc’ll buy you a six pack for keeping me out of trouble.”
“I do try to help out where I can Cutlass, bug I’ll accept the bribe regardless.”
The power of ‘modern’ electronics and advanced galactic computers and the sheer bounty that it offered a galactic citizen prepared to deal with the ‘discomfort’ of an implant… being a tiny nodule that nuzzled up next to your spine and was smaller than an individual vertebrae, was utterly amazing.
Sharon could listen to the conversation from an element in one of the fighter squadron’s flights, check on the health of an individual sailor in one of her damage control teams, double check firing solutions being used by Wichen’s gunners, check a warning from one of the automated point defense turrets and finally see if the frequency of the shields needs any tweaking and she could do all of it at the speed of thought, as augmented by a computer.
The only limiting factor was Cutlass and Outlaw using the mere spoken word to converse.
She wasn’t likely to give up her meat body any time soon, but Sharon could certainly see the argument for the incredible increase of capability augments could give you over mere organic matter, even with axiom factored into the equation.
“Wichen, status on the stealth torpedo?”
The sound of her own voice surprises her for a moment. She’d gotten pulled a little too into her sensors for a second there.
“Should be starting its final burn… now!”
Wichen aims an optical sensor the second the stealth torpedo’s secondary booster begins to final acceleration, quickly jumping up to near light speed and slamming into the enemy ‘carrier’ like the fist of an angry god, buckling it’s forward hull and triggering an explosive decompression that internal bulkheads and sealed doors should have stopped… but pirates were never the most safety conscious spacers in the galaxy, and many times they paid for it with their lives when they came up against a ‘victim’ that could actually fight back.
The ersatz carrier continued to buckle until at last its reactor went critical, reducing it down to flames.
Just in time for one of it’s escorting corvettes to die a similar violent death as the Inevitable joins the engagement, it’s heavy rail guns picking off the corvette that Storm squadron had already severely damaged.
In the background Captain Flynn’s Gutshredder is more than living up to her name, tearing through the pirate’s force of lighters like a tiger bounding through a herd of fat, blind, deaf, lamed, sheep. There was simply nothing they could do, and with fighter-launched torpedoes hitting the other corvette and rocking its world just about as violently as it got, Sharon figured it would only be a matter of time until…
“Captain! Enemy corvette is powering down its weapons and engines and sending a surrender notice to all parties. Some of the lighters have made pirate jumps to escape.”
Sharon grins.
“Excellent. We’ll leave the surrender terms to the admiral. What’s the status of the rest of the enemy ships? What’s left of them anyway.”
Evie looks up from her post.
"Enemy ‘carrier’ is splashed, threat profile zero, it’s in about twenty large pieces and a shower …
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