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A flash distorted space as fifty Kiojeas dropped out of Omni right on top of the UEC fleet. They pelted it with compression fire from long range as Garrion Retoe contacted Drion Nerec. "Octicate Nerec, pleased to be of use." "Good to see you, Commander. Get inside the UEC fleet and destroy everything you see, be it military or non-military. We'll cover you at medium range. Some of our fore ships will then drive straight into their heart. When the smoke clears, go right for that flagship's throat. Good hunting." "Thank you, sir." Nerec closed the transmission. "All right, take us in. Go into their fleet tight, then expand and destroy. No prisoners, no disables." The first officer quickly conveyed the orders to the battlegroup, and they plunged into the fray.
The two Phylydian Fleets had changed the outcome of the battle dramatically. Once the smothering and invincible force, the UEC Fleet was slowly in recession.
Levt grinned. The ChronoKinetic Cannon had completely annihilated one of the strongest ships in the Phylydian fleet. That demonstration of intimidating power had made the Weave Armada keep it's distance from the UEC Dreadnought, making it virtually untouchable. Yet that display of sheer force didn't impress the Phylydians.
Nerec Sneered.
"The rest of the fleet is to distract the UEC. The Phylydia III will join us to take down that dreadnought."
"Yessir."
The two massive capital ship broke away from the rest of the Phylydian fleet and headed on a direct course to the Vengeance.
- - - - -
"Sir, the two remaining Phylydian Flagships are on a direct intercept course for us."
"Order the fleet to attack and destroy them."
"They can't sir! All units are tied up by the combined Phylydian/Woven Armada."
Jerry chewed at the inside of his cheek. "Load all torpedo tubes and inform me when they are in disruptor range." He still had one trick left up his sleeve.
------------------ Time is the best teacher, yet it kills all of it's students.
Darkk's mind was whirling. These "Phylydians" were a little psychotic for his taste - blasting civilian ships to dust left and right. At least he disabled them, boarded them, and let the civillians off first.
Time to consider options. He had no intel, and neither did Spamo, on these Phylydians. Maybe Wizr would. Darkk wouldn't be fooled by something as simple as a stealth field. 4 enhanced Ishiman HVCs entering under a tiny jumpgate had to be Wizr. Darkk was amazed he would come personally. He'd be a major political asset. Maybe with his powers of rhetoric, William's, Sarah's, and Spamo's, they could convince a majority of the woven to let the UNS govern Earth.
No time for that now. Two X-19s attacked him from each axis, and he was surrounded by missles. The turret zapped some, William magnetoed some more, and the afterburners carried them outside the sphere of death. He promptly whipped around and dispatched the X19s with some photopulse shots while the gunners shot down any missles gotten off at them.
DEF carriers Yalta and Paris had come under attack from a UEC Viking Battleship, but they held their own, with help from 2 gunships and a cruiser vectored in by their fight coordinators.
Darkk watched the Phylydian forces screen their command ships with lesser vessles. At least these guys aren't incompetant. I wish they were nice, but that's a little too much to hope for.
Time for another quick talk with Spamo.
------------------ Formerly-Rampant Human-Coded AI
"The Phylydia III is in range, Admiral."
"Right." Levt once again grinned. "Fire torpedo tubes one through twenty, starburst formation. Ready disruptor nacelles."
"Torpedos away!" A large salvo of guided torpedos shot out from the edges of the screen, scrambling towards to huge Starship. It's turrets swiveled to meet the torpedos. They continued to approach. "Executing maneuver, Admiral."
Suddenly the torpedos all swerved in random directions, spreading out and away from the Phylydia III. It's turrets followed as did it's shield grids to track the torpedos, inadvertantly opening a huge gap in it's defenses! "Fire!" Levt screamed. All three disruptor nacelles fired in unison towards the Phylydia III in the brief moment it had let down it's defenses.
The three green beams simultaneously impacted on the naked hull of the Phylydia III, searing it's heavy armor plating and vaporizing a good portion of it's forward turrets! Onboard the Vengeance , Levt was chuckling to himself. These battle-headed Phylydians were childsplay. So predictable.... they wouldn't fall for that trick again anytime soon, and that too would be a new trick.
"Re-load torpedo tubes one through twenty, prepare all remaining tubes to fire starburst again."
"Torpedo tubes ready sir."
"Fire!" Again, a huge salvo of torpedos shot out towards the now-cindered Phylydia III. The massive ship's turrets, this time, did not follow the torpedos when they spread, but remained aimed at the Vengeance , ready to shoot down any disruptor bolts. "Fire Disruptor Nacelle one." The disruptor beam bolted out towards the Phylydia III, but was easily dispersed by a flurry of compression-cannon shells.
The explosion blocked the view between the Phylydia III and the Vengeance for the longest time, and scrambled sensors. The Captain of the Phylydia III believed he had survived that second round and mentally patted himself on the shoulder. He would have made the imperium prou- a huge explosion shook the ship! Consoles exploded, pipes burst, fires raged throughout the ship!
The Disruptor bolt had only served to distract the Phylydia III while the torpedos came about, slamming full force into the rear of the masive Phylydian Capital Ship!
"Sir the Phylydia III is spinning out of control!" Levt's sensor officer said in astonishment as the enormous Phylydian Ship, on fire and trailing debris, began drifting away from the Vengeance.
"Finish it off!" Levt was grinning an insane and maniacal grin, one which startled even his sturdiest opponents. A Chronokinetic glow emanated from the front of the Vengeance.
Soon the Phylydia III had joined it's sister, the Phylydia.
Two down, one to go. Now only the Phylydia II remained, Drion Nerec's command ship. Levt was looking forward to the final showdown between the two largest remaining ships in the galaxy.
All eyes turned as the two dreadnoughts approached each other...
(This message has been edited by Slug (edited 03-13-2001).)
(Slug, I'll say it again: THERE IS NO PHYLYDIA III!!!!! EDIT YOUR POSTS!!!)
"Launch all fightercraft and order them to engage their flagship. Reports on their fleet?" "In disarray, sir. Few ships remain. Commander Retoe's force is picking off any remnants." Outside the ship, hundreds of fightercraft poured out, led by the infamous Jackal Squadron. The Jackals evaded all fire and took out two frigates within thirty seconds of their launch. In the meantime, the Vermillion Battlegroup had taken out all but three massive battleships protecting the flagship. Nerec thought for a moment. "Pull us back and pound those battleships. Tell Commander Retoe to see if he can slip through and attack the flagship." The Phylydia's main batteries finally spoke, after being silent for the entire battle. Immense flare bolts, compressed projectiles, and heavy missles streaked from the colossus and struck the sides of the battleships. And the battleships returned fire, most of their shots absorbed by the Phylydia II's escorts. Nerec addressed the gunnery officer. "Prime the death pillar and give me fire control." "Aye, sir." The Vermillion Battlegroup flew through in all the confusion and started peppering the Vengeance with heavy compression fire. Almost all of it was shrugged off easily, but the Vermillions dodged around and continued.
"Sir the Phylydia II is approaching fast!"
"I copy, man all battlestations!"
"Here she comes!"
The Vengeance and the Phylydia II met.
(url="http://"http://www.slugsoft.f2s.com/img/VengeancevsPII.jpeg")(image)(/url)
(For that picture, you should have the Vengeance's engines blown away. A bomb capable of rendering entire planets barren can't be too good for a ship when fired into the fuel tanks and detonated... )
------------------ "I am the supreme dictator of the universe, it's just that nobody knows about it yet." "Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow."
(This message has been edited by Mag Steelglass (edited 03-13-2001).)
(The Vengeance doesn't have feul tanks)
(Detonated inside the engines, then. Close enough, anyway... )
(Thanks for making the Phylydia II a dark, undiscernable form, Slug. I'm sorry I haven't gotten a picture in, but I have no idea how. I'll think of something soon.)
"We're closing, sir. All weapons at your command." "Close to point-blank range and give them a few standard salvos. No heavy weapons yet. Inform me the second the death pillar is charged."
Flare bolt, burst, and compression turrets rained fire on the Vengeance, with minimal effect. The Vengeance returned fire with its minor weapons, which were deflected from the Phylydia II's fully charged shield. A bleep sounded at Nerec's control panel. He looked down. A message was being sent from a Phylydion border world. He pressed the recieve button. "Yes?"
"Sir, we have two attack fleets stationed here if you need reinforcements." "Good. Stand by. I'll contact you if I need them." "Aye, sir." The connection closed. "Order our fighter squadrons 1-6 to sweep the area and take out any UEC remnants they can find. This time, I want them to take as many alive as they can. Order the other squadrons to bomb the Vengeance. Where's Jackal Squadron?" "They're engaging one of the battleships, sir." "When they're finished with it, order them to cover us and shoot down incoming fire." "Aye, sir."
"Fleet status?" "We're down to half strength, sir. The enemy fleet is down to the Vengeance and a pair of battleships, not including various smaller ships fleeing the battle. The Vermillion Battlegroup has lost two ships." "Order our battleships to focus fire on the Vengeance's weapon systems." "Done, sir, but I have a feeling that we're the only thing in space capable of taking that thing down." "They'll still damage it, Lieutenant." "Aye, sir."
The battle raged, with the Vengeance and the Phylydia II exchanging broadsides and shrugging off the enemy's attack. It was going to be a long battle.
God Damnit! There's no more space in this for the Eleejeetians... :frown:
------------------ This Vid is a bit like my beast; extremely long, and best enjoyed with a mouthful of nuts. -Ali G.
(This message has been edited by Talon Karrde (edited 03-14-2001).)
(Wait a minute, you DIDN'T make it a dark, indiscernable form! Dangit, Slug, you could've at least asked me for a picture first. The P II looks almost nothing like that.)
That's it. This is getting out of hand. I will NOT continue this RPG untill someone deletes all these OOC posts.
(Well I will. Just deal with them.)
Vengance had brought up its reserve shields. The Phylydians had more escorts. This was a dang close fight. It could go either way. But it would take awhile.
William watched the carnage from his vantage point, far above the orbital plane of the planets, with the rest of the DEF. Now that the battle had come down mainly to a contest between the Vengance and the Phylydia II, he'd come up here, as had the Gaitori, Ishiman, Obish, and UNS forces. The Salrilians had gone below the plane, as had what was left of the Cantharans. Darkk took this as a sign that the Gaitori and Obish would be on his side. A quick analysis of the tone, rythm, and melody of their movements indicated they felt charitable, and charitable towards the UNS specifically.
The Salrilians and Cantharans were in disarray, having taken the brunt of the losses. Darkk had intended this, and had arranged for the Salrilians and Cantharans to be the best targets, by helping out the Gaitori and Obish more often, and leading the UEC to them by very subtle means. He doubted even the Oracular Network could find enough to justify accusations of anything more than subconcious prejudace, which was entirely understandable - at least to those aliens that had been on his side during the Ares War.
William knew his force wouldn't be able to do much against the Vengence. At least not yet. "How many more to go, Lill?" "367, sir" piped up the gunnery officer. Darkk had carefully long suspected there was a way to crack shield frequencies. Most shipbuilders used frequency hopping based on random number generators - and so apparently did whoever the heck designed this monstrosity. A fact not known to military people about random number generators was that they weren't really random. They would eventually repeat themselves. If you could find which pseudorandom algorith was being used, and synchronise your laser and pk frequencies with it, you could go right through the shields and do hull damage. No crap about getting inside the shields, like his trick attacking the rear. Shields cycled fast enough to let you collect data if someone else took the brunt of the attack, and the DEF's quantum computers could calculate "time to target" for the beams well enough to set their frequencies so they slip through.
"45 possibilites, sir." Right now, all computers not working out the pseudorandom algorithm were running spectral analysis on the Vengance and all radiation coming from it, even visable light. The goal was to find all the sensors on the exterior of the ship. William wished Sarah could help, but she had already made it to the jumpgate and left. If they could get the locations of the sensors and the shield frequency pseudorandom algorithm, they could blind Levt in one swift stroke. He'd have to aim visually. That would make the Woven's job much easier.
"We've got it. It's Heimsen-Boch number 4." Darkk folded his hands. The projected finish time on the sensor location was under 5 minutes. A capship duel could last longer than that, especially given the strength of the UEC command ship. Darkk still wanted to know where the f*** Levt had gotten his ships - it was irritating him no end. He also guessed it was irritating the Salrilians, as they shared his desire to make the universe make sense. Maybe they came from a parallel universe. Ah well.
Darkk watched the sensor finding algorith do its work, listening to the subtle tones of the acoustic visualizer as it projected images of the Vengance into his mind, with the sensors standing out, even though they didn't seem special when he saw them with his eyes. He'd identified enough now to maybe justify an attack. But he wouldn't even consider that.
He would let the Phylydians and the UEC tear each other up before he intervined. He didn't like them - they killed civilians for no good reason, and probably had rather interesting ideas about personal freedoms and rights of the accused. He'd almost prefer the UEC - better human tyrants than alien ones. He'd insist they let the UNS run Human space. Or he'd have to adjust their attitudes. Or die trying.
(A note on what I'm doing: Matching sensor frequencies is a tactic taught in most decent military theory classes, but because few both decent algorithms for decoding the shielding frequency algorithm, and few situations occur where fleets get enough time just looking at the enemy to scan their shields and figure it out, the tactic has only been used rarely, and not within the past 50 Earth years. Nobody has ever succeded in using it in any major action. At least, no yet.
If I was confusing anybody with my use of "algorithm" and "psuedorandom", I can clarify: I'm going to shoot through the shields, once I finish some calculations. When I do, it'll make Levt's shots much less accurate. Finishing Vengance with just lasers and LRPKs would take all month, so this won't be a finisher move.)
(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 03-14-2001).)
(this is it)
A pair of Phylydian Battleships, touting flames and debris exploded in the path of the Vengeance. The two massive dreadnoughts continued to duke out a massive amount of firepower, pouring all they had into each other.
They battled for hours across the orbital plains of Jupiter and Saturn, detatched and out of reach from the rest of the fleets. The monsters grappled, rammed, fired and deflected. The Phylydia II had dealt more damage than it had taken, but the Vengeance could take more than the Phylydia II. Slowly but surely the Phylydia II began losing the duel.
"Fire!" Nerec screamed as control stations behind him exploded and the lights sputtered. "Fire!" He repeated.
"We cannot sir! Dorsal turrets are offline!"
"Bring us about and use the ventral ones!"
"Yessir!"
The Phylydia turned, it's sides were facing the Vengeance when Levt gave the order. "Finish her off." He said in a cold voice.
At the front of the Vengeance, the familiar yellow glow began to flare up. It grew brighter and brighter and increased in intensity. Every Phylydian aboard the Phylydia II froze in fear, gazing into that yellow glow, gazing into inevitability.
But it wouldn't be so. This time it was Nerec's turn to pull the last trick up his sleeve. He manned the manual turret control station, pushing aside the dead gunner. He watched the glow grow and pulsate. It began to collapse into a Chrono Kinetic Beam. He fired a single pulse shot.
The compression bolt shot for the yellow singularity as a blur, entering the Chrono Vortex. For a second it seemed to have missed.
Then, all of a sudden, the singularity detonated. There was an awesome explosion as the entire front half of the Vengeance was ripped off! Yet still the singularity continued to grow, feeding back on itself, causing more and more damage to the UEC Dreadnought. "Navigator! Get us away from here or we'll be blown apart!" Nerec yelled over the din. Soon the Vengeance's main reactor would blow.
Onboard the Vengeance, things were amiss. The bridge was in chaos. Levt slumped in defeat, while clenching his fists in anger. "Prepare my shuttle, commander. I must leave here on my own."
The Phylydia II galloped as fast as it could away from ground zero, engines on full blast and all power rerouted to propulsion. It had barely cleared the blast zone when the Vengeance's tortured soul gave out.
A blast lit up the shy, a blast of immense proportions, a blast that lasted for hours as blinding white-hot light seared the hulls of every ship in the system. The intense pressure forced it's way out in a huge shockwave, a mile deep and twice as powerfull as a whole fleet's worth of energy. The expanding sphere of destruction caught Jupiter squarely on the orbital jaw. Entire layers of it's atmosphere were blown away in long whisps. Jets of raw energy lanced out, catching random objects, asteroids and moons, and completely annihilating them.
Amidst the destruction, noone noticed a single enhanced X-19 slip out, escaping shortly before the blast, and amidst the chaos, noone noticed a single UEC Carrier slip out of the battle to pick up the Admiral's fighter....
Nerec got up from the floor of the bridge, only to lock himself in his seat again. "Brace for immediate impact! Damage control crews report to statio-" The energy wave engulfed the Phylydia II. Her shield generators screamed, then fizzled out. All her internal parts had been specifically designed not to explode if they gave out. Seconds later, her engines powered down. She was tossed, pinwheeling, away from the battle. The lights went out.
Nerec took manual control of the thrusters and wrestled the runaway ship back under control. "Emergency power!" A dim light filled the bridge. "Report." The first officer looked up. "Engines gone, main weapons gone, shields gone, docking bay is at half holding capacity." "Order all our fighters back to protect us." "Sir, we've got a couple of transports full of UEC P.O.W.'s landing in the main bay." "Take them to the brig. We'll deliver them to the UNS as soon as we get a chance." "Sir, The Vermillion Battlegroup just got here. They'll protect us from anything around here. And those two fleets that were being held as reinforcements are en route. We'll drag the Phylydia II back to Dominus, and rebuild and update her." "Again," said Nerec.
Nerec got up from the floor of the bridge, only to lock himself in his seat again. "Brace for immediate impact! Damage control crews report to statio-" The energy wave engulfed the Phylydia II. Her shield generators screamed, then sparked and fizzled out-All her internal parts had been specifically designed not to explode if they gave out. Seconds later, her engines powered down. She was tossed, pinwheeling, away from the battle. The lights went out.
"You have failed, Levt. I gave you an armada of warships, and the plans to build more, and you squandered it. I gave you a StarLance-class dreadnought, and you foolishly allowed the treacherous Phylydians to destroy it. You let attention slip in your ranks, allowing the traitors Darkk and Spamo to rebel against you, and, with their miniscule forces they destroyed you." The holographic figure barked at Levt.
"But master," Levt said "The aliens rebelled against me. They united against the UEC solely because of it's prescence. They accuse me of genocide, yet they are the ones who rose against me because humanity was at the top, and they weren't."
"You did humanity a service, yet in the same time you annihilated it. You're in your own ruin."
"I'm sorry sir." Levt said. Pathetic.
"That's master to you. Master Darvonsal." The screen faded and Levt turned to face the ship. Amidst the sounds of a ship, one more sound that would be heard would be a choked sob.
The Supreme Octicate looked over battle reports in his lavish office located in the largest building on Dominus: A black, oval shaped building with the symbol of the Imperium(An octagon with a circle at every vertex with an eye in the center) engraved on the top. The building held the High Octicon and the Phylydion Imperial Senate, and was the most well-protected building in the entire Imperium.
He was pleased with Octicate Nerec. For a time he thought he'dve had to utilize the Primary Armada to take out the menace. He groaned, however, when he read the damage report on the flagship of the entire Phylydion Imperial Navy. She'd have to undergo extensive repairs, replacements, and maintainance. It'd cost several billion scintak just to patch her hull. The repairs, of course, would provide an opportunity to upgrade her.
Now that the crisis was over, he turned his thoughts to the rebels. There were a few rebel remnants lurking here and there throughout the Imperium. Once the Vermillion Battlegroup returned they would quickly flush the rebels out.