[M] War in the Void - Imperials IC

[Azazeal849]

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Spoiler: HDMS Pillar of Intent, HDMS Retaliator - Baraspine 

HDMS Impiger, Baraspine orbit
Zero hour +8
Imperial objectives: Neutralise Glom defences

“Activating tactical cogitators!”

The circular pit to the rear of the strategium was bathed in green light as hololiths dominoed into life. Twenty stories below the command deck, the armoured gallery was full of low murmurs - the clacking of servitors and tech adepts at their command runes, the whisper of astropaths as they scrawled their visions onto parchment to be whisked away by couriers - all punctuated by the occasional gunshot command of a senior officer.

“Captain.” a young lieutenant hailed, reading over the shoulder of an astropath whose blind eyes were rapidly switching around as he scribbled. Steel-jacketed cables plugged into the psyker’s nape spirited his visions directly into the ship’s cogitators, just as a hydraulic bolt rested against the back of his head, ready to trigger if the warp sensors in his chair spiked just a fraction too high.

“Damnatus orders close and board on the primary cargo hub.” the lieutenant reported, looking up from the recessed pit to the podium overlooking the hololiths. The astropath was writing down coded symbols, but the Impiger’s command crew could read them by sight.

Elspeth von Scharn has been expecting the order. Admiral Bravick was a meticulous commander, and had issued detailed battle orders and contingency plans to all of his cruiser captains. In contrast, the light cruisers and frigate squadrons had been given a degree of freedom of initiative, which no doubt chafed some of the more aggressive cruiser commanders such as Elspeth’s squadron commodore - and indeed her own XO. Commander Thurlow had moved downship an hour ago to directly supervise the boarding preparations, leaving Elspeth to the strategium.

“Acknowledge order and burn retros to bring us into plane with the orbital ring.” Elspeth nodded to her deputies in the hololith pit. “Stand by graviton tethers and boarding pods.”

She narrowed her eyes at the globular hololith as it slowly rotated around the fixed point of the Impiger. The warp-sensor displays did not do justice to the slow, brutal dance progressing beyond the cruiser’s adamantium hull. Translucent cones were the killing fields of multi-megaton gun decks. Dotted lines were comet-tailed plasma bolts shearing through space, wavering as the gun captains tried to keep their mag-sheathed courses true against clawing enemy ECM. Flashing red triangles were deflected energy, blooming like white-hot flowers across void shields.

One cluster of green dots denoted admiral Bravick and his squadron, taking station above hive Alda now that its surface-to-orbit defences had been nullified. No doubt the flagship’s interceptor squadrons were already swarming down to clear the skies for their Guard allies below. Another closer duo of contacts denoted Elspeth’s squadron mates flanking her - for it was the Impiger that held the boarding action’s secret weapon.

“They closed their ears to the Emperor’s word.” a soft voice behind Elspeth said. “They brought terror to the innocent. Now it's time for them to know fear.”

The Silent Vigil canoness had been a quiet, unobtrusive figure at the back of the strategium. Sister Kiana was a lined, waxy-skinned woman - strong-voiced, sober, sometimes wry, but ever since the uprising Elspeth had seen something glinting behind her eyes; diamond hard and diamond sharp.

And why not. The Patriots’ opening shot was to lance their convent, with all their child-novices still inside.

Elspeth felt a tremor run through the deck beneath her feet, as if the ship itself felt the sister’s quiet anger.

“Station guns have locked onto us.” a scutarium officer warned. “Prow shields holding.”

Elspeth rested her elbow on one folded arm, massaging her chin with a gloved hand. “Hold course; we’ll draw their fire. I expect the commodore will be ordering the frigates to attack any minute now.”

“You called it, captain.” the lieutenant by the astropaths admitted, with an uncertain smile. “Stander Z signal, tagged for Audax, Pillar and Retaliator.”

Well I was the commodore of this squadron, lieutenant, if you remember. Elspeth resisted the urge to speak the petulant thought aloud. Still tapping her chin, she wondered for a moment how the two frigate captains would choose to execute the order to neutralise the Glom’s gun-clusters. Perhaps they would concentrate their fire to batter down the local shield dome, or maybe they would take it out by sending boarding parties to fight their way back to the scutarium blister, or even to the gun cluster itself.

Spoiler: Shepherd of Light - Perinetus 

Legio Sirenia tender Shepherd of Light
Perinetus orbit
Day 156 of Perinetus civil war
Imperial objectives: Break ambush

“Titan transports are away!”

The report was welcome across the command deck of the mechanicus cruiser Shepherd of Light. Close orbit was one of the most dangerous places for a starship to be; constrained by gravity, and within range of ground weapons far larger than could be mounted on any ship. The battle lines below were always shifting, and the Patriot-held shipyards in orbit were no guarantee that their counterparts below would not risk a shot at the departing transports. The mechanicus transport carrying their Vostroyan allies had already loosed its dropships and was sheering away.

“Coming about.”

As the Shepherd burned its manoeuvring retros, the warp-sensor displays taunted the bridge crew with red ghost-images of the shipyards - sprawling gothic castles, cross-linked with steel arms and docking booms. When the Patriot sympathisers had mutinied, they had taken the entire squadron stationed here within hours, and the shipyards themselves within the next six days. A stalemate had ensued, with the shipyards being too valuable for either side on the ground to destroy, but too vulnerable to loyalist-controlled ground weapons for the Patriots to use it as an operational base. Any traitor ship that tried to dock for repairs would likely be blown to pieces on approach.

The imperium would be back for those shipyards, once the ground war was won.

If the ground war was won.

“Captain.” a junior officer by the hololith called out.

Captain Jeanette Chao saw it before the man had finished speaking - a flare rippling down one of the docking booms; weapons discharges so powerful that they sent mirroring shockwaves through the warp.

Answering blooms chained off against the green marble representing the Vostroyan transport, and a few seconds later the deck shuddered as the Shepherd’s own voids fought to shunt several megatons of radiation and kinetic force sideways into the warp.

“What the Horus was that!?”

“Defence monitor,” a sensorium analyst shot back in clipped Mars-accented gothic. “Possibly two.”

“I thought the ground lances got all the ones that weren’t tugged away by the traitor fleet!”

“I hypothesise that they docked with the shipyard to avoid fire.”

“Captain.” the hololith operator chimed in, pointing to a vivid blue line scoring across the display as a second salvo rocked the void shields. “The Vostroyan transport’s caught in a grav tether, the shipyard’s reeling them in.”

[dakkagor]

Jeanette muttered a curse under her breath. This was the last thing they needed.

"Sensorium, wash that feed and get me a clear return on the Monitors, I need to see them to kill them. Gunnery, status on the port broadside?"

The gunnery commander, an old hand with hands and scalp laced with mechandrites and data jacks, turned to face her on the command pulpit. He saluted briskly.

"Spirits are fully operational and soothed. Currently unloaded as per fire safety orders for close orbit action."

"Good, that saves us time." Jeanette punched a set of numbers into the tacticae, running quick and dirty gravity and power consumption calculations through the ships cogitator.

"Load the port broadside, three salvoes of impact fused plasma warheads. Bring the starboard broadside to combat readiness and load the fore bombardment cannon with a blind barrage."

"Three salvoes impact fused aye!" The gunnery master returned to his station and started to issue rapid fire binharic orders.

"Navigation, bring us about. I want us ten kliks to starboard of the Vostroyan transport."

"That. . .that will place us in the grav-tether instead of the Vostroyans!"

"Exactly." Jeanette smiled wickedly as the Shepherd shuddered again. "Sensori!"

"Feeding improved data to hololith now!"

Jeanette descended from the command pulpit, taking a dataslate from an aide as she did so. She stood by the hololith tank and looked the scene over, playing out the variables as the Shepherd shook and lights dimmed. She saw hope there. The monitors fore mounted lances pointed out into open space, not towards the planet. Breaking from the docks would allow them to come to bear, but also expose them to fire from the ground. That meant daring their capable batteries. They outgunned the Shepherd by a degree, but they could not manoeuvre.

"Void status?"

"64% and holding, keel aft is weakest."

"Get some teams on that. Gunnery, prepare for three salvoes on my mark, squirting targeting data now."

The whole ship shook like an ocean going boat in a storm. Red lights flared into life.

"We're snared! We are being pulled in!"

Jeanette could see that. She could also see the Vostroyan transport powering clear. She could now also see the power conduits being used to power the grav tether. As she had hoped, the power source was far from the weapon currently dragging them in for a boarding action by the stations Skitarii.

"Mark!"

+++++

The Shepherd of Light, voids flaring, opened up with her portside armaments. Rolling fire flared along her flank as the barrage was flung right down the throat of the gravity tether. With the pull of artificial gravity, it was like dropping marbles into a funnel, down a pipe. Each shot, one after the other, slammed into the same place until the grav tethers local voids failed and the remaining shells slammed into the grav tether itself, blasting it apart.

As the Shepherd powered free, it fired its bombardment cannon. Fat, atmosphere piercing shells slammed into the docks holding the monitors, and released a vast obscuring cloud of particles designed to foul even advanced sensors. For a few crucial moments the fire from the monitors slackened, and the shields of the Shepherd cycled to rest the generators and prepare for the next round of fire.

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Shepherd of Light - Perinetus 

“Salvo is effective!” the gunnery chief reported. “Target neutralised.”

Several of the command deck’s tech-priests were less enthusiastic, and let out what almost sounded like static wails as the ripples of secondary explosions bloomed across the warp augers.

“Oooh,” Jeanette’s XO hooted cheerfully, as they watched the docking boom around the grav-tether cough and jerk apart. “The archmagos isn’t going to be happy about that!”

No doubt ex-weaponsmith Ankari would be somewhat aggrieved to hear that the precious shipyard had been bombarded, though if she had any perspective the old gearhead might also be mollified somewhat by the broken ambush, and the flushing of two Patriot monitors that her defence silos had apparently missed.

Speaking of which…

“Monitors are disengaging from the shipyard.” the sensori chief called out. “Isolating signatures.”

Mag-tunnels clunked back, fuel umbilicals flailed free, and more than a few mooring chains shattered to pieces as the monitors shoved themselves clear of the docking booms. Drifting laterally, with shields fizzing under the rain of hull fragments thrown out by Shepherd’s bombardment cannon, the first defence monitor flared its retros and began to swing ponderously round.

“C-c-c-captain.” rasped the young astropath clinging to a guard rail above the cartastra pulpit. “I c-can hear coded whispers from the...the spire further down the docking spar. I think they are using the augers there t-t-to target for them.”

“Second monitor is accelerating.” the sensori added, overlaying the relevant information onto Jeanette’s tacticae display. Whether from aggression or from fear that their opponent was clearly willing to target the sacred shipyards, the second monitor was executing a full burn directly away from its berth. Fire rippled and washed over the shipyard’s adamantium gridwork as the monitor drove clear, aimed like a dagger towards the escaping Vostroyan transport.

Horrendously outgunned, the Vostroyan rippled a volley from its macrocannons. The rail-accelerated shells flared briefly, before casting off their cloaks of plasma and vanishing into the black of space. The monitor’s shields glared as they turned the shots, and its prow lance flickered in silent reply. For an observer on the Shepherd’s hull, it would have been less than a ghost of light, flickering across space. For someone on the Vostroyan’s, it would have been brighter than the end of the world.

The first shot collapsed the transport’s shields in an ugly pulse of light. The second struck the transport aft of midships, and chained off a silent cataclysm of secondary explosions. The transport yawed from the force of the hits, shedding a plume of hull plates, metal debris and broken, flash-burned corpses.

“Transport is hit.” Jeanette’s XO relayed grimly, and clapped a hand on the astropath’s shoulder, causing the scrawny young man to flinch. “Request a damage report!”

On the warp-auger display, through good luck or cunning design, the cone representing the second monitor’s broadside arc was drifting over the Shepherd even as it pursued the stricken transport. The way the monitor began to roll to line up with the Shepherd’s weakened keel shield gave Jeanette a sinking feeling that the manoeuvre was indeed deliberate.

[dakkagor]

"Give that monitor a taste before it closes. Helm, execute a 180 roll on my mark"

The broadside spoke again. Shells rippled and blurred the shields of the advancing monitor, checking its advance as it had to shunt through debris.

"Mark."

Groaning, the Shepherd began to roll. Even as it did, Jeanette barked new orders for the helm, turning the nose of the huge vessel to face the monitor attacking the vostroyan transport.

"The. . .ship is injured, but can still fight." The astropath shuddered. Jeanette didn't envy him the stress of this, his first battle. Their last astropath had burned out unexpectedly, and this astropath was a replacement part, quickly bodged into place.

"Tell them to hold course please, and see if you can wake up. . . Ragnarov battery west. Have them harass that damn monitor on our arse."

The astropath nodded weakly and seemed to sag from the effort. She turned back to the hololith as the ship rocked again. The whole bridge rocked, and a terminal blew out in the lower deck, shrapnel shredding a servitor and a junior techpriest.

"Medicae!" Jeanette shouted. She had nearly been knocked off her feet by the blast. "Shields?"

"Popped the forecastle and spine. We've lost portside gunnery control. Re-cohering on. . .mark."

She watched as the range counted down to the monitor. Holding course took significant courage on the part of the vostroyan crew, and she vowed not to waste it as vectors aligned.

"All ahead full! Brace for impact!"

The Shepherd of Light leapt forwards, her plasma thrusters pushing her forward on a spear of furious light. Jeanette held the hololith and yelled last second course corrections as the enemy monitor loomed large in the view screen. Realising its peril, it had begun to desperately manoeuvre, but despite its small size, its heavy armament meant it had small engines and poor manoeuvrability.

Many captains viewed ramming as an act of desperation. What Jeanette knew was that the doughty mars pattern vessels did not have that eagle prow for patriotic ornamentation. Each prow was reinforced adamantium, metres thick, sharp, and backed by reinforced decks designed to take the hit. The ramming prow was one more weapon in the arsenal of the Imperium. And a ram from a capital ship, against a destroyer sized monitor, was a deadly weapon indeed.

The ramming prow bit in amidships, middeck, nearly perfect. The tremor of impact knocked crew over, tore open fuel lines and stressed bulkheads along the length of the Shepherd, but it was minor compared to the devastation wreaked on her target. There was a banshee screech as the Shepherd ploughed onwards, the beak carving through gundecks and into the adamantium spine of the monitor, where it rode up and over, tearing open more decks to the vacuum. It felt like an age, but the whole ram took less than 30 seconds before the monitor was shoved aside and rolled away under the Shepherd fires blossomed into life across the stricken ships gundecks as she began to break up.

Her bridge crew let out a cheer, fists punching the air, drowning out the mourning dirges of the more devout techpriests. Jeanette remained focused on the hololith tacticae.

"Damage reports please."

"Minor damage Ma'am." Her Xo smiled. "A good kill."

The whole ship shook. Alarms blared.

"Aft voids! Took a hit but holding."

The other monitor, of course. "Come to a new heading. We aren't done yet."

[Jarms48]

Pillar of Intent had been running silent. They'd moved up and stopped within the extremes of their maximum sensor range. The gunnery officer had dumped a torpedo into the void 10 minutes ago, it was put at low burn. Making it harder to spot and increasing its maximum range.

"Orders, Captain?" Questioned the Lieutenant Struss, the bridges gunnery officer.

"We're waiting. Impiger is taking the stations fire, it's void shields should hold at this range." Replied Aeneas. He was a patient man, someone use to fighting unorganised pirates and the odd Ork raider. Compared to his fellow captains he was relative young and fresh to this kind of void combat.

"What about, Retaliator?" Voiced the concern of Lieutenant Marie, the bridges comms officer.

"Again, we're waiting. We're going to move up with Impiger and the Retaliator. When the enemy are distracted we'll switch to a gun boat roll and hit them with our macro fire." Assured Aeneas.

The Captain paced across the deck. His hands clasped behind his back. His footfalls heavy. Pillar of Intent was state-of-the-art compared to her counterparts. His vessel was a mere decade-and-a-half old and he stood at its command for a dozen of those years. By now he knew the in's-and-out's of his vessel and what she was capable of.

"Impiger is moving up, sir!" Marie relayed, her hands clasped to the earphones of her comm set.

"Lieutenant Struss, dump another melta torpedo. Let's keep them on their toes. Lieutenant Horst, burn starboard retros, get us out of our torpedoes trajectory and then ahead slow. I want to keep our presence unknown until absolutely necessary." Ordered Aeneas.

"Aye!" Came their mutual reply.

Pillar of Intent drifted slowly to right. Aeneas could feel his stomach turn slightly as the ships artificial gravity shifted to adjust to the new force. He looked up to the bridge monitors and watched the bright green rune of their second torpedo appear. His eyes shifted towards the first green rune of their initial torpedo which was closing on its target.

"Now it begins, lets see who draws blood first." He muttered quietly to himself.

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: Shepherd of Light - Perinetus 

There was debris ahead of the Shepherd, spinning away from the damaged shipyard, and debris behind them as the destroyed monitor bled flame and atmosphere. The second monitor continued to rake across the titan-tender’s stern, burning a course it couldn’t have deviated from if it had wanted to. Another ripple of bright flashes sent a meteor storm of macro slugs and plasma bolts shearing past its wrecked comrade to burst against the Shepherd’s hastily reconstituted void shields. A flash and a shudder announced the warp-shunt capacitors tripping off yet again - this time with one of the holy machines rupturing in a scythe-wind of fragments that killed several enginseers and a senior magos. The tail end of the salvo pummelled into Shepherd’s armoured hull.

“Fire on deck 43, portside.” one of Jeanette’s bridge officers reported. “Closing bulkhead doors. Fire suppression servitors are en route.”

The dry summary did little justice to the chaos beginning to unfold on the Shepherd’s keel deck. In compartments ripped open to vacuum, crewmen collapsed and went into brief, silent spasms as hypoxia stole their consciousness. They were, if anything, the lucky ones; in the service hanger that had once held the Imperial Knight Honest Mistake, a metres-long gash in the deck slowly bled atmosphere into the void, leaving enginseers and menials to hammer on the locked-tight isolation doors while the pressure gauges crept inexorably downwards. In the adjacent loading shaft things were even worse - impact had ruptured a nearby transformer, spraying lube oil across the electronics and cooking off a blue, spark-spitting fire. As smoke filled the cabin, blinded crewmen stumbled their way past oblivious servitors, while also trampling their all-too-conscious comrades who were already choking on the floor.

By the standards of void combat, the casualties were exceptionally light.

The second monitor powered on, killing light now building along the length of its prow lances as it lined up on the skidding Vostroyan transport. A brighter light backlit the cloud layer of the planet below, scattering white fire through the atmosphere before vanishing into the void. The lance strike smote clear of the precious shipyards and reappeared as a blooming explosion across the aft shields of the monitor. For a moment the voids resisted, scattering light as they tried to reflect or absorb several exawatts of power through their warp-shunt capacitors. The orbital lance burst them in under three seconds, and began to peel through the vast nozzle-cones of the ship’s engines.

The monitor flared erratically as plasma thrust was vented from ripped-open funnels and spurting hull seams. Retro rockets knifed yellow fire, trying in vain to counter the unvectored force. Slowly, the charging monitor began to pitch backward, its forward lances scattering into space a harmless 20 kilometers past the Vostroyan transport.

“Ragnarov West.” the Shepherd’s comms officer dictated to his astropath, not bothering to suppress the wide smile creasing his features. “Lance strike is effective, target disabled. Check your fire.”

Jeanette could see the outcome playing out on the tacticae; the red stream of active shields siphoning power into the warp was ceasing, to be replaced by the ripples of cataclysmic explosions and the starburst of hundreds of souls scattering into the empyrean all at once.

“Second monitor is drifting off course, captain.” the sensorium officer reported. “It looks like their engines are gone.”

“Message from Ragnarov.” the comms officer chipped in, still smiling. “Your kill, captain Chao.”

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

[dakkagor]

Chao nodded, and kept her face set in the firm mask her crew expected. Internally, she breathed a sigh of relief. Stern facing a lance was a terrible place to be. As the monitor had just found.

"Haul us around and give me a clean solution for the starboard batteries."

The ship shuddered as she turned. Chao nodded as she noted the damcon board light up with fresh alerts as overtaxed seals popped. But she had her solution. Sections along the portside were being evacuated and sealed to retain atmosphere. Light damage, yes, but still damage. They would pay for that tenfold.

"Make it clean. Gunners mark your targets and remind the Patriots the cost of turning from Holy Mars."

"Gunnery lock confirmed."

"Fire!"

+++++

Comets of fire speared through the void, and a half dozen macro cannon shells punched into the listing monitor. Explosions rippled through its superstructure, fires spread, and the small vessel shattered like glass. Its broken segments and flash cooked or frozen crew began an irreversible tumble down the Perinetus gravity well.

+++++

"Cycle shields down to ready status." Chao ordered, watching the tacticae for another surprise, and finding none just yet. "Get me a full damage report and casualty list. Move us back to geo-sync orbit over Ragnarov, and get us back to close orbit status once damage control has been achieved and the spirits soothed."

There was a series of verbal and canted affirmations, but Chao was already ignoring them. She dismissed her officers to their various duties, duties she knew they would perform perfectly because she demanded nothing else. Her focus now was on the battle fought. She rewound the tacticae, playing back the last half hour of close fought void combat. It was a well executed ambush, and had nearly succeeded in destroying the Vostroyan troop ship. Indeed, if they had focused on her ship, they might not have got away with such comparatively light damage.

What did this achieve? Delzharian was devious, this much was clear. He wouldn't have risked two monitors unless he could call on more ships (unlikely) or he needed orbital space distracted for a key period of time. . .

"Comms!" Chao looked up and fixed her XO with a glare. "Get in contact with our ground elements. Now!"

[PaintSerf]

Spot held for Retaliator first post.

[Azazeal849]

Spoiler: HDMS Pillar of Intent, HDMS Retaliator, HDMS Resurgent - Baraspine 

There was no true stealth in space, even when your target’s voids were up and hamstringing their standard sensors - well, unless you invested in very expensive warp dampeners, or very illegal Eldar tech. There was, however, merit in being the smallest blip against a big background, and the blazing warp-signatures of a dozen much larger, angrier contacts.

Deflected shrapnel trailing from Impiger’s shields fizzed against the Pillar’s as the heavy cruisers took fire. The heavyweights returned it with desultory salvoes, both wary of damaging their prize and forced to split their fire with the Patriot monitors still hedgehogged above the planet. Harwood and Scolari’s frigate squadrons held the flanks, like terriers waiting for the bulldogs to have their scrap before rushing in. As the Pillar and the Retaliator held their course, the Sword squadrons began an oblique burn to encircle the harrying monitors.

“Astro from Audax.” Lt Marie was smiling. “Commander Harwood’s compliments, and he assures the new kids that he will show them that a good old-fashioned Sword is better than some unwieldy new Falchion. Surge et vince.”

Audax, Defensor and Susceptor fanned off to port; Scolari’s Preliator took Vindicta and Velox starboard. Retaliator, which seemed to have been ready and waiting for the signal from Impiger, was already burning at maximum acceleration and lashing out at the Glom ring with its main batteries.

“They’re keen.” an officer commented quietly beside Aenias. Perhaps understandable, Aenias mused - they had been at the Coseflame ambush where the Patriots had lured the remaining loyalists in piecemeal, under pretext of mustering a force to fight back against the rebellion. They were hungry for the revenge their ship’s namesake implied.

Glowing hot on the warp augers, Retaliator was soon attracting attention from the Glom’s defensive emplacements. Those turrets abruptly shifted fire when Pillar’s first torpedo entered kill range, powering up with a flare of rockets and slashing jets of its directional thrusters. Bright lines of phosphor-hot shells, glowing like tracer fire, swung across space as the melta torpedo went active. They fumbled for a few seconds, then found their target, and the building-size missile slowly shredded apart into harmless pieces.

“Torpedo one caught in the net, torpedo two is still running.” Lt Struss reported, his eyes fixed on the tacticae screen. “We are entering effective battery range in three...two...one.”

[Jarms48]

Those turrets abruptly shifted fire when Pillar’s first torpedo entered kill range, powering up with a flare of rockets and slashing jets of its directional thrusters. Bright lines of phosphor-hot shells, glowing like tracer fire, swung across space as the melta torpedo went active. They fumbled for a few seconds, then found their target, and the building-size missile slowly shredded apart into harmless pieces.

“Torpedo one caught in the net, torpedo two is still running.” Lt Struss reported, his eyes fixed on the tacticae screen. “We are entering effective battery range in three...two...one.”

"We've stirred the hive. Struss, you may fire when ready. " Captain Aeneas ordered.

"Aye, Captain." Struss returned.

Struss worked at his terminal, fingers brushing over keys and touch screen. He watched his display as Pillar's fire directors converged onto the Glom defence platforms. His screen flickered to life as the batteries convergence was met and green acknowledgement runes from the gunnery decks flashed their ready status. He punched in the firing commands and Pillar of Intent's main macro batteries lit up the darkness of space with a fury of building sized tracer fire.

Captain Aeneas watched the bridge display with curious eyes. Hands still clasped behind his back as he paced across the deck. He pondered, thinking of their next move. He had to take into account that his vessel was no "knife-fighting" brawler like his antiquated counterparts. Pillar's strengths lay in her prow facing, they had to keep the enemy ahead of them, that presented their armoured prow, allowed them to focus their void shielding and maintain bombardment with all their artillery.

"Second torpedo caught in the net, they've got a heavy defence." Reported Lt Struss.

"Get the torpedo decks to hold fire and await further orders, we'll have to soften their screen first." Replied Captain Aeneas.

"Yes, Captain, aye." Said Struss, as he relayed the orders on.

Captain Aeneas turned facing. His hand dug into his breast pocket, he pulled out an old trinket. A memory of his homeworld, a life long past. He flipped the old pocket watch cover and looked at the hands. The clock set to local time as his memories went elsewhere. These long deployments often got to him, stress, the weight of everything sitting upon his shoulders.

He closed his eyes and placed the pocket watch back into his pocket.

"Helmsman, bring us to a standstill. We'll hold here and maintain long range bombardment." Aeneas directed.

"Yes, Captain." Helmsman Bernd replied. His hands grasping the chadburn as he passed the orders down to the engine decks.

"Lieutenant Marie hail the Retaliator, let them know we'll cover their advance." Captain Aeneas commanded.

"Aye!" Maria shouted. She acted immediately, her hands moving to the long range vox's dials as she patched to the Retaliator's frequency.

"Hailing Retaliator. Hailing Retaliator. This is Pillar of Intent, we will remain anchored at the second line and provide long range support to cover your advance. Call priority targets as they come up. Pillar of Intent out." Marie relayed. Her right hand tapping pen to paper as she waited for their reply.