Month 211, Day 5 Helium System of the Undine Conglomerate
Forty hours later, the warp point flickered again. Six dreadnaughts appeared and launched 96 gunboats. Forty-two armed pinnaces followed them through, risking annihilation again to arrive as a massive swarm. The defenders had reorganised themselves after the last fight. The six undine capital missile battlecruisers sat with six longer ranged battlecruisers as escorts at six light seconds from the warp point. Between them and the warp point at three light seconds all remaining undine ships clustered up in a protective group, too far to be ponced on but still in good range for their missile launchers and force beams.
on the other side of the warp point, at four and a half light second, the remaining cartell ships waited, with the carriers again at a long distance outside of missile range behind them. The dreadnaughts exchanged fire, with their capital missiles digging into a cruiser, followed by their lasers. The allied fleets responded, and while their forcebeams slowly pecked away at one of the huge ships, their missiles mostly failed to penetrate the strong point defense suite it carried.
In the next half minute, six battleships emerged from the warp point and detached a further 72 gunboats. The first wave of gun boats went out after the Cartell ships, salvoing their missiles into te cartell corvettes and overwhelming them quickly, then ripping deeply into the cartell battlecruiser who had managed to rush to action stations. Unfortunately, its plasma guns and capital missiles only managed to kill three of the small attackers. while this happened the undines ships where still slow of the mark, but their gradual fire dug deep into the invading dreadnaught. The invaders answered with coordinated salvos of capital missiles from the dreadnaughts, and more capital missiles from three of the battleships. The other three proved to be of the same design like the probe which happened earlier by their broadsides of hetlasers. The fire concentrated now on the undine battlecruisers, as their forcebeams were the most efficient weapons. The dreadnaughts also salvo-ed their external missiles, stripping the armor of another battlecruiser.
With the next wave, three battleships and three battlecruisers which delivered 66 further gunboats, the invaders started to focus their lasers on several battlecruisers in an attempt to strip away their EDMs from the external racks, as these proved to be quite effective at stopping their missiles. The battlecruisers had just a single capital launcher each, but four very powerfull XRay Lasers as a broadside, which by themselves allmost stripped the armor of an undince battlecruiser when they targetted it, even at three light seconds distance. The battleships were more capital missile armed combatants. All this was paid for by the death of the dreadnaught under the relentless forcebeams of the defenders.
But all this was allmost a sideshow compared to the wave of gunboats which crashed into the five remaining cartell battlecruisers, and overwhelmed them quickly by salvo after salvo of short range rockets with fRAMs. The 52 remaining gunboats in this wave turned then towards the warp point again, preserving their remaining armament while the armed pinnaces flew out to eliminate the shattered wrecks of the cartell battlecruisers and corvettes with external lasers.
As the last wave of the invaders came in, two more battleships and three battlecruisers, the defenders attention was diverted as 138 gunboats forged foreward from the warp point to intercept the undine defenders. But this forray was met with the fire of all battlecruisers and cruisers, who fired sprint mode missiles into them and reduced their numbers by half, while their missiles blotted the undine frigates from space and engaged some of the more crippled combatants. Unfortunately, this allowed the red ships to fire unopposed, and they went to scour the armor of defenders and break up their datalinks left and right.
Still, even while the last wave of gunboats followed their colleagues, the defender stayed focused on the first wave, as they closed to swarm around them, damaging cruiser after cruiser heavily while the cruisers reaped them in return. Some of the gun boats were laser armed, and those went ahead to remove more armor and external EDM from the battlecruisers as the cruiser force died around them. Nineteen gunboats broke away after this, having expended their ordinance and the defenders let them go, focusing on the incoming second wave while ignoring the ships still clustered around the warp point. These proceeded to further damage many of the defenders, but not going in for the kill, while removing coordination, engine rooms and armor from them. By now the defenders knew they were in trouble. If they closed in, which they no longer could quickly, their beams would become more effective and they could fire their missiles in sprint mode. But the invaders beams would also become way more effective and slaughter them quickly. Fleeing, they would have to crawl through capital missile fire with antimatter warheads, and bereaved of datalinks and EDMs would also be destroyed before escaping. The missile armed enemies meanwhile engaged the distant group of battlecruisers with laser tipped capital missiles , breaking up their datalinks and scouring their eternal ordinance after they had managed to destroy one battle cruiser.
After the last wave of gunboats crashed in a was eliminated for the price of further heavy damage, the battle took on an allmost leisure pace, lasting another six minutes where the heavy damaged defenders trades light individual hits with their opponents, taking another battlecruiser to the grave with them and damaging a third as they, now unable to flee where picked apart slowly before the eyes of the horrified Cartell carrier crews, until the defenseless wrecks were chased down by the armed pinnaces, as they had to deal with far less long range fire swooping in.
As the red fleet only had some gunboats left, and those would not have good chances in a stern chase with the carriers, the three cartell ships retreated towards Tantalum, leaving the red fleet in possesion of the warp point.
On the inhabited worlds of the Tungsten system, now unreachable by any fleet the battered undines could hope to muster, like thick rain drops heralding a deluge from a cloud swollen sky, neutron bombs started to fall.
