Lan Screwsmith: ...according to the estimations, Las Palmas' shields are placed somehwhere around 600-800 points on anti-beam scale... Probably at elast 650, though. That'd give them regeneration rate in betwen 20 and 30 points per volley so 2-3 points per second... Probably closer to 20, though. If it was more of an upper limit, that'd mean not only faster restabilization, but also at least 800 points, and given we went through them quicker than originally anticipated...Sam Tucker: So... We won? I mean, I pushed Velociraptors so close for a reason, the accuracy and concentration of laser beams at 70000 km is amazing... Buut... I think there are still at least 32871346578513476 things that might go wrong. Technically we have advantage in laser firepower now, plus particle beams are better than lasers for that stalemate we're stuck in... Another behemoth and 2xSanta Cruz... That's... Still 52 laser blasters.
Barely below our own firepower.
LS: On one hand, I also believe we've won. On the other... If we continue like this, we'll win. But... While Assault Squadron can stay further behind, maintaining 130000 km and score decent hits... Lasers are barely usable at this range. I'm afraid PURGE Team will not hold. We have only one ship left... And without them... We'll need to go through the second's behemoths armor... Things will take... some time...ST: As if I didn't know... For now PURGE 006 will act as our meat shield, whether we want to waste our best soldiers and equipment like that or not, because enemy won't target anything else. But once it goes down, those 52 blasters will be aimed at a Determination... One after another... We might have to pull them further away... But that means Velociraptors will be pulled away too, we can't stretch too close or we're at a risk of instant loss from sudden missile strike... smeg... Alright. Let's show the enemy a magic trick. We'll multiply their 52 laser blasters into 36 laser blasters. All fire on Satna Cruz 001. Velociraptors at 70000 km, rest at 130000 km. Maintain speed and course. Notify me of shields. Oh, and one more thing: no PURGE sweep on that one, just blast it until it falls apart. No point getting the last ship blown up over reducing firepower by only 8. Prolong its destruction as much as possible. PURGE Commander?
Luke Short: ...ST: Turn on autopilot script and board escape shuttles. We've lost damn too many of you. Too many of too valuable soldiers... Too bad we can't save any ship itself... But you're more important. PURGE 006 is going down. But I don't want any more dead PURGE Team members. Be ready to leave the ship any moments. Program it so that it closes in and attack second behemoth if by some miracle it'll survive till its shields destabilize because their generators stop working or something.
LS: ...15000t for Santa Cruz meant half a weight of a Velociraptor. And it took less than a minute, a total of three volleys and the shields on Santa Cruz 001 already dispersed.
PURGE 006 was still holding on...
Velociraptors had a total of 15x86=1290 points on a deflection scale, a crude surviviability approximation based on armor physics under extreme kinetic projectile velocities on when exposed to deadly-tier particles or photon streams. With Santa Cruz having similar firepower, half the tonnage and more or less same shield generating potential, it was estimated to have 645 deflection points. Not good, but not too bad either.
As more shots exploded over Santa Cruz 001's hull, engines of both Santa Cruz-classified ships suddenly lightened in a blaze of glory. They started accelerating away from the battle, increasing speed up to 7500 km/s until finally turning engines off, putting main fleet in between them and the pursuers dictating range.
This was the final straw for the fleet admiral to rip remaining hair of the top of his head, creating a new style that hairdressers would later refer to as "Cosmic Emptiness". Shields had already gone down and time had been wasted. Santa Cruz 001 just had to be silenced. This sudden acceleration was a nasty surprise, but still not enough to outrun N.O.V.A. engines. But raw speed and thrust weren't everything. Main fleet awaited ahead and moving past it, especially when going at 8000 km/s, could be... a tiny bit complex. Admiral permitted to reduce distance to 100000 km, but with Velociraptors slowing down briefly to also get at 100000 km and merge with the fleet. That was set as a safety margin from the main fleet. From then on, N.O.V.A. Strike Force would slowly change trajectory to go around and then close in at crucial moment before straying too far from the target, while already leaving the behemoth, still advancing at only 3000 km/s, behind.
Problem was, the moment N.O.V.A. Strike Force started leaving their straightforward path, enemy did the same. Both detached ships engaged their engines to get them as far away from the threat as possible, while maintaining remaining fleet in between. Attempting to switch directions and catch them from the other side would be hopeless, so Sam Tucker had no way but to slowly decrease distance, circling around the behemoth and the rest towards Santa Cruz.
Soon it turned into both sides establishing a circular route around Comitee of Humanity's main forces, firing engines only in bursts at crucial moments to keep them on track, without getting "ejected out of a circle". With each volley Santa Cruz 001 was weakened and it wasn't a question whether N.O.V.A. Strike Force would destroy it. It was a question what the enemy was preparing that required otherwise pointless prolonging of the battle.
Admiral had to think about carriers and fighters, whether he wanted to or not. Only a bit more than thirteen minutes had passed since first lasers lightened up the sky. 120 fighters... 75000t carriers... Assuming equal split that meant 18000t worth of fighters alone on each. Adding up hangar space, likely shields, missile storages, storages for everything else, all the fighter maintenance services... Reloading 120 fighters could... take a while. And by taking into account distance from the enemy between the moment second and third volley came in, speeds of all the ships, it was estimated that "a while" meant 5202 seconds, so over 86 minutes. This calmed the admiral down... But soon he attempted to rip off more hair he didn't have.
Destroying Santa Cruz 001 and 002 would take some time this way. PURGE 006 wouldn't survive till shields going down on second beheomth. Next in queue were bound to be Determinations. No other way around. Loose too many and suddenly regular missile volleys are enough to shred the whole fleet to pieces. Of course it could be prevented. By getting them out of laser range, so
at least to 180000 km. Maybe 170000 km would do, the damage and accuracy would still be too low to matter significantly in the next hour. But that would mean Velociraptors couldn't stay closer than 100000-110000 km, otherwise they wouldn't merge with Determination for next missile strike in time. Firepower and accuracy would be reduced. Even assuming only 20 points per volley on behemoth regenerating, whole N.O.V.A. Strike Force would just barely outpace that. More intel on enemy came in. A behemoth could easily hold 15 layers of armor, giving it roughly 3000 deflection points with shields combined, possibly more. It would still go down. But just barely. And with no Determinations to target, it'd get through Dark Phoenixes next. They were a bit less resilient than Velociraptors, but far deadlier at considered distances. Firepower would drop. Behemoth would go down. No doubt. But the question was when. It could take dozens of minutes just for that one dreadnought alone...
It was dangerous territory. Dozens of minutes... Maybe an hour? Maybe
more? Fighters would come online again. That could be the end. Their missiles would target Determinations exclusively, obviously. At 11 missile destroyers and PURGE Team operating at full capability and every blaster targeting missiles because of no better options to lock onto, one was erased. There were 9 missile destroyers remaining. No PURGE ships remaining by then. And blasters having many other important things to blast. How many would blow up? Two? Three? Even if only two... That was unacceptable. Railgun array would leak. And with Determination waivering, it'd leak more. And more. And spiral out of control.
No, just no. Fighters had to be stopped. But how?... Even assuming lucky run... Behemoth might go down before them going up. But... Behemoth and at least one carrier, which was also a behemoth? With 10 armor layers
at bare minimum? Unless absurdly fortunate, no chance. On the other hand... Destroying a behemoth should still leave quite a generous safety margin. Not to blow up a carrier... But possibly enough to blow up other missile ships. With both behemoths taken out of the equation, that'd leave only eight laser blasters on one Santa Cruz, assuming fogetting about the games it was trying to play and coming straight at a dreadnought first. A formality. Afte that, entire fleet could maintain, say, 50000 km. It'd make for a powerful laser-particle beam barrage. All gunboats would go down in flames
quickly. Then, no matter targeting, fourth volley from the fighters wouldn't matter. It would deal some damage. That's it. Without other missile launchers to back it up, it'd lose its game-changer status. Yep, that was the strategy. Silnece lasers, then silence gunboats. And win.
But... Almost an hour had a chance to spawn another obstacle. PURGE damage wasn't permanent or requiring dry dock repair. Jamming sequence, EMP blasts, computer viruses, backdoors, microwaves frying stuff... If the enemy was prepared, and there was no point assuming it wasn't, maybe an hour of peace was all it would take them to repair. And then open concentrated fire. No, N.O.V.A. stood no chance either. If Comitee would make a mistake of not syncing all the ships at once and have them reopen fire as they come online again, without waiting for the others... So silence lasers, silence gunboats, then still foget about carriers and just destroy everything else... So many things could go wrong, nothing better could be done.
Despite desperate cat and mouse attempts, Santa Cruz 001 took one laser too many. The beam drilled through the armor and overheated something. And that something blew up. It was not powerful enough to cut more smaller ships out of what was one ship before, but it could be a reactor powering weapons, because they didn't come online for the next volley:
After that it was all or nothing. Velociraptors speeded towards remaining behemoth, not caring abotu Santa Cruz 002 that had reunited with main fleet shortly after realising it was not being fired at. Dark Phoenixes also came together with Velociraptors, maintaining 70000 km. Closer meant more accurate. And they weren't the ones to be targeted and everyone knew that everyone knew about this. Determination and PURGE 006 had been left at 135000 km. Just before the new plan was implemented, a final volley had been fired at Santa Cruz 001, just to double check. At the same time, first laser beam melted through PURGE 006's hull.
Shields on Las Palmas 002 held, meanwhile PURGE 006's armor not so much.
Tense moments extended into infinity. As if Sam Tucker was staring at a battle being fought on the edge of a black hole. A total of 695 points of damage had been done to the behemoth's shields, but just kept deflecting lasers and dissipating heat over and over again. Meanwhile PURGE 006 was already without a spare fire control, leaking fuel, blinded from sensor damage (at least that was not important because of other ships in the formation). Dodging helped survive the ship for a little longer, but it was about time to launch escape shuttles. And prepare for a lenghty space equivalent of trench warfare...
