Divine Chaos
“You rarely destroy an empire, sure you can zero fleet it, starve it of goods or money, or blow up a planet with a death star, but once the foundation of an empire has been built, it can always be built on again.”
And this one was rebuilt on vengeance. The Amieuronite empire was once a proud, high standing empire, conquering the galaxies until a ferocious war with the Borg smashed them to pieces. Here they were now with only 8 planets, 17 asteroid mining colonies, and a pitiful fleet of mostly untrained crew.
And Gavin Dreagis.
Gavin was on the council of 12. He was responsible for the planet Shnur. He was also the supreme commander of the fleet. That is, if 400 cruisers, 29 fleet carriers, and 11 dreadnoughts was considered a fleet. They had an abundance of fighters though, enough that they were considering selling or scraping the excess ones.
Gavin looked out of his portal and had the familiar wishful thinking of any leader who had lost it all. Several months ago it had occurred to him that money was not the main issue to the fleet. It was the lack of automated shipyards. And he had a plan to get some. Looking at his clock, he noticed that the ship had 3 minutes to go before they arrived at the meeting point. Apparently the remnant had retained its fast warp tech. Leaving his half eaten frazzgalian blue cheese, he left to the head of the ship uncertain of the reaction to his plan.
The meeting started in conference chamber A2 with Llasra Ollesan's plan to improve the economy.
“Which is why I propose we start up a market for ships.” she said. “selling advanced warp cores is good, but with tensions so high, cheap, low quality fighters and destroyers are going to be extremely profitable.”
“It's not that we don’t need money, it’s just that our shipyards are busy building cruisers.” said therax muran-derpfan. “How will we supply them?”
“We have over a hundred thousand more than we need”. Lasra put in.” when we sell all, we will use the starter money to build more shipyards. Obviously we would need to keep a few dozen cruisers with us, just to protect it. But in the end, it would work out. With everyone-borg included- busy building capital ships, filling in the ever so needed gaps would have us raking in credits. Besides commander Dreagis has an idea, and his ideas are usually good.”
Gavin blushed, and realizing this was his chance, he stood up. “Yes I have a solution to the fleet problem. We have a lack of automated shipyards. However if we were to capture one and replicate it to build our ships, we could easily build enough fleet to serve our needs. I have located a small shipyard here, in the neutral strip. That is what I intend to steal. If authorized, I have prepared a plan for this assault.
In the end the idea was authorized. But only after careful revision. The 16 MK 5 cruisers and Gavin’s special ops battleship, -the last of its kind,- the /surgeon/, jumped out of warp speed into the border between Npo and Borg territory stripped of all insignias. A mere 6 mile strip of space, it was, yet constant bickering and debates had been underway as to who controlled it. However this part was in an asteroid belt in the ‘borg half’, and the site of the target: an automated borg cruiser shipyard. It was relatively well guarded for such a small installation, with 10 ions, 10 photons, and 20 plasma deck turrets; it also had 500 fighters and 2 heavy cruisers. These defences were supposed to hold off a dreadnought, but today they would not be able to destroy more than some fighters and cruisers.
Each cruiser had 4 squads of 5 fighters each. In addition, they had 24 plasma deck cannons and 24 anti fighter laser cannons. The battleship had 40 squads of fighters, 60 ion cannons and 60 plasma turrets. Its shields were high enough to withstand the barrage of a lone heavy cruiser for an hour and a half, and it was invincible to fighter drops less than 600. The empires dreadnoughts were several times stronger, although they were not here.
However the base did not know of their fate, and that mean the task force would have the upper hand. Hiding behind a moon, they waited for the installation to come into its way, on its daily round trip of the same moon, and then accelerated. Gavin could feel the tension of both sides as their fleets began to charge up their cannons. The base began charging up its weapons, but they were taken by suppose and needed at least 15 minutes to get ready.
And the massed fighter group came spilling out. They were attempting to rush the attackers, a costly head on strategy that usually led to a 1-1.2 ratio. Gavin knew this time they would not do any damage, for fighters were only good against unshielded units.
“Bring all ships around.” They will be unable to turn left to avoid the planet's gravity field, he thought, therefore, all ships would go by the right side. “Bring about port side of all ships” he commanded. “Portside laser cannons will lay down dispersion fire.” This, he thought, would allow a volley from forward batteries to hit the fighters.
The fighters came, the cruisers opened up a small salvo of concentrated fire, in order to spread out the ships and make them less effective. 2 fighters were hit, spiralling out of control as their hull took head on shots. 2 down, 498 to go, thought Gavin. As predicted, the fighters shot a volume of spread out and ineffective fire, inflicting a small hull breach in one of the cruisers. Then, the swarm veered to the right, where all the forward weapons of the cruisers brought their fire upon it, blasting almost 300 of them. Some of the fighters managed to get through the point defences and concentrate on one of the cruisers, knocking out a sensor and 4 plasma turrets on cruiser 8 and causing hull breaches along the bulkhead. However these damages were minimal, and the debris created from the fighters was be an added bonus as Gavin ordered 200 recycler units to head to the system.
“Commander, we have incoming patrol vettes, stand by for 40 incoming.” Gavin looked around, scanning the space. There they were heading straight for cruiser 8.
“Bring the battleship and cruisers 2 and 11 above the helm, in attack position.” he instructed. The battleship had enough shielding to “rape” the corvettes. The cursers however, would undoubtedly take damage, and they were vulnerable. The vettes opened fire, hitting a plasma turret and exploding it. The cruisers responded with swift laser fire to confuse the enemy, and plasma and ion to take them out. The shots hit the reactors of 2, effectively putting them out of the fight. More fire came, and this time they all hit, downing 6 vettes.
Then they crossed around the cluster of ships, hitting cruiser 8 and lighting up its core, blowing it up. Then, perhaps realizing there were no more possible targets, they left. By now, some of the photons were powered, and the cruisers were done with the fighter drop. As pre ordered, the fleet went into attack procedure, deploying their fighters. The photons and heavy cruisers fired a combined volley, the wave of plasma fire mixed with bright yellow photons succeeded in eliminating 30 fighters. Now it was the assault fleets turn to fire! “2 volleys, from all ships, directed at the heavy cruisers. Get the fighters to run a flank rush. Do not release fire until 400 feet away.”
The crew looked at him shocked. 400 feet was really short distance that allowed for better accuracy. However it was shocking to hear that all 450 remaining forces were to be sent. This was no subtle movement but it would allow the cruisers to advance. So 450 fighters charged. The photons turned slowly, with the 4 ion turrets swivelling faster. The 2 heavy cruisers also moved. A costly mistake and the opportunity. Firing at the fighters, they hit more and more as the fighters got closer, but before they wanted the fighters got within the accuracy peak and took out all of the ions! Also the cruisers had advanced and the photons were way too slow! In the end the small force systematically “derbed” all the photons.
Before long, several of the enemy guns had been taken out. However the heavy cruisers teamed up to destroy a cruiser. Then, bringing about, they left the battle at warp 10 speed. The base surrendered. Gavin ordered them to release the automated shipyard. Then, hacking its powerful codes, they prepared for warp. However they would soon face another problem on a much bigger scale.
A spy from 13th had looked in on the attack and the guild master had sent a task force to observe their old enemy, to find out who and what attacked, and perhaps, to persuade them to fight Borg further. A lone frigate jumped out of stellar space. It had full sensor stealth, even a magnetic signature cloaker. Learning the id of the fleet and tracing the faint warp signature it followed the ships home, only to wind up at shnur where it would proceed with its espionage, and maybe, just maybe, get into some dirty work.
4 days later, Gavin heard of the sad death of Llasra Ollesan's death at the hands of unknown causes. A new, professional but humorous adult had been picked to fill in the job. His name was Maxwell Piminite. Within days his suggestions had improved the bases transportation and efficiency, and he was trusted very well by the council.
“Commander Gavin Dreagis's log: stardate 3425: 11: 27: 12:38 am standard galaxy time. The Borg has made no effort to track us down and I am starting to worry less. The mission was a success, with our losses mounting to 30 000 credits. However, the recyclers cashed in 36 000. The shipyard is now producing our model, the techs fiddled around until they could program it to build our ships. I have prepared Ollesans funeral, we will all mourn tomorrow. Meanwhile, I am one step closer to my personal objective, which I call operation scarp witch.”
Maxwell snickered with that same schoolboy trick, hiding a recorder under a cabinet. Yes, he thought. You have a secret objective. I do too. But in the meantime, he had a conference to attend with.
/Meanwhile/
This is not good, the pilot thought. Not good at all. The 2 fleets collided, a Borg cube turning to fight a deathstar. Below, farmers looked up to see a ferocious battle, with a fighter tumbling down. A destroyer moved at a breakneck pace, but with a single disruptor shot, it exploded violently, the individual fighters did their best to collaborate in a swarm, but were constantly dispersed. And in the middle of it all, his ship.
I must get this message through, he thought. The fate of the galaxy depends on me. His ship lurched suddenly, and he looked up to see the dreaded leviathan class ship take him in. Uh oh! If only those blasted
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Ok so that is it for part one! Next one I will really spice it up. I intend to continue this series, adding new characters as we go. It won’t just be plot though. There will be a constant battle for survival from a stranded force and meanwhile the Amieuronite empire gets attacked! Please add your feedback by commenting! :)
P.S. To Borg: don’t worry, you will get your revenge.