Anuria Orbit
[i]Born of Steel, Forged in Fire[/i]
Flag Bridge

Commodore Rammael glared at the holosphere surrounding her. The display was amazingly high fidelity, rendering the fiery battle so clearly she could have believed she was standing on [i]Born of Steel[/i]’s hull rather than deep in its flag bridge. With a thought, a sub-display opened in front of her, rendering the battle in a more tactical view, enemy ships represented by orange stars while her own were blue. She’d somewhat underestimated how tightly the Vaegir were willing to form up; their ships were practically touching in some places. The tight formation was causing some losses to friendly fire, but it was also making it physically impossible for Rammaels heavy energy weapons to hit the enemy flagship.

The Vaegir counterfire was also causing some problems. Having engaged them before, Rammael knew to expect a veritable sandstorm of kinetic rounds and missiles, and she’d tried to plan for it, but other objectives had limited her flexibility. The Ashtar cruisers were more or less fine for the moment, their shields constantly flashing and steadily draining under the withering Vaegir response. Her corvette packs were also faring quite well. A few dozen of them were lost to the initial salvo, but once they were accelerated to combat speed and dispersed away from the cruisers--where most of the Vaegir firepower was concentrated--they did considerably better. The problem was the fighters. In order to exectue the precise tactical jump that brought them into battle, the entire fleet had been tucked in close together. On arrival, their close formation rendered them vulnerable to the massed Vaegir counterfire. The cruisers and corvettes had enough shielding to take the first few rounds as they loosened formation, but the fighters did not, and the Vaegir cut huge swathes through their ranks. It was unfortunate, but an inevitable consequence of the overall manoeuvre. With their numbers reduced, they’d be best used on the offensive, assaulting the Vaegir from lateral vectors and keeping clear of the main barrages directed at the Ashtar heavies. This would leave the Vaegir fighter craft without any direct opposition as they closed on the Ashtar cruisers, but the elegant ships had some effective tools available to them.

The last of the Swiftwinds crossed out of the fleet’s firing solution. “All ships, engage defensive batteries at full power, direct polaron flak shell full ahead and match it with the fighters positions as they close for attack.” Rammael commanded. Missiles, shells and Vaegir fighters abruptly began to explode in the space between the two fleets as polaron packets exploded in their midst, flooding the void with blasts of coherent energy. Flak remained an incredibly useful tool on the battlefield, but as with most things, the Ashtar had decided that crude projectile flak wasn’t good enough for them, and had developed an unnecessarily sophisticated counterpart of their own. As enemy fighters continued to close, the flak shell morphed and twisted with them, sophisticated AI’s and psionicly linked gunners tracking and predicting their positions.

Ashtar corvettes were now running rampant across the battlefield, grouping and dispersing on a whim to take out targets of opportunity. Seven of them spotted a battleship with shields weakened by heavy weapons fire. As one, they each launched their omega torpedoes, the first two wiping away the last of the battleship’s shields and the remaining five smashing into the hull. Four of the corvettes abruptly died in chain detonation of nuclear ordnance, but the surviving three raced on, wreaking havoc.

The first massive salvo of missiles directed at [i]Imperator Kirov[/i] had contended with half a fleet’s worth of point defense before reaching their target, only then to have to deal with the battle carrier’s own point defense. Suffice to say, not enough survived to do any noteable damage. But that was only the first salvo. Rammael watched the tactical displays on her flag bridge. As they shifted to open fire on her own ships, the Vaegir were slowly exposing their flank. She glanced up at the charge timer on the fleet’s jump drives. Ultimately, she did want to keep her options open, so she discarded the idea of executing another tactical jump. Besides, she had missiles for that. “Prepare another salvo of shipkiller warheads, jump capable, high burn drives….Fire.” Another massed salvo shot their launch tubes, and abruptly disappeared with a flash. Vaegir tracking systems were confused for a few seconds, then abruptly reacquired the missile salvo...coming at high speed from the opposite side of the fleet, boring in directly on [i]Imperator Kirov[/i].