From: Mike Wikan <mww@n...>
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 10:02:50 -0400
Subject: Turned Tables...... (Fiction, long) Part 1
This is a fictionalization of a recent game: Captain Kanov glanced at his chrono and fretted about the time. His vessel had been alongside the forward refuelling vessel for an hour taking on supplies and slush hydrogen for fuel. A mishap transhipping a Needle Missile had severely injured a crewman as it crushed him against a bulkhead. "Bad Omens" he muttered and made a sign learned from his grandmather to ward away evil. His vessel, the CNS Black Prince was a Raider. A Heavy Battlecruiser with the speed to run from anything tough enough to destroy her, the BP was on a deep raid into Republican territory. So far her kill total was up to 500 million tonnes of merchant and escort hulls. Her only damage had been a minor particle beam strike on her midships point defense battery. "Easily repaired" he thought. "Captain!" a voice called out from sensor bay 1. kanov walked to the "pit" as the bridge staff called it. "Yes, lieutenant?" Kanov inquired. "Sir, sensors have an n-space distortion about 3.5 million klicks out, level two." Lt (jg) Peters looked up at her Captain, suddenly tense. A level 2 meant multiple ships about to translate into realspace. And the range was almost maximum missile range. "General quarters!" Kanov shouted. "Get those people off that DAMNED resupply ship!!" Through the vessel, the crew frenziedly finished their repairs and ran to duty stations. On board the Light Cruiser Northampton, Captain Smythe watched his tac display. 50 kilometers off his port and starboard hung the two destroyers Ardive and Ardent. Tied into the Northampton's Tac net, they prepped for the crash fold into realspace. "Now we find out if the information was worth the price.." He said quietly. Space boiled with vehement, but silent energy as the three vessels suddenly spat out into realspace at.25 Lightspeed. "Target!!" Shouted Northampton's exec. "Classify as one Type 9 CNS Heavy Battlecruiser!!" Smythe turned to astrogation. "Target!!" again came the call "Classify one additional unit as CNS Merchant hull, Type 2!!" Smythe bared his teeth as only those two immobile vessels hung in the holo display. "Take them! Tac option Gamma!" Smythe almost shouted. Outside the two attacking destroyers each separated an antiship missile. Carrying a 20 megaton warhead, even a near miss would cause catastrophic damage from enhanced EMP and fast radiation effects. The missiles accelerated away toward the immobile Battlecruiser. Even as Smythe watched her point defenses flared, taking one missile down, the other acquired the merchant vessel and detonated squarely on her hull.The catastrophic explosion flared around the hull of the Black Prince, spinning it away, hull blackened. As Smythe opened his mouth to issue orders to close and destroy the Battlecruiser, the enemy suddenly brought her bow in line with Ardive as she frantically tried to evade. Two bright spears of yellow-orange energy lanced from the battlecruiser's bow and intersected the Ardive's Fuel tankage. The next instant, the ship was a vanishing halo of fiery debris. Smythe blinked as the shockwave slammed past his own hull. "Damn! She has two Spinal Particle Cannon!! Maximum Evasive! Get us out of her arc!!" The two Rep ships twisted furiously around to either side of the Raider, each trying to close to point blank range. On board the Black Prince, Kanov cursed silently. The Resupply vessel still had significant ammo stores on board when she blew. the resultant fireball had knocked out half his fire controls and his Portside point defense battery was down. Worse, his drives were damaged and the Prince, usually nimble for her size, now maneuvered like a pig. "Target that other damned destroyer!!" He bellowed.