The Lost
AN: I just had an idea like this, ill probably continue it because I wrote two A4 format pages full of plot points and notes from my one idea moment. But if not then sorry. Please let me know what you think, motivation is important for me.
„Ambushes are like love; it happens when you least expect it"
Unknown
Quiet, that's the defining quality of the UNSC Preston's Will during the night time on the agreed upon clock of the ship. There was a skeleton crew manning the bridge and only the marines guarding the ship had any real duties, to stand guard and look at the wall. Everything else could be handled by the main computer, the navigation, sensors, even cleaning bots and maintenance were done by it.
The only officers present on the bridge was the helmsman and the weapons officer. Although even they were not doing their jobs but were busy with more…..carnal activities with the weapons officer bent over the main holotable.
The Preston's Will was cruising through space at maximum cruise speed, the Halberd class destroyer was a rarer variant of its kind. While most of the halberds in service had only the default escort package on them with the extra armaments and weapons, this one was an armed special transport variant. Its destination was a small ONI research station far behind the current enemy lines.
The ship had made this run for half a dozen times in the last two years, never encountering a single covenant ship. Their successes had made them complacent, confident that this run would be the same as the last one, and the one before that one.
It might as well have gone like that; the Preston's Will would have passed through the system from one end to the other to shake any chance of tracking them via gravitational anomalies. Everything might have gone well if not for a single mistake made by the two people on station at the command bridge.
Their 'activities' had brought them over to the communications panel of the holo table. The weapons officer's ass sat on it as her lover pounded into her, moving her back and forth on the panel, cycling through contacts until she accidentally touched the transmit button with her hand when she was trying to steady herself.
The hail did not reach anyone; they were in a barely charted system that the UNCS had barely begun surveying when the war broke out. But the system still tried to make a connection, it activated the communications array and sent out a ping, trying to find a beacon or a stronger array it could access to bounce the signal and extend the range.
That ping which lasted maybe two or three seconds was enough to attract some unwanted attention. In the next system over was a Covenant battlegroup that was patrolling for human activity, trying to find any colonies that had been passed over with the first campaign.
The battlegroup was small by covenant standards, only a single CPV class heavy destroyer and three CAR class frigates. But for a single Halberd class destroyer, a ship class that hunted in packs, it was the stuff of nightmares.
As soon as the covenant picked up the brief signal, they were like sharks that had sensed blood in the vast waters of space. No delay was made in activating their slipspace drives and moving towards the supposedly empty system.
The two on duty officers were blissfully oblivious of what they had just inadvertently done, resuming their fucking until they both finished. The two held onto each other for a few love filled moments, only separating when one of them saw that it was almost time for the shift change. They both busied themselves with erasing any sign of their actions.
When the computer monitoring the sensors started blaring warnings about slipspace eddies with covenant characteristics the two on duty officers jumped into their duties with a practiced ease. But they were still somewhat shocked, they were compromised, even though the route was supposed to be clear.
What really made the officers worried was when out of those eddies came four covenant ships, a destroyer with three frigates as escorts. Now they were in full panic mode, punching the emergency alert that set the ship on condition one immediately.
The covenant ships were still about a hundred thousand Kilometers away, letting the officers gather and for the marines and sailors to arm themselves to repel boarders. The dual MAC had their warmup procedures activated for without them the ship would not have a chance.
In the next minute the rest of the main bridge crew filed into the small room. The sensors officer was the first one in, rushing to his terminal and without pause started shifting through incoming data, trying to get any information that would help in the coming fight. Then came the communications operator, throwing a dirty glance towards the on-duty officers when she saw the puddle on her console. Last but not least was the captain, William Adama who strode into the bridge in a calm step, even though his breathing showed that he had ran there.
"I want an update now, enemy strength analysis, systems report, ETA until engagement range, slipspace drive capacity, I want it all in the minute."
The bridge crew of the Preston's Will got to work immediately, wasting no time on useless formalities. The sensors officer was the first to complete the task.
"Enemy force composition is one CPV class heavy and three CAR class lights. They have full shields and zero armor scarring and patch-ups. They are fresh."
The next was the weapons officer.
"MAC at 36% charge, ETA until 100% is one minute twenty seconds if reactor output staysat current levels."
The communications officer turned around in her chair, giving a sigh before giving her own report.
"Communications are jammed, even if we send out a distress beacon it will be weeks before it reaches the nearest friendly forces.
The last was helm, he looked sad and resigned. Like he knew that they were not going to make it.
"Slipspace drive at 1% charge, ETA is one hour forty minutes."
All the officers had turned turned to Adama, waiting for their orders, hoping against hope that he has some sort of plan to get them out of the situation.
"Helm, bring us 60 degrees hard to starboard, cut power to engines after 20 second burn, weps, use the extra power in charging the main cannons. Comms, just in case drop a distress beacon informing command that we fell under attack. Sensors, mark the heavy as hostile H1 and lights as hostile L1 through L3, inform me when they change course."
All of them turned away from the captain, busy with the tasks assigned to them. All of them were afraid, they knew what Adama meant with the distress beacon, command had to know that there was a covenant presence here, whatever the cost. But even when they were afraid, they still followed orders, still clinging to the small chance of getting out alive.
The ship jolted, inertial dampeners struggling to compensate for the sudden shift in momentum. Maneuvering thrusters on the port side were firing at full burn, trying to bleed off the speed from the previous heading. The full burn lasted for twenty seconds, just as Adama had instructed. The new heading took them towards a shattered dwarf planet with massive asteroids scattered around it.
"H1 is accelerating, L1 through L3 have taken up standard escort positions, ETA until they have us in weapon range is two minutes thirty seconds."
Adama just smiled at that, glad that his own predictions were true.
"Weps, Mac full charge ETA?"
"thirty seconds', captain."
"sensors, take a deep scan of the asteroid belt, give me its mineral composition."
"Aye captain."
"Enemy has launched fighters, swarm approaching the 100 mark."
That made a bad situation even worse. A Halberd class destroyer only had 8 dual mounted fifty-millimeter anti air guns, each taking a couple of seconds to down a seraph even with an A.I assisting the targeting, which they don't have. A swarm of that size could overwhelm lone ships with ease.
"Weps, stagger vent archer pods one through eleven, one missile per pod. Keep it cool and be ready to remotely detonate them."
"Acknowledged, venting archers one through eleven. Boosters are disengaged and cool."
"Comms, open a line to engineering and tell them to push the reactor to one twenty output for thirty seconds, they are clear to use the emergency coolant. Helm, you have thirty seconds of engine power, punch it."
"Will do."
"yes sir. "
The ship lurched ahead again, gaining speed but not enough to outrun the fighters, only to delay the inevitable. The covenant fighters, seeing that the human ship was adding speed did the same, boosting forward and starting to catch up to the lone ship even faster than before.
In moments they were within the fading ion trail of the destroyer, partially blinding themselves for a better shot at the engines of the human vessel.
"Detonate, archer missiles one through eleven."
"Yes sir."
The archer missiles, normally only effective against covenant ships when launched in hundreds or thousands completely ripped the fighters apart, the small shields only meant to deflect fighter grade weapons and point defenses were stripped by the nuclear explosion which was even stronger than normal because of the unused fuel in the missiles as well.
In a blink of an eye the covenant lost over two hundred fighters that had tried to swarm the lone destroyer and had thus overextended themselves from their motherships.
"I think they are pissed sir."
"They better be, we just wiped out their fighter wings."
Indeed, the covenant now looked pissed, their engines took on a brighter hue of blue as they rocketed forward. Plasma even now being concentrated into torpedoes on the purple painted hulls of the aliens.
"MAC one and two at full power. Capacitors holding."
Adama looked relieved at that, even he didn't want to face the covenant without a big gun or two. Nor did he want to risk overheating his main reactor too much.
"Comms, have engineering tune down reactor output to 80% until temperatures normalize, then back to full power, keep the superheated coolant contained as long as possible. Helm, reroute as much power as possible into the main engines, get us through the asteroid field."
The human ship lurched forward for the third time, now reaching speeds that threatened to slag its engines with the intensity needed to keep the speed up. The small ship swooped through the asteroid field, pushing aside smaller chunks of rock with its heavy armor plating and dodging the bigger ones.
The covenant ships were only a minute behind, barely out of the weapons range of the destroyer, not that it would have done any good as the MAC guns were pointed in the other way. They didn't bother with dodging, instead they plowed through the field, trusting their shields to keep them safe.
Captain Adama got out of his chair and waltzed over to the tacmap.
"I need those deep scans miss Scarlatina."
The blue asteroids displayed on the 3D map turned into a myriad of colors. Yellow and purple being the most prominent ones.
"Yellow is aluminium, red is iron and purple is Titanium. The rest is a mix of metals too elaborate to count off."
Adama looked at the holotable, deep in thought. He moved around some settings and did some math in his head.
Meanwhile the covenant had been gaining on the human ship, now they were close enough for the covenant destroyer to fire off the two torpedoes collected in its anterior. The first splashed against an asteroid scant seconds after leaving the projector, the magnetic guidance system not good enough to avoid it. The second met the same fate as the first, impacting one of the biggest asteroids in the vicinity.
The force of the torpedo changed the spin of the asteroid, forcing one of the frigates into dodging into a smaller one.
Adama suddenly had a smirk on his face.
"Weps, fire full salvo at each of the asteroids I'm marking at these specific angles, fire as fast as possible."
The weapons officer had a confused face for a second before he just shrugged and started inputting the target data. Moments later the twenty missile pods on the heavy transport variant of the Halberd class opened up and spewed out a missile each, all of them flying into the same place, trying to hit their target at the same time, three seconds later, and another salvo exited the missile pods, and another, and another.
The covenant ships bunched up, overlapping their point defenses so that as few missiles as possible would get through.
Now picture the surprised faces of those aliens when those missiles that would have only scratched their shields impacted the asteroids around them, scattering a lot of fast moving rock debris that impacted the bunched-up covenant ships. One of the bigger asteroids impacted the by then weakened shields of a CAR frigate, impacting on the side, pushing the frigate into a still stationary asteroid and squishing it between the two.
Another had its shields stripped by a moderate sized asteroid and a bad dent was left in the superstructure where the pile of metal and rock hit it.
The covenant heavy destroyer and last undamaged frigate came out of the cloud of wildly flying asteroids with shields shining at full brightness. The ships were now in eachothers prime firing range. Only problem was that the Preston's Will was facing the wrong way with its main guns.
"Helm, initiate anchor turn."
All over the ship thrusters flared, taking a turn that if done any faster would have ripped the ship in half. Even though the maneuver had been pre written by a smart A.I to be as safe as possible some inner supports still collapsed from the pressure of a 500 meter ship essentially turning on a dime.
"Target L2 with MAC 1, fire at will, secondary batteries, barrage fire."
The unmistakable sound of a MAC round leaving the barrel of the spinal mounted main gun was heard throughout the ship, followed by a salvo of deck guns a second later. The shot flew true towards the covenant frigate, at first the deck gun rounds flattened themselves completely against the energy barrier after which the mac round smashed through the flickering barrier of energy and cored the purple abomination of a spaceship.
But the covenant heavy destroyer had not been idle, no sooner had the rounds left the human ship that the energy projector under the destroyer came to life, shooting out a thin energy projectile that cut through a portion of the human vessel, exposing multiple decks to vacuum, spilling out both crew and equipment and severing some systems.
"Helm, all ahead full, ramming speed. Weps, deploy deck guns and return fire with everything you have, open up missile pods one through twenty, full spread."
The spearhead-like human ship sped towards the covenant ship, intending on ramming the hostile. By that time the damaged CAR frigate had joined the fight and fired its starboard torpedoes which honed onto the Preston's Will. This time there were no astroids big enough to intercept the plasma torpedo, so both impacted against the hull of the human ship, one hitting the wound caused by the earlier energy projector.
"Captain, I just lost control over the slipspace drive, sensors say its charging at an exponential rate and that it is preparing to initiate jump procedures."
"How in the…"
"I don't know captain; the drive room just took a direct hit from a plasma torpedo. I'm happy that we still have a ship left."
The ships momentum was not stopped by the blobs of plasma so it still continued onwards, plowing through asteroids. Then it impacted the covenant ship.
The Sharpish point of the UNSC craft smashed through the shields of the covenant ship, piercing the outer plating and digging through it.
Adama allowed another small smirk to tug his lips.
"Fire the main gun, let's see how they like being stuffed by the UNSC."
The bridge crew let out a small smile at that. The weapons officer smiling gleefully as he activated the firing sequence on the MAC. That grin fell as a red error message was displayed on the screen before him.
"Sir, the cannon is bent at the front because of our ram, firing MAC 2 would take it out of operation until we can get back to a shipyard."
Adama didn't even contemplate it, he knew that they were going to die if he didn't fire that gun, and there is no further use for a big gun if you are dead.
"Fire anyway!"
As Adamas fist hit the arm of his command chair the weapons officer flinched. There goes one of his babies.
"Commence firing, override: Echo-Lima-Zulu-India-Uncle-March."
The error message disappeared from the screen, replaced with a loading screen that went away just as fast as it came.
"Override acknowledged, weapons officer Evans. Commencing firing."
Everyone on the ship was suddenly thrown back by the cannon firing. The front of the ship was partially ruptured, the second MAC warped so much that it was obvious that it would not be firing anytime soon.
The slug passed from one ship to the other, shredding the softer innards of the offending destroyer, piercing the reactor and sending it into critical condition. Seconds after, it exploded. The explosion vaporized the covenant destroyer and sent both the remaining covenant frigate and the UNSC destroyer flying wildly in the asteroid belt.
The Preston's Wills bridge was washed with red, all of the alarms blaring as the artificial gravity system failed under such a massive strain. Everyone was pressed into their chairs, barely able to draw breath as the gravity that was supposed to help them run the ship was now trying to kill them.
Then the sensors officer glimpsed something on her display and her eyes went wide in fear.
Just then the previously unstable slipspace drive decided it had had enough and flew out of its mounting. The highly unstable drive impacted the wall adjacent to it, squishing an engineer that was trying to keep it secure in its mounting.
Slipspace drives are barely understood by humanity, nobody can claim full mastery over the field of travel in alternate dimensions, so nobody can actually say what happened when the warped drive core activated. Without its housing it no longer had a steady supply of power, nor stability. Because of that it is a sheer miracle that the drive formed the portal in the path of the ships spin, right before it impacted a lather large asteroid. Even more surprising is that the ship was not torn to shreds in the unstable rift of dimensions. What defies understanding is the last miracle, that the ship even exited the rift.