"Guns, mind your vectors," Ricton reminded. "The Admiral wants us in close formation and we can't expect our shields to soak up the friendly fire this time. We're going to need every ounce of shield strength we can get."
"Tractor control," Nete's voice said from the Captain's chair, "set for 110 meters, solid hold."
Ricton glanced at the main display as the Indomitable drifted over the Rising Sun's starboard bow. The diamond-shaped ship paralleled their orientation then froze in place as both ships' tractor beams locked their hulls equidistantly apart, with the Indomitable's port tip extending almost to the Rising Sun's forward ridgeline. This allowed room for the Lynx to move into position ahead, above, and to port of the Sun, putting it 150 meters across from the Indomitable in a mirror position.
Two more cruisers moved into position below Captain Ricton's ship without obscuring his primary firelane directly off the bow. Directly above them was empty space, and a potential attack vector for the approaching cloud of Insectoid fighters, but below and to either side sat their sister ships…two almost touching the lateral lines, with the third some 500 meters below. All 22 cruisers were moving into this eight, six, eight formation with the Rising Sun occupying the upper, middle position within the six…sitting almost dead center within the formation.
The Fury and Intercession, with their weaker shields, took up the upper, outside positions on the back row, putting them behind the stronger shields of the fleet while still allowing them plenty of room to continue launching their missile salvos.
Suddenly every available laser battery within the fleet opened up on the wisps as they broke into attack lines and opened fire on the Alliance cruisers. Ricton kept a constant eye on the Rising Sun's shield strength indicator while watching the attack unfold on the tactical holo. The missiles were doing an enormous amount of damage to the closely grouped fighters, rendering dangerous debris clouds that contributed secondary collision damage to the surviving wisps, who quickly altered their 'cloud' formation into a dozen or so 'tendrils' that snaked into the cruiser formation, firing a torrent of green laser blasts, too numerous to count, into the enhanced shields of the Alliance cruisers.
Ricton watched with helpless frustration as the Rising Sun's protective shield began to steadily weaken under the relentless assault. The attacking tendrils would snake through the gaps in the formation, then skirt around the edges until they found another hole to dive back through. All the while the Alliance gunners destroyed wisp after wisp whenever they had an unobscurred shot. There were so many friendly hulls in sight that many gunners logged no-fire zones into their firing controls and let the onboard computer abort their attacks whenever their sights crossed over a friendly.
This made for a lot of useless, frustrated trigger pulling, but it meant no hesitation on the part of the gunners…which was paying off when the wisps would cross into the open. They managed to down many as they crossed the gaps between ships, sometimes only visible for a fraction of a second.
Ricton knew his gunners were good. They'd trained relentlessly for just this type of situation and he was pleased to see their hard work paying off, but there were just too many fighters for them to deal with. Given time they could target and kill them all, but with the drain on the shields being what it was he knew the Insectoids were going to break through their shields first.
"Defiance's shields are down," Irison announced between clenched teeth.
Ricton glanced at the ship's icon on the upper left of the front line. It was missing the blue aura that the other cruisers were showing…no, wait, Resonator's shields had just gone down too. Both ships were now taking shots to their armor and the tiny auxiliary shields that covered each individual weapons battery.
The Captain's eyes glanced at the fighter count above the holo as the swarms seemed to suddenly lose their integrity. 603 fighters remained, and that number was decreasing rapidly. If they could just hold on a little longer…
A small vibration shook the deck under Ricton's feet. "What was that?"
"Impact," Irison said as more vibrations reverberated in sequence. The ship's shield strength diminished with each. "They're ramming us."
Ricton glanced back at the holo. It wasn't just them. The remaining fighters were ramming all the cruisers. One last act of defiance…or was it?
The Captain shook his head in disbelief. "Damn, they're sacrificing themselves to soften us up for their reserve fleet," he said aloud as the shields dropped under ten percent. "Time to intercept?" he asked as the last of the enemy fighter icons vanished from the display. Seventeen of the 22 cruisers had lost shields and suffered minor to moderate hull damage, but none of it had managed to penetrate their ten-meter thick armor plating.
"Eight minutes," Irison answered.
"Tractor control, release all locks," Nete ordered. "Helm, hard to port. New coordinates. We have to get moving before their reinforcements arrive."
"Retreat?" Ricton asked.
"No," Nete said, firmly shaking his head. "Delay. The Admiral wants to give us a chance to recharge shields. If they attack now, they'll have to attack with their smaller ships only…"
"…because their larger ships can't keep pace with us at full thrust," Ricton finished.
"Exactly," Nete concurred. "If they hold off we get time to recharge, if they send their faster ships ahead they hit us with less firepower. Either way we're better off than facing them head on."
"Good thinking, Admiral," Ricton mumbled as the Rising Sun's bow rotated left as the ship's main engines activated at full thrust. The helmsman followed the Lynx away from the Insectoid reserve fleet…and closer toward Colorban and the battle that was raging on the other side.
With a few moments to spare, Ricton adjusted the holo controls and checked on the status of Lord Corodel's fleet.
He cringed. The other Alliance fleet, twice their size, was in worse condition than they were. Shields were down throughout half the fleet with several ships showing significant hull damage. The other Dreadnaught carrier had apparently been destroyed, but two of the other four Insectoid attack groups were now engaging the Alliance fleet at point blank range…and Lord Corodel wasn't backing down.
Ricton knew the Alliance cruisers had been specifically designed to be tough to kill, even without shields, and it looked like the Warlord was putting that theory to the test. Meanwhile, the third Insectoid assault fleet had just finished off one of Colorban's defense stations and had begun to reposition itself into transit lines pointed toward the main battle. Its 16 corvettes would be in range within twelve minutes, with its 27 remaining frigates five minutes later. The destroyers and cruisers would be within attack range inside of half an hour.
Only two of the four Mon Cal warships had survived the initial assault, but both were shieldless and pitted with hull breaches…but now they were being shielded by a protective ring of cruisers fighting around them and the other barely operational defense station. Rim League fighters from the other two defense stations darted about on the holo, hunting down the remaining wisps from the dreadnaught as well as those launched from some of the enemy cruisers, while groups of B-wings were making strafing runs on the 101 Insectoid capital ships as they slugged it out with the Alliance cruisers.
Ricton zoomed out and checked their present course. He nodded with understanding. They were intentionally fleeing in the direction of the main battle. The time it would take them to get to the other side of the planet would allow them to be in a position to reinforce Corodel's fleet with their partially recharged shields, even if it meant drawing the undamaged support fleet into the fray with them.
Apparently the Insectoids realized this and chose not to wait, because their corvettes and frigates were gaining on them while the enemy destroyers struggled to gain ground and the two cruisers were left behind.
"Helm, move us to the rear of the formation. We've got the highest shields in the fleet, we ought to take the brunt of the attack," Ricton said loud enough for everyone on the bridge to hear.
"The Admiral just ordered us so," Nete added.
Ricton smiled. "Glad we're in agreement."
The Rising Sun's expert helmsman drifted the giant ship out of line and decreased thrust just enough to allow the other ships to inch ahead of them as the 106 Insectoid corvettes entered weapons range on the trailing ships, Rising Sun included.
The 18 aft-firing weapons batteries on each of the four trailing cruisers opened up on a single corvette, pouring as much combined firepower into it as possible while the enemy fleet moved alongside and within the retreating cruiser formation.
Within 30 seconds the small corvette was hulled. It broke up and the resulting debris fell behind into the approaching frigate formation, causing them to go evasive and delay their arrival by a few more precious seconds.
Meanwhile, the Insectoid corvettes made the mistake of flanking the cruiser formation…which brought them into the sights of the silent, fore-mounted weapons batteries. They had tracked to port and starboard before the corvettes had even come into range, just waiting for the chance to do some damage…and damage they did.
Had the Insectoids hung behind and targeted the cruisers' engines then they'd have had a chance at isolating one from the fleet and pouncing on in en mass, but their overly aggressive attack pattern brought the tiny corvettes far too close to the fleet's lateral lines. Wave after wave of blue turbolaser blasts tore apart the ships as they tried to target the shieldless cruisers in the front of the staggered, double-line formation.
It was a disaster that the corvettes couldn't recover from, nor flee from…the weapons fire was simply too intense. Instead, the dying corvettes tried to ram the cruisers, who used their tractor beams to deflect the failing ships away from their suicidal course or at the very least divert them into glancing blows.
Still, damage was done to the cruisers. Some were now showing holes in their armor, exposing the inner decks of the ship to space. Fortunately none of the damage reached any critical systems, including the engines. All 22 cruisers continued on course without delay, though a few were now trailing smoke into the trailing frigate formation as it opened up exclusively on the Rising Sun.