Chapter 45 - Battle on the Banks of the Lethe
Flag Bridge, ISS Nebuchadnezzar, Lethe Star System, Delta Quadrant
Ulysses Vanguard, brevet Vice Admiral in Imperial Starfleet, defacto commanding officer of Sector 2000 and its attached fleet units, rested his head on steepled fingers as he studied the strategic holodisplay before him. His hazel eyes were narrowed in concentration and thought, the skin pulled taunt around the remnants of his ocular implant because of a faint scowl as he watched the enemy maneuver deeper in-system.
The Neb was one of the fortunate few of Prescott's Star's defenders that had gotten through the last battle relatively unscathed. Once her basically superficial damage and slipstream nacelles had been repaired, Ulysses had claimed her for his temporary flagship while the Valley Forge completed her considerably more extensive repairs under P'tel and Clay's watchful eyes. While he would have liked to have waited for further ships to be repaired before he began taking back neighboring star systems, he couldn't afford to play things safe. The local Galactic Unity forces were weak for the moment, having concentrated virtually all their units for the near final push against Prescott's Star. Uly he didn't want to give them a chance to reinforce and make his job harder than it already was.
So he had taken a squadron of Wraith (U)s out, backed up by a Sovereign Battlegroup and a Battlecruiser Taskforce, to either scare away or blow to hell any GU pickets holding down the Imperial colonies in the sector. So far, Task Force 2000.3 had freed and repicketted 27 systems and from the looks of things was about to add 28 to the list.
The Flag Bridge was abuzz with normal pre-combat activity, with orders, status reports and the other plethora of minutiae details involved in getting a large concentration of warships ready for battle. But Ulysses tuned most of it out, instead concentrating on the angry red light beads of his opponent. Like him, they were heavy in Destroyers and Light Cruisers. Unlike him, the heaviest unit they had was a Battleship, and then only a heavy division's worth. Any sensible opponent would have cut their losses and begun a retreat from the system by now when faced with the overwhelming superiority in weight of metal bearing down on them, and the GU were certainly not fools. And that was the cause of Ulysses scowl, for the enemy had [b]NOT[/b] withdrawn from the battlefield. Quite the opposite in fact, the GU Task Force appeared to be falling into strike formation about six hundred thousand kilometers from Lethe's massive Class S Gas Ultragiant, Nephthys.
Nephthys had not quite reached the levels of self sustaining reaction necessary to become a full fledged second sun in the Lethe system, but it was close enough to be throwing out fairly substantial radiation and was even briefly luminous in places. The Gas Ultragiant's massive size had dragged in quite a few moons, with many being planets in their own right and more than a handful whipping around in rather exotic orbits. With such effective cover near by, there were ample places to hide a starship, even a whole fleet.
Ulysses, frowned as he stared into the holodisplay with his lone working eye. Something was nagging at him, nibbling at the back of his brain. He didn't like the setup to this battle at all. While it could be just a ruse designed to scare him off from attacking, the force before him was to powerful to leave running around in his rear areas, especially considering he had only been able to spare Destroyers and Cruisers for picket duty in his recaptured systems "Order the scouting elements to concentrate on the nearside of Nephthys especially. I want detailed sweeps as deep as we can get them before I commit to battle. This entire setup smells of a trap and I'd really rather not walk right into it and make the enemy's job overly easy." His forces could handily keep the GU in range thanks to their slipstream capability, so he wasn't too worried about their STL speed advantage. But they were definitely up to something, and he didn't want to pop in unless he could at least make a solid guess as to just what that was.
By now familiar sounding ayes answered his even toned order. If he couldn't have his home along with him (strange as it seemed for a child of the stars who was a follower of Spock to call an Imperial Warship home), at least he had been able to take his staff along when he had transferred his flag to the Neb. Unfortunately it also meant his watcher had come along as well. At least Commissar Stevens couldn't possibly have anything to complain about so far. It had been an easy thing to pounce on the light GU system pickets providing orbital fire support for GU ground troops. With mostly only light handfuls of combatants present, it had been easy to use not only Ulysses superior firepower but superior numbers to clear every system visited so far.
On the holodisplay, the Imperial scouting units that had by now broadly enveloped the GU Task Force spat a volley of recon drones. His sensor systems couldn't pick up their covert launch, all indications of their activation and course were based off of their pre-programmed course only. His sensors should only pick them up if something went wrong with their stealth systems. Most were set to curve around the enemy to stay clear of his PD, tracking instead for the massive swirling ball of gas and energy at the enemies' backs. A handful cut straight for the heart of the GU formation, attempting to gain firmer data on their numbers and dispositions than the long ranged scans of the scouts could get.
Every now and then, a brief contact blossomed near his units. They were enemy recon drones scouting his own formation, nailed by escorting Achilles or other ships either quicker off the draw or closer to the drones to begin with. The enemy likely had fairly firm readings on him by now thanks to their damnably effective stealthing systems, and with his self evident superiority it wouldn't really matter all that much when the battle came. But Ulysses didn't want to give any possible edge to the enemy if he could help it, hence the enemy drones continued to be vaped as soon as they were spotted.
The recon drones pierced Nephthys' turbulent, energized atmosphere, spreading out into a standard search grid pattern. It was tighter than was optimal due to the intense sensor disrupting disturbances present, but there were enough individual probes to provide adequate scan coverage in spite of the planets distortion.
Deeper and deeper Ulysses' probes went, seeking the enemy with their extensive sensors suites as the pressure on their shields grew with every extra meter from the surface. Like they were caught in a giant three dimensional vice, the drone's shields weakened at an ever increasing rate. One, likely succumbing to a design flaw, lost its shields. In virtually the same instant, it crumpled like a deflating balloon as the massive pressure unleashed itself against the drone's weak hull. The other reconnaissance platforms smoothly shifted their formation to cover the resulting gap, but an already small net got even smaller as a result. And then, as the recon probes were nearing the deepest into the atmosphere they were rated for, an angry rash of scarlet enemy icons flared on the holodisplay.
"There you are, you sneaky little buggers." Ulysses said softly. The frown mostly left his face and he peered intently over his steepled fingers, trying to glean anything from the red hued flecks that represented the enemy. "Designate new enemy units Force Beta." Ulysses ordered.
It wasn't the individual set of icons that a more thoroughly scouted formation would be. It was more of a shifting, misshapen blob of crimson as the probes could only give very general information on their targets. Every once and a while a target would firm up enough to give a rough mass reading. By CIC's best guess, there was at least another division of GU SD's down there. The recon drones systems couldn't provide more fine detail with passives only, their synthetic eyes were too distorted by the interference to hope to gain hard numbers on them, let alone firm readings on what class they were, and at any rate, Ulysses didn't want to tip his hand that he knew about the ambush,.
Fortunately enough, the GU commander had made a mistake in setting up his little trap. It relied to much on Ulysses not spotting it before hand to ensure its success. If Ulysses approached the main enemy force through Nephthys' turbulent upper atmosphere, he could peg the hidden one as he passed, allowing him to defeat the divided enemy forces in detail rather than being caught in a murderous crossfire. The plan also had the benefit of greatly increasing his force's effective ECM while engaging Force Alpha, at least until he broke free of the atmosphere or they came into it after him.
"Orders for the Task Force, come to heading 042 mark 355 and prepare for slipstream micro-jump to the following coordinates." Ulysses listed the desired alphanumeric sequence. "Then come about to heading 181 mark 190 and go to full impulse. I want saturation fire on Force Beta's location as we pass, but keep your drives at full impulse. If we start to lallygag, they'll be crawling up our buts by the time we reach Force Alpha thanks to their superior top speeds." As Ulysses spoke, his steepled fingers slipped apart to order the holodisplay into tactical mode. The strategic representation grew, wrapping around his chair, making the Flag Bridge disappear behind a veil of stars. In front of him was the white and gold titan of Nephthys, seven of its moons clearly visible. Lethe cast a slightly blue light on the surroundings, the massive disc of the giant star a thumb sized orb at his back. The point of view shifted as his ships came to their new heading smoothly. Icons shifted as the enemy's sensor returns hardened or faded. The world he had come to liberate was a distant flicker, distinguishable from the stellar backdrop only by the orange edged green ID bracket around it. "Engage micro-jump in three. two. one. execute."
Having found the trap, Ulysses still felt uneasy though he couldn't explain why. Unable to come to a satisfactory conclusion, he put his feelings aside and concentrated on the coming battle. The slipstream cores powered up, their bottled fury transmitting through the ships alloy bones as a rumbling hum. For a brief instant, a swirling blue void flashed on the viewscreen. Then it went back to the normal backdrop of star flecked ebon vastness.
While the Nebuchadnezzar Squadron wasn't quite up to the snap the Valley Forge's had been when it came to maneuvers, they were getting close. Ulysses could find no fault as the entire Taskforce flipped end for end while simultaneously swerving onto the preassigned heading change. Smaller ships pulled tight half loops, but thanks to their Borg inspired STL drive, the TF's Wraiths were easily as quick as even the smallest Nova class escort and merely began accelerating down their desired heading as they gracefully swept their prows around. The course change completed, all ships executed simultaneous barrel rolls so that they were correctly oriented with System North, the arbitrarily assigned 'up' from Lethe's planetary orbits. The final maneuver, while not necessary, simplified formation maneuvers by having everyone on the 'same page' and made minor mistakes in helm control much easier to correct should they crop up. This was especially true once the ships started their own evasion routines inside the formation, but with everyone oriented the same way, it made it a simple thing to keep your place.
Ulysses assembled ships plunged into the charged atmosphere of Nephthys, their high speed passage turning the already chaotic maelstrom into incandescent fury as atoms smashed themselves against the carefully reconfigured shields. Leaving kilometer long tails of flame in their wake as they punched deeper into Nephthys, Ulysses Wraiths swung about so they were flying sideways. Reaching out with their powerful tractor beams, the Neb and her sisters caught a Sovereign each. Once they felt the tug of the tractors, the Sovies cut their impulse drives and swung onto the same axial bearing as the Wraiths. From the otherwise sleek Imperial Battleships and Superdreadnoughts, unsightly tubular growths detached with a series of commands from their motherships. Basically retooled Type-X orbital weapons platforms, the new parasite weapons platforms as Clay Heidberg had coined them were designed to latch directly onto their motherships outer hull matrix via molecular bonding. With a seamless bond thanks to the molecule sized velcro like effect of the molecular bonding process, the PWPs rode into battle with their motherships to greatly enhance a forces offensive firepower.
But that massive boost to firepower came at a cost. When attached, the PWPs covered shield grid sections. This weakened a ships shield levels for every extra pod that was attached. Also, if they remained attached during battle, any hit that destroyed them would cause massive damage to the mothership thanks to the PWPs individual M/AM power plants and capacitor systems blowing up in contact with the mothership's hull. Finally, for every extra PWP present on a starship, her top speed at FTL and impulse dropped by a noticeable amount. This was thanks to the fact that Type-X PWPs had to be near cruiser class in size to house the massive Phaser Lance system and its required potent power plant. Pushing that much extra weight around at high speed could get very dangerous for a ships structural integrity, even in vessels as tough as the Terran Empire's Superdreadnoughts
For all the drawbacks carrying PWPs, especially the massive Type-Xs, their increase in offensive firepower made it all worth it. Ulysses was able to double his heavy long range punch with them, and he used that edge mercilessly as his ships opened fire on Force Beta. The PWPs slipped outward, held steadily by their motherships tractors as Nephthys' atmosphere turned to plasma around their cocooning shields.
The golden orange spears of 50 Imperial Phaser Lances stabbed outward, boiling away the tortured atmosphere in their path with contemptuous ease as they saturated Force Beta's formation. Some, more likely most, of the terraton pillars of hellfire would miss any ships present deep in Nephthys' atmosphere. But given Force Beta's tight formation, and the number of Lances brought to bear, the first volley was bound to have a telling effect on the concealed ambush force. Nor was it left to the Lances alone, for all other weapons that could be brought to bear volleyed as well, seeding the gaps between the heavies with weaker but still substantial energies of destruction.
Enemy PPDs, plasma torpedoes and Phaser beams were flaring around Ulysses position by now, but it was even more ineffective than his own fire because his ships were maneuvering like dervishes rather than standing still. Must have hit them good, Ulysses thought, there's only smattering of return fire coming from Force Beta. At least I've managed to slip inside the PPD envelope of whatever is left hiding down there and only have to worry about Force Alpha's heavy hitters. With the PWPs and fore Lances recharging, Ulysses nodded in satisfaction as the Neb's Captain, Erika Benteen, ordered the Wraiths to flip end for end even as they continued to fly sideways and hammered away at Force Beta's position with every other weapons system. After flipping end for end, the Wraiths aft lances let loose. Fire from Force Beta's position slackened noticeably, and the recon drones indicated that most of the targets had been hit, including internal explosions as weapons magazines and capacitors were hit. Debris and spikes of oxygen rich atmosphere were also detected, easily picked up as there were no competing sources of oxygen so deep into the gas giant.
Flag Bridge, ISS Nebuchadnezzar, Lethe Star System, Delta Quadrant
Ulysses Vanguard, brevet Vice Admiral in Imperial Starfleet, defacto commanding officer of Sector 2000 and its attached fleet units, rested his head on steepled fingers as he studied the strategic holodisplay before him. His hazel eyes were narrowed in concentration and thought, the skin pulled taunt around the remnants of his ocular implant because of a faint scowl as he watched the enemy maneuver deeper in-system.
The Neb was one of the fortunate few of Prescott's Star's defenders that had gotten through the last battle relatively unscathed. Once her basically superficial damage and slipstream nacelles had been repaired, Ulysses had claimed her for his temporary flagship while the Valley Forge completed her considerably more extensive repairs under P'tel and Clay's watchful eyes. While he would have liked to have waited for further ships to be repaired before he began taking back neighboring star systems, he couldn't afford to play things safe. The local Galactic Unity forces were weak for the moment, having concentrated virtually all their units for the near final push against Prescott's Star. Uly he didn't want to give them a chance to reinforce and make his job harder than it already was.
So he had taken a squadron of Wraith (U)s out, backed up by a Sovereign Battlegroup and a Battlecruiser Taskforce, to either scare away or blow to hell any GU pickets holding down the Imperial colonies in the sector. So far, Task Force 2000.3 had freed and repicketted 27 systems and from the looks of things was about to add 28 to the list.
The Flag Bridge was abuzz with normal pre-combat activity, with orders, status reports and the other plethora of minutiae details involved in getting a large concentration of warships ready for battle. But Ulysses tuned most of it out, instead concentrating on the angry red light beads of his opponent. Like him, they were heavy in Destroyers and Light Cruisers. Unlike him, the heaviest unit they had was a Battleship, and then only a heavy division's worth. Any sensible opponent would have cut their losses and begun a retreat from the system by now when faced with the overwhelming superiority in weight of metal bearing down on them, and the GU were certainly not fools. And that was the cause of Ulysses scowl, for the enemy had [b]NOT[/b] withdrawn from the battlefield. Quite the opposite in fact, the GU Task Force appeared to be falling into strike formation about six hundred thousand kilometers from Lethe's massive Class S Gas Ultragiant, Nephthys.
Nephthys had not quite reached the levels of self sustaining reaction necessary to become a full fledged second sun in the Lethe system, but it was close enough to be throwing out fairly substantial radiation and was even briefly luminous in places. The Gas Ultragiant's massive size had dragged in quite a few moons, with many being planets in their own right and more than a handful whipping around in rather exotic orbits. With such effective cover near by, there were ample places to hide a starship, even a whole fleet.
Ulysses, frowned as he stared into the holodisplay with his lone working eye. Something was nagging at him, nibbling at the back of his brain. He didn't like the setup to this battle at all. While it could be just a ruse designed to scare him off from attacking, the force before him was to powerful to leave running around in his rear areas, especially considering he had only been able to spare Destroyers and Cruisers for picket duty in his recaptured systems "Order the scouting elements to concentrate on the nearside of Nephthys especially. I want detailed sweeps as deep as we can get them before I commit to battle. This entire setup smells of a trap and I'd really rather not walk right into it and make the enemy's job overly easy." His forces could handily keep the GU in range thanks to their slipstream capability, so he wasn't too worried about their STL speed advantage. But they were definitely up to something, and he didn't want to pop in unless he could at least make a solid guess as to just what that was.
By now familiar sounding ayes answered his even toned order. If he couldn't have his home along with him (strange as it seemed for a child of the stars who was a follower of Spock to call an Imperial Warship home), at least he had been able to take his staff along when he had transferred his flag to the Neb. Unfortunately it also meant his watcher had come along as well. At least Commissar Stevens couldn't possibly have anything to complain about so far. It had been an easy thing to pounce on the light GU system pickets providing orbital fire support for GU ground troops. With mostly only light handfuls of combatants present, it had been easy to use not only Ulysses superior firepower but superior numbers to clear every system visited so far.
On the holodisplay, the Imperial scouting units that had by now broadly enveloped the GU Task Force spat a volley of recon drones. His sensor systems couldn't pick up their covert launch, all indications of their activation and course were based off of their pre-programmed course only. His sensors should only pick them up if something went wrong with their stealth systems. Most were set to curve around the enemy to stay clear of his PD, tracking instead for the massive swirling ball of gas and energy at the enemies' backs. A handful cut straight for the heart of the GU formation, attempting to gain firmer data on their numbers and dispositions than the long ranged scans of the scouts could get.
Every now and then, a brief contact blossomed near his units. They were enemy recon drones scouting his own formation, nailed by escorting Achilles or other ships either quicker off the draw or closer to the drones to begin with. The enemy likely had fairly firm readings on him by now thanks to their damnably effective stealthing systems, and with his self evident superiority it wouldn't really matter all that much when the battle came. But Ulysses didn't want to give any possible edge to the enemy if he could help it, hence the enemy drones continued to be vaped as soon as they were spotted.
The recon drones pierced Nephthys' turbulent, energized atmosphere, spreading out into a standard search grid pattern. It was tighter than was optimal due to the intense sensor disrupting disturbances present, but there were enough individual probes to provide adequate scan coverage in spite of the planets distortion.
Deeper and deeper Ulysses' probes went, seeking the enemy with their extensive sensors suites as the pressure on their shields grew with every extra meter from the surface. Like they were caught in a giant three dimensional vice, the drone's shields weakened at an ever increasing rate. One, likely succumbing to a design flaw, lost its shields. In virtually the same instant, it crumpled like a deflating balloon as the massive pressure unleashed itself against the drone's weak hull. The other reconnaissance platforms smoothly shifted their formation to cover the resulting gap, but an already small net got even smaller as a result. And then, as the recon probes were nearing the deepest into the atmosphere they were rated for, an angry rash of scarlet enemy icons flared on the holodisplay.
"There you are, you sneaky little buggers." Ulysses said softly. The frown mostly left his face and he peered intently over his steepled fingers, trying to glean anything from the red hued flecks that represented the enemy. "Designate new enemy units Force Beta." Ulysses ordered.
It wasn't the individual set of icons that a more thoroughly scouted formation would be. It was more of a shifting, misshapen blob of crimson as the probes could only give very general information on their targets. Every once and a while a target would firm up enough to give a rough mass reading. By CIC's best guess, there was at least another division of GU SD's down there. The recon drones systems couldn't provide more fine detail with passives only, their synthetic eyes were too distorted by the interference to hope to gain hard numbers on them, let alone firm readings on what class they were, and at any rate, Ulysses didn't want to tip his hand that he knew about the ambush,.
Fortunately enough, the GU commander had made a mistake in setting up his little trap. It relied to much on Ulysses not spotting it before hand to ensure its success. If Ulysses approached the main enemy force through Nephthys' turbulent upper atmosphere, he could peg the hidden one as he passed, allowing him to defeat the divided enemy forces in detail rather than being caught in a murderous crossfire. The plan also had the benefit of greatly increasing his force's effective ECM while engaging Force Alpha, at least until he broke free of the atmosphere or they came into it after him.
"Orders for the Task Force, come to heading 042 mark 355 and prepare for slipstream micro-jump to the following coordinates." Ulysses listed the desired alphanumeric sequence. "Then come about to heading 181 mark 190 and go to full impulse. I want saturation fire on Force Beta's location as we pass, but keep your drives at full impulse. If we start to lallygag, they'll be crawling up our buts by the time we reach Force Alpha thanks to their superior top speeds." As Ulysses spoke, his steepled fingers slipped apart to order the holodisplay into tactical mode. The strategic representation grew, wrapping around his chair, making the Flag Bridge disappear behind a veil of stars. In front of him was the white and gold titan of Nephthys, seven of its moons clearly visible. Lethe cast a slightly blue light on the surroundings, the massive disc of the giant star a thumb sized orb at his back. The point of view shifted as his ships came to their new heading smoothly. Icons shifted as the enemy's sensor returns hardened or faded. The world he had come to liberate was a distant flicker, distinguishable from the stellar backdrop only by the orange edged green ID bracket around it. "Engage micro-jump in three. two. one. execute."
Having found the trap, Ulysses still felt uneasy though he couldn't explain why. Unable to come to a satisfactory conclusion, he put his feelings aside and concentrated on the coming battle. The slipstream cores powered up, their bottled fury transmitting through the ships alloy bones as a rumbling hum. For a brief instant, a swirling blue void flashed on the viewscreen. Then it went back to the normal backdrop of star flecked ebon vastness.
While the Nebuchadnezzar Squadron wasn't quite up to the snap the Valley Forge's had been when it came to maneuvers, they were getting close. Ulysses could find no fault as the entire Taskforce flipped end for end while simultaneously swerving onto the preassigned heading change. Smaller ships pulled tight half loops, but thanks to their Borg inspired STL drive, the TF's Wraiths were easily as quick as even the smallest Nova class escort and merely began accelerating down their desired heading as they gracefully swept their prows around. The course change completed, all ships executed simultaneous barrel rolls so that they were correctly oriented with System North, the arbitrarily assigned 'up' from Lethe's planetary orbits. The final maneuver, while not necessary, simplified formation maneuvers by having everyone on the 'same page' and made minor mistakes in helm control much easier to correct should they crop up. This was especially true once the ships started their own evasion routines inside the formation, but with everyone oriented the same way, it made it a simple thing to keep your place.
Ulysses assembled ships plunged into the charged atmosphere of Nephthys, their high speed passage turning the already chaotic maelstrom into incandescent fury as atoms smashed themselves against the carefully reconfigured shields. Leaving kilometer long tails of flame in their wake as they punched deeper into Nephthys, Ulysses Wraiths swung about so they were flying sideways. Reaching out with their powerful tractor beams, the Neb and her sisters caught a Sovereign each. Once they felt the tug of the tractors, the Sovies cut their impulse drives and swung onto the same axial bearing as the Wraiths. From the otherwise sleek Imperial Battleships and Superdreadnoughts, unsightly tubular growths detached with a series of commands from their motherships. Basically retooled Type-X orbital weapons platforms, the new parasite weapons platforms as Clay Heidberg had coined them were designed to latch directly onto their motherships outer hull matrix via molecular bonding. With a seamless bond thanks to the molecule sized velcro like effect of the molecular bonding process, the PWPs rode into battle with their motherships to greatly enhance a forces offensive firepower.
But that massive boost to firepower came at a cost. When attached, the PWPs covered shield grid sections. This weakened a ships shield levels for every extra pod that was attached. Also, if they remained attached during battle, any hit that destroyed them would cause massive damage to the mothership thanks to the PWPs individual M/AM power plants and capacitor systems blowing up in contact with the mothership's hull. Finally, for every extra PWP present on a starship, her top speed at FTL and impulse dropped by a noticeable amount. This was thanks to the fact that Type-X PWPs had to be near cruiser class in size to house the massive Phaser Lance system and its required potent power plant. Pushing that much extra weight around at high speed could get very dangerous for a ships structural integrity, even in vessels as tough as the Terran Empire's Superdreadnoughts
For all the drawbacks carrying PWPs, especially the massive Type-Xs, their increase in offensive firepower made it all worth it. Ulysses was able to double his heavy long range punch with them, and he used that edge mercilessly as his ships opened fire on Force Beta. The PWPs slipped outward, held steadily by their motherships tractors as Nephthys' atmosphere turned to plasma around their cocooning shields.
The golden orange spears of 50 Imperial Phaser Lances stabbed outward, boiling away the tortured atmosphere in their path with contemptuous ease as they saturated Force Beta's formation. Some, more likely most, of the terraton pillars of hellfire would miss any ships present deep in Nephthys' atmosphere. But given Force Beta's tight formation, and the number of Lances brought to bear, the first volley was bound to have a telling effect on the concealed ambush force. Nor was it left to the Lances alone, for all other weapons that could be brought to bear volleyed as well, seeding the gaps between the heavies with weaker but still substantial energies of destruction.
Enemy PPDs, plasma torpedoes and Phaser beams were flaring around Ulysses position by now, but it was even more ineffective than his own fire because his ships were maneuvering like dervishes rather than standing still. Must have hit them good, Ulysses thought, there's only smattering of return fire coming from Force Beta. At least I've managed to slip inside the PPD envelope of whatever is left hiding down there and only have to worry about Force Alpha's heavy hitters. With the PWPs and fore Lances recharging, Ulysses nodded in satisfaction as the Neb's Captain, Erika Benteen, ordered the Wraiths to flip end for end even as they continued to fly sideways and hammered away at Force Beta's position with every other weapons system. After flipping end for end, the Wraiths aft lances let loose. Fire from Force Beta's position slackened noticeably, and the recon drones indicated that most of the targets had been hit, including internal explosions as weapons magazines and capacitors were hit. Debris and spikes of oxygen rich atmosphere were also detected, easily picked up as there were no competing sources of oxygen so deep into the gas giant.