Changed Circle
by Warringer
Chapter Eleven
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It was the third hour into the battle of Zendamor and Lexington had been separated from the last vessels of her Task Force. She was far away from the real battle, trying to get away from a huge Sharlin.
The rest of the Battle Line had spread over the entire gravity well of Zendamor and the Minbari had been reduced to just a few dozen ships, while the Terran Fleet had lost nearly six hundred ship. Even with the tactical advantage of the String Drive and the new Software that allowed to get interferometric data from several gravitational sensors, the Terran fleet had several tactical disadvantages. If a ship was hit, antennas and phalanxes of projectors were burned from the hull, and the String Drive needed to be recalibrated to work with the new layout of projectors nearly constantly. TacNet was jammed by the Minbari and the interferometric software lost data and made it a problem to target the Minbari at all.
"Hull Breach aft, Decks One to Four. We lost a third of MAC Twos capacitators."
Sheridan cursed. He needed to get away from that Sharlin. He glanced over to Rommel, the AI of the now destroyed dreadnought Rommel. Sheridan knew that all Terran ships had the capability to work with an AI, but only few ships had one and even now Rommel was busy with recompiling parts of his code to work with the computer core of Lexington.
Three of the graser turrets had been put out of actions and only four grasers of the remaining turrets were still in action, with the sole ventral turret being welded in to its position pointing port. The missile batteries were empty, having been sped during the first hour of the battle. And the MACs were of no use as they were fixed forward. That left Lexington with only two working grasers which were constantly firing at the general direction of the Black Star, as Minbari IFF had named the large Sharlin behind Lexington.
Only now and than Lexington was getting in one or two hits and those were only strafing shots at best. He needed to take it out and fast, before the Black Star took them out.
Suddenly an idea stuck him.
"I got helm and tactical," he said firmly as he started to reconfigure his holographic console.
"I hope you know what you do, skipper," the tac officer, still bleeding from a flesh wound on his arm where he had been hit by a plastic shrapnel from an exploding shutter.
"I hope so too," Sheridan gave back and pressed a few buttons, reloading the MACs and charging the capacitators.
Another hit rocked Lexington and again Sheridan was glad that the combined DefNet/EWeb fields were spreading the actual damage of the Minbaris energy weapons to a much higher surface of the armored hull.
"They are getting more shots in," Rommel said with a strangely calm voice," I would say they need only five or six shots until they hit the reactors."
Sheridan ignored the new AI of his ship as good as he could and waited.
As the next hit shook the ship, he deactivated the gravimetric drives, but now without bringing Lexington into a slow spin. From the outside it would have to look as if the hit had taken out the drive itself.
"What are you doing?" someone screamed and Sheridan stared at the screen in front of him, showing the fuzzy optical image of the Black Star.
Lexington spun around slowly, the Sharlin closing in on the purposely crippled Fast Attack Cruiser for a fast and effective kill.
"Now," Sheridan said as his instincts screamed at him and pressed the fire button of the MACs.
The two MACs activated and flung their payloads towards the large Sharlin. The 50 ton discus from MAC One had its full speed, while MAC Two only was able to accelerate her projectile to 13 PSL.
The first MAC round impacted into the frontal armor of the Black Star, the crystalline armor unable to take the huge amounts of kinetic energy released by the 50 ton projectile going at 20 PSL. More than half of the frontal armor was turned into crystalline shrapnel racing through half of the ship, while the rests of the MAC round forced its way through the rest of the Sharlin, destroying one fusion reactor and another good portion of the aft armor, before continuing to move towards interstellar space at now only about 4 PSL.
The second MAC round followed only a few hundredth seconds later, racing through the open frontal armor deep into the innards of the Sharlin and right into the Singularity reactor of the large vessel, destroying the dampening fields protecting the 2000 ton singularity inside the reactor from everything.
As the dampening fields failed, nature claimed the singularity and she disappeared in a flash of Hawking Radiation equal to the detonation of a 20 GT thermonuclear bomb, vaporizing the rest of the once proud Minbari vessel.
Lexington was still near to the detonation and the Hawking Radiation flashed over her, melting and vaporizing a few meters of her carbonite armor and shortening her as the fifty meter thick frontal armor lost the first forty meter.
Sheridan and the rest of the crew were shaken as the wave of energy washed around the flat and once aerodynamic ship.
"Damage and casualty reports," Sheridan ordered, circles dancing in front of his eyes from the sudden flash of bright light before the camera melted away," Status of the String Drive."
"String Drive operational," he heard the voice of Rommel," But we will have a hard time navigating. Only the rear sensors are still online."
Sheridan nodded and pressed his eyes shut trying to tone down the white circles in his field of sight.
"Take helm, Rommel," he finally said," And get us to Norfolk ASAP."
"Yes, sir."