Disclosure
by Chaoseternus
The Truth Is Out At Last, Are You Ready For It?
Twenty-ThreeControl the skies.
Ever since the Great War, that had been the foundation of warfare. It took the Second World War to sink in completely but control the skies was the rule. A rule made unbreakable by hard earned experience, blood and the sheer capabilities displayed by airborne, or in this case, spaceborne warcraft.
You aimed for Air Superiority, control of the skies, but you hoped for Air Supremacy, you tried to ensure nothing moved in the skies without your permission. With that in hand, controlling the ground became far easier.
Of course, Peters thought rather grumpily, that doctrine had been written by tacticians that assumed you would have the best aircraft or the most aircraft to throw into the battle.
Today, she had neither.
Twelve warships, the Destroyers Invincible, General Hammond, Stingray, the untested Defiant, and the cruisers Yorktown and the extremely green Jinaghu, and she could not count upon the Jinaghu to follow her commands. Six warships to the Drakh Twelve, of course, she also had four Al-kesh, two full squadrons of MTBs, one was patrol, one Planetary Defence Force, one F-302 squadron and one Lancer squadron. The Free Jaffa warships she had been promised would not arrive for another two hours, the battle would most likely be done by then.
That, if she was only worried about Capitals, would most likely be enough, but she wasn't. The Drakh would be launching fighters before long and she had seen the reports, their weapons were a threat to a Capital ship and their carriers carried enough that her own fighters might be swamped.
It was worrying.
Of course, she hoped to even the odds on that a little, the two cloaked Al-kesh she had were even now manoeuvring into position to kill at least one of the encroaching carriers, a mission that was most likely to prove suicidal. She was just glad that the captured craft had been equipped with certain sensor foxing technologies for their special' operations.
A cloak, even if they were older types was difficult to detect, though she knew Anubis could do it, but when said craft was also equipped with sensor absorbent paints and jammers then detection became very difficult indeed.
Not that the enlarged crew liked the reduced space they had to work in, but considering the nature of their missions, they didn't question anything that decreased their chances of discovery. She just considered herself lucky that both craft had been home for some R&R when all this mess started to kick off.
"Commodore, we have a microburst transmit from Rogue"
She cast her thoughts aside for the moment, Rogue was one of the cloaked Al-kesh , she risked exposure by transmitting at all, so what she said had to be taken seriously.
"Go on" she told her current Communications officer, a Canadian Sub-Lieutenant by the name of Brown.
"Full force disposition m'am, Three Carriers, nine Cruisers. No mother ships"
"That confirms the reports from the Lagrange array, or rather," she noted dryly, "what's left of it"
"New signal M'am" Brown glanced up from her displays, her face looking oddly pallid in the red lighting, "Tally-ho"
Peters nodded, grimly, knowing that it was more then likely she would not see those two bombers again.
"Good Luck," she whispered quietly, and "God Speed"
"Damnation!" she glanced across frowning, her engineering officer wasn't exactly known for such outbursts, "the ammo train for the starboard arm is down"
Peters rose swiftly, cursing. That single train provided munitions for two gauss rifles and two cells of missile launchers. The loss was a real dent to the total firepower of the station as without it, the starboard weapons were reduced to the munitions in there ready bunkers. As soon as that relatively small stock was gone, they were out of ammo.
"What happened?" she barked, annoyed and anxious.
"Not sure, There are no stoppages visible through the cameras, and rerouting through the second command net didn't clear the issue, looks like a motor blew"
"Find it and hot-swap a new one, fast"
He nodded, already spitting orders through his headset and Peters returned to her seat, her mind already factoring this new problem into her battleplan. .
"Contact lost, Master Designate 142, Drakh carrier" Peters glanced up to the main screen, watching as the icon for the 142 hostile contact to register since Thundersdawn was built changed from the steady red of a known hostile to the blinking red expanding circle that showed the outside limits of where the ship could possibly be.
"Was it destroyed?" Peters asked, frowning, the Al-kesh had signalled a Tally-ho after all.
Sensors, a tall frigid blonde, shook her head, "Possible explosions on site, but nothing definite as yet. I've ordered a triangulation of all the sensor data, it'll take a few processor cycles but it will give us a far clearer picture"
She nodded, if that ship was alive, dead, or just injured might make all the difference, "let me know soonest please"
"Of course M'am"
Peters nodded, wishing desperately that she could have a cuppa, but this was Battle conditions, the craving would have to wait. If the station itself was attacked, then it was known to rock, and that combined with electronics and hot drinks was not a safe combination, doubly so when the electronics were command circuits.
She turned her attention once more back to the tactical display. The Drakh were launching fighters now, but a dozen blue dots were already racing towards the formation, two squadrons of MTBs racing in for a hit and run assault, hoping maybe to force a Cruiser to drop damaged out of formation, easy prey.
The ever growing circle that signalled the area in which the third Carrier could be abruptly vanished, replaced at its centre by the flashing yellow beacon of a navigation hazard.
"I see," Peters glanced up at Sensors as she began to speak," status of Rogue and Black?"
"No contact"
"I see" Peters did too, for a stealthy warcraft, No contact meant no idea. They could have been destroyed but just as equally they could be retreating under cloak, you wouldn't know until they contacted you, or you found debris.
On the Tac screen, the blinking blue dots of the MTBs and MGBs intersected momentarily with the red of the Drakh, blinking in the double beat pattern which indicated weapons firing, before darting back away again, racing into space. In their wake, darted the red emblems in fighters, sixteen chasing after the small but deadly warships.
The screen flashed, and a damage marker appeared over a Drakh cruiser. A second damage marked appeared around an MTB, the Griffin as behind it, the Drakh Fighters double-beated, weapons firing Instantly, the blue dots turned, icons blinking almost spastically as they fired.
The two groups of dots intersected, and Peters found she was chewing her nails as Blue and Red meshed on the screen in front of her. She dropped her hand to her lap, but she didn't notice as it rose into her mouth once more.
The dots scattered abruptly, damage markers appearing around most as an expanding white halo flashed across space. Shockwave, somebody had died, and not in a minor way either, their core had breached, but was it a Drakh fighter or one of hers?
The picture cleared, the blue dots swiftly congregating around the Griffin. Peters counted and sighed with relief, there were twelve still. Then she frowned, her eye catching on an encroaching form.
"Priority signal to the motor squadrons, they have a cruiser coming up on their tails; suggest they vacate the area, post-haste!"
"Aye M'am," there was a grunt, then "Griffin signals that they are abandoning ship, Chimera and Dragon are picking up survivors"
Peters grimaced, but at least abandoning meant survivors, unlike actually losing the ship and they had completed their mission, one damaged cruiser was dropping back, along with the now defenceless carriers, their fighters swarming around the eight operational Cruisers charging for her battlelines.
The dots moved, blue racing away from red, leaving behind the scattered markers of twelve new navigation hazards, only eleven of which belonged to the enemy.
"Siren, Warhound and Sniper are out of the fight, Drakh fighters blew their shield generators in a single shot and they have crippling shock damage across the rest of their systems"
Peters nodded acceptance of the report, "signal them to join the second line"
The second line, that's where all the craft that had weapons but weren't dedicated warcraft were, the Paladins and Shunters, support craft with barely enough weapons to defend themselves against an Udajeet . But should the first line fail, then even the little they could do might be enough. They would sell their lives dearly, most likely in the only way they could.
Peters frowned, sitting abruptly forward in her seat. The Drakh, they had shifted course. In fact, they appeared to be bypassing the fleet and heading
Peters finger darted straight for the Stationwide button, after all these years, she no longer needed to look to see where it was, "All hands, Battlestations!"
