Pride's Prize - Part V

The hands of Kezetta, Muun-Thirty of the Yirrho-Fleet were turned into fists and the nails of his fingers tore into the palms of his hand. Through gritted teeth he had observed how clumsy the destroyer-squadrons of the humans had fought against the defenders of Yrr-17. Well, perhaps clumsy wasn't the right word. Overconfident might be a better term. Overconfident and subconsciously prejudiced. After all they had fought and won the greatest war of the last thousand years against a confederation of mercantile powers and probably had viewed the ultra-capitalist Yirrho as cut from the same cloth and as a second they were probably used to their Kuati-ships to be vastly superior to any kind of vessels serving the same purpose in a different Navy. Kezetta was sure that the Kuati, who prided themself as the ones who set the benchmark on powerful warships could learn a lot from the Yirrho. The thought caused a grim smile to appear on his face.

A smile that quickly vanished once he thought of the farce he was about to perform.

"Reduce power-output by thirty percent." the Muun-Thirty ordered. Remembering, that Rugar and Zaar were civilians and lacked the experience with military-hardware he had he added. "Correction, make that fifty percent." As much as he loathed the plan Kezetta would make sure that it succeeded.

"All five reactors?" his second-in-command asked.

"All reactors. The main reactors at the centre of our ship-modules and the reactors, that supply additional power to our shields and weapons in the trenches."

Having executed the order Kezetta's XO turned back to his superior. "I guess we also won't open fire on their heavy ships from here, if we power down our reactors?"

"And show the Empire, that you can combine a laserbeam with a hyperwave? No. We're not going to win this war by revealing what we're capable of."

---

"When will the main elements of the Yirrho be in weapons-reach?" Commander Uther demanded to know from his sensor-officers.

"Twenty minutes, if they keep up their current acceleration." was the answer.

"Until they make a micro-jump inside the system." Admiral Teshik muttered.

"A micro-jump inside a star-system is far to dangerous to execute. No sane military commander would try something like that." Uther argued.

"A collegue of mine, who is advocating for the Imperial Starfleet to adapt and further develop such tactics would disagree. But as a non-human his views on the risks of something like this might be different." Teshik mused.

Marthel Uther was at a loss for words. What should one expect from a non-human after all? He also didn't wanted to insult a superior officer, even in his absence, especially since he didn't knew, how close his own superior was to his "collegue". So he decided to shift the conversation back to the battle.

"As long as the Yirrho stay reasonable and don't make a jump we have twenty minutes to deal with their ships here."

"Yes, but if our additional squadrons don't make progress within the next five minutes, we'll have to sent in a Dreadnought-division. We can't afford to prolong this fight any longer."

---

But for the moment, there was no reason for the concerns of Fleet Admiral Osvald Teshik.

Three additional Bellator-Class Star Destroyers, fifteen Imperators and fourty-five Star Frigates turned the battle over Yrr-17 in favour of the Imperials. Seven of the Yirrho-destroyers were left, three of the modules from the destroyer the "Defender of Tepasi" had fought with and twenty of their seven-hundred-fifty meter long frigates.

Teaming up with the leading Bellator-Class Star Destroyer "Defender of Tepasi" the "Champion of Corulag" started to attack the Yirrho-destroyer designated HD-2, while the "Paladin of Kuat" and the "Herald of Anaxes" engaged a third of the 1,500 meter long cylinders. As an answer two of the remaining five Yirrho-destroyers moved in to support their brethren under pressure, while the remaining three tore into the formation of the Imperators. To protect their larger ships the Imperials used their frigates to cover the larger ships from individual bolts and parts of entire salvos, when the Acclamators weren't busy fighting the Yirrho-frigates.

And while all this was going on Yirrho-fighters, TIEs and - as ordered by Admiral Teshik - Imperial NTB-640-naval bombers were flying around.

Realizing, that with their current formation they couldn't outbalance the advantage the Imperials had with their frigates in numbers as well as different positions the Yirrho defending Yrr-17 decided to take a risk. Of the remaining twenty frigates twelve ships initiated the seperation of their individual modules, while the eight that had stayed in one piece hurried to the support of the destroyers, that were fighting the Imperators. Suddenly the seventy Acclamators, that were still participating in the battle were faced with sixty cogwheel-shaped objects with a main body hundred-fifty meters long and equally wide and fourty meters added by the beams, that ran parallel to the centre-line. From one moment to the other the imperial frigates were no longer able to protect their larger brethren from the laser-fire and missiles of the three Yirrho-destroyers. Together with the eight frigates, that hadn't seperated their modules this part of the battle was suddenly almost evenly matched.

At the fighter-front things looked different. At the beginning of the battle thousand-fourhundred-fourty TIE-fighters had been facing close to thousand Yirrho-fighters. When it had become necessary for the Imperials to sent three additional destroyer-squadrons into the battle, the total number of TIEs going to be employed had increased to three-thousand-three-hundred-sixty fighters. Since Teshik had also ordered the launch of bombers 612 NTB-640-naval bombers had joined the fight (it would have been 780 bombers, but the ships carrying the other 168 NTBs had been destroyed before the order to launch the bombers had come). For fighter-battles imperial planers and tacticians preferred to outnumber the enemy three to one, but that hadn't been the case in the initial phase of the battle over Yrr-17. There the relation had been only four to three in favour of the Imperials, so the TIEs had only a small advantage. Worse for them had been, that the fighters of the Yirrho were shielded and armed with missiles in addition to their laser-cannons, while still being as fast and manouverable as their imperial counterparts.

As a result and with the support of the point-defense-systems of their capital ships the Yirrho had shot down more fighters than the Empire. For each Yirrho-fighter destroyed, three or four TIEs had been vaporized, so both sides were almost equal in numbers, when the Imperials got re-enforced by the fighters of the destroyer-squadrons five, seven and eight. It probably wouldn't have changed the outcome, but it might have given the Yirrho more time for their main fleet to arrive, but with their fighter-force already reduced by twenty percent and now with additional two-thousand-sixteen TIE-fighters joining the battle the Yirrho-fighters were outnumbered almost four to one. Even worse was, that with those odds the naval bombers of the empire had more or less free reign. Coordinating their attacks three or four squadrons sneaked up on Yirrho-frigate-segments, that were already under fire from the Acclamators and delivered their payloads of heavy proton-torpedos.

Exchanging broadsides with HD-2 the "Defender of Tepasi" and the "Champion of Corulag" were also forced to keep the four remaining modules of the first Yirrho-destroyer at bay. Aware of the danger of another Yirrho-destroyer on its way to support its brethren the Imperials shot every joule available to them. They even risked overloading their reactors by increasing the maximum annihilation-rate of hypermatter by seven percent, more than the entire power-output of a Star Destroyer of the Venator-Class. And while finally the combined fire of the two Bellators brought the shields of HD-2 down, the need to fight two very aggressive destroyer-modules distracted the gunners of the "Defender of Tepasi" long enough to allow the already doomed Yirrho-destroyer to take the "Champion of Corulag" with a last devastating salvo with him. This time only two of the five destroyer-segments got away intact from the ship. Meanwhile the "Defender" had managed to destroy the two ship-modules, that had harassed her and was now in basically the same situation she had been in, before the additional reinforcements had arrived.

The "Paladin of Kuat" and the "Herald of Anaxes" did better, since they had only to deal with one ship and not one ship and four destroyer-modules, but they were also aware of another incoming Yirrho-destroyer. The "Paladin" lost several heavy turbolaser-turrets and the "Herald" got her bow melted in the destruction of HD-3, but suffered no additional damage.

Meanwhile the savage fighting between the fifteen ISDs and the three Yirrho-destroyers and eight frigates continued without one side being able to get a deciding advantage. One Imperator had been lost, while the Yirrho had lost two frigates and the bow-segment of one of their destroyers had been obliterated. The commanders of the large warships on both sides were unaware, that their part of the battle would be decided elsewhere.

The use of bombers and their superior numbers of fighters finally started to pay of for the Imperials. Massively outnumbering the remaining Yirrho-fighters the TIEs were able to prevent their enemy-counterparts from harrassing the much larger and heavier naval bombers build by Incom. Those were therefor able to deliver their payloads against the frigate-modules that had been fighting the imperial Acclamators. Slow, but steadily they freed the ships built by RothanaHeavyEngineering from their opponents, what allowed them to return to the support of the remaining ISDs.

Like a large animal catching its breath the "Defender of Tepasi" moved through space, seemingly ignorant of the two destroyer-modules, that were firing salvo after salvo at her. But the two short cylinders were only wasting their energy, too powerful were the shields of the more than two kilometer long dagger for the weapons of the three-hundred meter long cogwheels. Each on their own would have been able to fight an Imperator, but a Star Destroyer of the Bellator-Class was as powerful as three of those. And for one reason or the other the Yirrho commanding the destroyer-modules didn't consider the possibility to wait and charge up their weapons. Persecuted by the two Yirrho-ships the huge dagger headed for a point, where its course and the course of its last large opponent would met. The men and women crewing the sensor-stations of the Bellator-Class Star Destroyer were especially closely monitoring the super-heavy bow-cannon of the Yirrho-destroyer. A flash of blue-white light detected by the hyperwave-sensors, milliseconds before the actual beam would hit, the almost automatic reaction by the helm to de-accelerate saved the ship. The Yirrho had aimed for the bridge and their weapons-blast impacted against the shields and managed to overload them - but it passed the physical structure of the bridge by a few meters. The sudden de-acceleration also caused the two destroyer-segments to pass the "Defender of Tepasi" and for a few moments they covered the Imperial Star Destroyer against the weapons of their larger brethren. Using the opportunity presented to him, Rear-Admiral Kaller ordered his gunners to open fire on the two smaller ships, destroying them with a few overpowered shots, knowing that the Yirrho-destroyer couldn't bring enough guns to bear with its bow against him and the large cannon there needing time to charge up again.

Kaller was partially correct, since the Yirrho aboard the 1.500 meter long ship attempted to re-align their vessel so that their broadside would face him. Turning his ship around the two opponents were soon engaged in a broadside-duel.