(Section 02, Chapter 8: Wolves and Demons)
(Dateline: 8 July 3050)
(Location: In orbit around planet Csesztreg, Clan Wolf Invasion Corridor)
At Romulus, they had come and gone, waiting no longer than to charge their jump drive and be gone. In a week they were headed toward their next system, the Csesztreg system. Several days of high-speed flight was all it took to get to the planet in question.
The mission was to hit the Wolf invasion corridor as hard as possible to draw the heat off the FedCom forces, by which they could double back and help drive the Clans out of the Inner Sphere for good.
Well, we have already earned a reputation for shit-kicking the Falcons around the Galaxy, shall we see if they will let us play their game by their rules? Murrue thinks loud enough that she actually telepathically broadcast it, though this was not her intention.
"Damn straight, Captain," Chandratta replies by speaking. Murrue could naught but blush when she realized that she had just put that rather unprofessional thought out without even trying.
"Readying channel now," Kuzzey says as he dials in the frequency band that the Clanners used for general transmissions. After a few moments of considering it (silently) Murrue had come to the thought that the bridge staff (and at least a chunk of the crew) agreed.
"What...the hell?" Sai asks in the strangest tone, which had froze everyone in mid-action that had heard him. "Conn, Sensors, I have a very strange reading here, may be a contact of some kind."
"Sensors, can you classify?" Sai was still working over the controls as fast as possible.
"Oh, shit," Sai says, which was so grossly uncharacteristic of him that both Natarle and Miriallia had to look and see what he was looking at. "Clear the channels, I have enemy contact, lots of enemy contact," Sai says in a rush.
"Sensors! Report!" Murrue demands quickly.
"Enemy fighters, enemy Dropships, enemy Warships, multiple capital ships inbound our vector, intercept course! Eight minutes to contact!"
"All hands, level one battlestations, prepare for anti-ship, anti-capital ship, and anti-fighter combat!" Natarle broadcasts throughout the ship as the klaxons begin blaring their warning.
"Sensors, I want numbers," Murrue orders.
"Reading at least fifty enemy fighters, various sizes from forty to one hundred tons, eight dropships between two different sizes, two warships. The warships are about half the size of theFalcon's Nest, one slightly larger than the Falcon's Nest."
"Captain, if we go head-on into that, we're asking to get blown to hell and back," Natarle says, and though she was stating the obvious the head-on approach might have seemed a valid option to Murrue. In truth Murrue had already discounted such a plan, the only other option she was seeing was to dive into the atmosphere and hope the enemy couldn't effectively target her on the way down. It would be a forlorn hope, she knew, since those Warships were perfectly capable of shooting at the surface of the planet, much less something in high atmosphere.
"All right, Natarle, any ideas?" Murrue asks after ten seconds.
The first thought that came to mind was a conversation that Hikaru and Natarle had some time prior, in fact before they had left Cephiro. They had not been able to apply that tactic at that time, but now was a good a time as any. "Yes, actually, something I picked up from Hikaru. Reverse course and run for it. If they really want our heads on pikes, they'll follow, and their forces will get strung out. As they do we kill them off one or a few at a time."
"You learned that from Hikaru?" Miriallia asks, rather dumbfounded that such a tactic was in said Magic Knight's repertoire.
"Who learned it from her elder brother," Natarle confirms. "Captain, if we expect to walk away from this, we have to limit how they hit us and how many of them at one time can do so," She tacks on to validate her plan.
"It's our best bet right now. Newman, swing her around and prepare to break orbit, set your speed just barely slower than the mid-range-speed fighters. Chandratta, you have fire authorization on the fighters only for now, Natarle, please deploy all our available mobile forces. All weapons released on ship and mobile forces."
"Conn, Control, I have Blitz and Windam ready for launch at this time," Miriallia reports.
"Launch them as fast as possible, Miriallia, no priority at this time except getting them out there and ready," Murrue orders.
The ship shuddered as the launch catapults fired off the first two of the mobile force, being Blitz and Windam. Thirty seconds later, the Duel was shot out the port side, followed in ten seconds by the Moebius Zero on the starboard side.
"What the hell is Duel carrying?" Murrue asks as the Duel makes a rather lazy turn in front of the ship and comes in for a landing on the rear deck of the ship, where it could stand and take shots at the incoming enemy.
"A whole bunch of different things," Miriallia notes. Yzak had taken to the welding torch with a vengeance, assembling two different hand-held weapons to compliment his already diverse weapons on the Duel. The foremost was a replacement for the LRM box he had assembled and subsequently lost on Romulus, only this one was assembled of two LRM-15 packs instead of the single LRM-20, and had more ammo available to it in an actually armored chassis. The other weapon even Miriallia did not recognize, though from the fact that it resembled a Mp5 submachine gun with something slung under the barrel, she could guess it was a ballistic weapon of some type.
"Well, so long as they work, that's fine with me, I guess," Murrue says warily.
It was almost a minute before anyone else launched, then the Strike and Aegis were out and about, Kira armed with the IWSP Pack as well as one of the two new rifle/laser combination weapons that Athrun, Hikaru and Kira had assembled, and Aegis had its equivalent weapon as well. Thirty seconds later, Rayearth launched and immediately moved to where Kira and Athrun were taking station on the sides of the ship, ready to move forth in pursuit of nearby fighters. Selesce and Buster both launched at the same time, and the hangar bays closed down to prevent lucky shots from entering and killing the deck crew.
"Conn, sensors, the plan is working, the enemy is stringing out in pursuing us. The first fighters should be coming in range here in a few," Sai says.
"Chandratta, give them something to think about, fire all missile tubes with anti-air shrapnel warheads."
"Roger that," Chandratta replies as he dials in a command that he had just set up days prior with Athrun's help. All twenty-four missile launchers rearmed with the requested missiles, though did not fire for two seconds. The forward-facing missile launchers fired first, firing from the rearmost-forward, and after the missiles got two hundred meters forward of the ship they began to arc inward, turning 180 degrees completely around the ship and accelerating hard toward the rear. As they reach predetermined points the rear-facing silos began firing, the forward-most silos firing first, then the rearward silos. What this amounted to was a veritable wall of missiles headed straight toward the onrushing fighters.
"What the—time on target?" Murrue asks as she watches the sensor plots of the missiles headed toward the enemy. "I didn't think our systems were capable of that!"
"Athrun, Kira and I have been tweaking the fire control systems over the past weeks. I've got a lot of dirty tricks up my sleeve now and I intend on using them," Chandratta notes with a bit of humor.
The missiles began splitting open when they reached the vicinity of their determined targets, though for the most part the fighters in the second and third range brackets had time to react and some even managed to dodge the incoming attack outright. Because the enemy was spread out in three dimensions, there was no chance of attack overlap (where missile patterns would hit more than one fighter), but by the same token there was no warhead fratricide as well. On the other hand, some fighters got two missiles all to themselves, and were severely damaged as a result. And, not the least of injuries added to insult in this one attack, several of the fighters also flew into the missile body as it was headed in the opposite direction at several thousand kilometers per hour, engine still burning and all; such a hit was devastating to even the heavier fighters. By the time the fighters blitzed past the fiberglass casing of the missiles they had just been socked by, two of their ranks had fallen prey to the missiles, each hit with two missiles and finished off by one of the missile bodies flying into the nose of the craft and into the innards of the fighter.
- - - - -
"Oh hell yeah, two down already!" Yzak half-shouts as he centers his weapons on the oncoming Visigoth-class fighters, more or less completely ignoring the pathetically small and faster Batu that was so favored by the Falcons, but did not have the striking power to really threaten his Gundam. Besides, trigger-happy (Chandratta) had one very large array of smaller weapons to deal with them.
"Mobile forces, fire at will, fire at will," Miriallia orders the the stead of Natarle. "If you pursue, keep it close to the ship," she tacks on after a moment.
Yzak's left hand nicks a control on a nearby panel, and as his systems give him a lock tone on a rapidly approaching enemy fighter. After a moment he hauls back on both left and right triggers, firing both his shoulder-pack double-fifteen and the beam rifle. Most of his volley hit on one fighter, which was enough to divert its attack away from the ship. "Damn, these suckers take a lot of killin' to kill," Yzak notes as the fighter blazes past, managing to dodge the ship-mounted ERPPC in the rear but not the array of Pulse Lasers; with those hits, the fighter was severely damaged to the point of armor breach.
"Uh, Captain, I think we got the performance envelopes of those enemy Dropships wrong, they appear to be closing now," Tolle notes from his position on the rear deck of the ship.
"Actually, Newman is drawing them in closer at this time. Watch out for the fighters, Tolle," Miriallia warns. "All mobile forces, launch and close with enemy fighters, just don't stop moving whatever you do!"
"Roger that!" Kira shouts as he hammers his jets to leap off the deck and wade into the growing furball against the Wolves. In two seconds he had the anti-ship swords drawn and readied to slice into the oncoming fighters. Two managed to dodge him as he came off the deck, but a third fighter did not, instead realizing a moment too late what he was intending with the 9-meter-plus blades bared and set for the collision. The fighter in question had taken it quite rough from one of Chandratta's missiles and actually had suffered an armor breach to the nose; when the Anti-ship sword struck just to the side of the cockpit, it went straight through the soft fuselage and even had enough striking force to cleave the entire craft roughly in half. The pilot was fortunate enough that the cockpit was more or less undamaged and he ejected less than three seconds later.
"Holy shit, Kira," Kuzzey says as Chandratta worked his controls furiously. A pair of Valiant slugs joined the evolving battle, targeted on a pair of the enemy's heaviest fighters, Kirghiz, on the premise that taking them down at range would be the best move possible for the team as a whole. One missed by a matter of meters, though in space that distance could have easily been kilometers to the same effect: the pilot of that fighter was scared shitless that an enemy Warship had just put a naval gauss rifler slug that close to his fighter. The second slug found its mark, instantly converting a Star Commander's personal ride into a fireball still headed toward the Archangel; even at 100 tons, the Kirghiz is still unable to take the abuse of a 500-kilogram nickel-ferrous slug headed in the opposite direction at very high speed.
Nicol had maneuvered to the Archangel's port and wide, ostensibly to get a different angle on the enemy that wanted them clearly dead. This had the effect of drawing them into the ship's broadside arc as well as giving him a different angle, though Chandratta was more focusing on the action to the rear rather than the sides and Nicol got no assist. His maneuvering did not go unseen; a Jagatai outfitted for armor-busting decided to take personal interest in the shadow Gundam, and as they closed they traded shots, the enemy landing a pair of Ultra-20 cannon bursts and Streak-six SRMs on the Blitz, though such attacks had no effect on the Phase Shift armor. Nicol fired three rounds of beam rifle at his fighter, though only one beam landed on the enemy fuselage as it blew by the Gundam real fast.
The Helldart silos spoke next at the incoming fighter groups, Chandratta had the silos broke down into four groups of four for the battle for ease of targeting. As the missiles moved in, two of the targeted fighters fired wildly at the stern of the Archangel, and strangely enough for as large a target as the Archangel is, hitting was a totally different story in space combat. One hit with both slugs from an ultra-20 autocannon volley and a flight of Streak SRMs; the other had been seriously damaged by the anti-air missiles prior and had only two Large Pulse Lasers to use on theArchangel; both hit. In retort, the Helldarts that slammed into the enemy fighters destroyed the Jagatai that had hammered the ship with the autocannon, had chunked the Visigoth that had laser-raked the arse of the ship, tore two serious rents in another Visigoth, and chunked serious armor off a Jenghiz with two hits (the other two missiles were killed by warhead fratricide again).
"Huh—oh, shit! Conn, sensors, enemy Warship has us locked up!" Sai shouts as he gets a good cut on what was dwelling on the ship with some heavy sensors.
"Newman! Hard to Starboard!" Murrue shouts. It was enough that she was able to get the ship clear of one of the enemy Heavy Naval PPC blasts, but not the forward battery on the enemy ship. The sound of the paired Heavy Naval PPCs hitting translated throughout the hull, though when Murrue checked the damage board it was actually a lot less than she expected.
"Oh CRAP!" Newman half-shouts as the ship turns farther into the dodge than he intended. With some quick maneuvering he had it back on the course he set. "Whew, we're alive!"
"Chandratta, do we have an angle for return fire?" Natarle asks quickly.
"Valiants and missiles only," he replies. "Gottfried turrets are out of range."
"Load Sledgehammers and Valiants, we're going to scratch more of those fighters," Murrue orders.
"Conn, Sensors, incoming!" Sai shouts as four fighters and the other Warship take their liberties on the ship and the Gundams. A Jenghiz with a completely energy weapons struck the rear of the ship with four Large Pulse Lasers, each laser causing an amount of damage to the ship that was less than nominal for the weapon but enough to remove armor overall. A Visigoth came in close to the ship's starboard side, blazing away with the LB-10X autocannon in its nose and the three ER Medium Lasers; all hit since the pilot had the time to line up on the ship properly, though the pilot did not have enough time to dodge the broadside Igelstellungs and Ultra-10 Autocannons and left the attack run far more damaged than the side of the Archangel. Another Visigoth followed the same vector in, and even fired on the ship with the same weapons as the prior, but due to severe combat abuse prior he only hit with a Streak SRM4 and a single ER Medium laser, completely missing with the mighty LB-10X and the other lasers (1). Despite the damage, he got away clean off the attack run, having taken no shots from the ship's point-defense grid. In comparison, the shots from the enemy Warship were even less effective than the fighter strikes to point, as the laser strikes at extreme range against a moving target were really a case of luck hitting, and none hit.
A Jenghiz-class fighter had targeted the Strike, having seen that Gundam had chopped the Batu in half the long way, and this Jenghiz was outfitted with straight energy weapons for intercept missions. Kira was fast enough to haul around and block three of the four incoming Large Pulse Lasers from his rear, but not fast enough to get all four; the laser penetrated the right half of his IWSP pack and rendered the right cannon barrel completely useless, but did not penetrate to his Gundam. "Strike's hit! Half my IWSP pack weapons are useless right now!" He puts out on the radio as a pair of large capital missiles streak by his Gundam, headed for the Aegis. At the last moment Athrun jammed his throttle to the max and ducked over the missiles aimed at him, using his beam saber to chop the 50-ton missile in half the long way as it passed under his Gundam. The explosion as his beam saber crossed the mostly-empty fuel tank threw the Aegis for a loop, but Athrun was able to bring it under control rather quickly. The second missile missed completely.
"Damnit Strike, don't let them line up on you!" Yzak shouts angrily.
"Right," Kira replies drolly as he lines his weapons up on a passing Visigoth (2) and unloads, the pilot caught unawares as the 120mm cannon, the 35mm rotary MG, and the beam rifle all hit the fighter as it passed by. He managed to hit with a second beam rifle shot, but not a third as the enemy pilot began maneuvering to avoid it. Kira moved clear of the firing line after that, dodging around the aimpoint of a pair of Jenghiz that were trying to sight him up to continue the damage already dealt to him.
As the ship had shifted course, the enemy ships had crept closer themselves, and the Gundams were even closer still as the pilots had waded in on the enemy fighters, trying to scratch the fighters before the fighters scratched them or the ship. The Dropships were out front of the Warships, and though ill-suited to the vagaries of space combat they had enough defense and offense capabilities that the Wolf Star Admiral had ordered them in first, to help augment the fighters. This they intended on doing, as each ship had a compliment of weapons greater than most the fighters on board and the heat dissipation to use at least some of them. One of theUnion C-class Dropships had even taken an interest in Athrun, and had fired most of its forward-facing long range compliment at the Aegis, which amounted to three Gauss Rifles, two ER Large Lasers, three Large Pulse Lasers, and two LRM-20 packs with Artemis FCS add-ons. Athrun was wise to the juggernaut that was trying to lock him up and took the hits in stride, blocking the lasers fairly easily and simply absorbing the gauss and missiles with his Phase Shift armor. Athrun's answer was a shot of Large Pulse Laser from his new heavy weapon system, as well as a shot of beam rifle being carried in Aegis' left hand (3). The Large Pulse hit, though the beam rifle missed the port side of the ship by a matter of a meter.
"Archangel, brace for it, a pair's incoming from starboard!" Tolle shouts on the main frequency. Buster, Selesce, Rayearth, and Windam were covering the close-in guard detail, the other machines were forward mixing it up with the enemy in close proximity. The two fighters, a Jagatai and a Sabutai, cleared past them with some creative dodging and made a run on the starboard-forward of the Archangel, reefing past the Igelstellungs that had already claimed one of their comrades in a smaller fighter. The two pilots waited until they were almost on top of the ship before they fired all their weapons, which gave them the best aiming profile for their heavy weps. The Sabutai ripple-fired his lasers, four ER Large and six ER Medium, the Jenghiz had an Ultra-20 Autocannon, an ERPPC, and two wing-mounted Streak SRM-6 packs to exercise on the Archangel. At point-blank range for a fighter strike, the only weapons that did not hit were the Streak SRMs, which failed to lock properly and never fired to begin with. "Archangel!"
"Minor damage to the starboard side, Tolle, don't worry about us," Miriallia replies calmly, knowing what he was worried about intrinsically. "Tolle, you have an enemy Dropship trying to lock you up, dodge it!"
"Oh crap," Tolle says as he traces down what was trying to target him. It was one of the Clan's larger transport Dropships, an Overlord C type. Athrun had drilled Tolle mercilessly on this scenario, where he was being tracked by someone with a lot more guns than him, and Tolle had absorbed the lesson after a full week's training on it. He hammered the main thrusters and one side's verniers, thereby shooting himself off at a strange angle relative to the enemy ship, which normally did weird things to a TTS, especially when their systems were just beginning to lock onto it. It normally worked for human-controlled gunnery systems and basic TTS, but not on an advanced assault ship TTS, which was more than half automatic and the only real man-in-the-loop instance was the actual pulling of the trigger. In this case, it worked enough that most of what hit him from the enemy ship was missile and ballistic, but not all. Tolle took the full of a Clan ERPPC to the dead center of the Buster's thigh, which immediately scorched into the interior of the leg and shattered the leg structure as well as rendering the leg jets unusable in that leg. The rest of what hit him, being missiles from the LRM-20s and a burst of Autocannon, was rather pithy and quite harmless to the Buster. "Buster is hit, my left leg systems aren't responding!"
"Dude, you ain't got no left leg, man," someone says in such a falsetto that Tolle could not recognize who said it. Indeed, what was left of his leg had been sheared clear off and was drifting with him in the general direction of the melee. Tolle eschewed it for now, instead linking his weapons in sniper configuration and returned the favor, the shot striking dead on and calving a significant chunk of armor off the ship, enough that the pilot had second thoughts of the attack run and let the ship fall behind momentarily.
"Kid, keep it moving!" Mu orders to Tolle as he maneuvers the small and incredibly nimble Moebius Zero in behind an enemy Sabutai and hammers on the rear of the enemy machine with the Gunbarrels and Linear Gun. The pilot may have been slightly prepared for a dead-on attack, but was not prepared to dodge fire from five different directions as Mu laid on him. The volley that struck into the enemy was harassing, small flecks of armor on a fighter that carried far more armor than the Moebius Zero, and actually carried more armor than the GINN Mobile Suits, yet it struck in the craft's far weaker rear armor rather than the main fuselage armor or the wing armor. Of what he shot, two volleys from each Gunbarrel and three rounds from his main Linear Gun, he missed only one of the latter, as the enemy pilot became grossly confused as to how one unit was hitting him from five directions at once. The amount of strikes, however, was grossly more than needed, as the fourth volley of Gunbarrel struck into the left wing and penetrated the armor there, burying an otherwise smoking-hot slug into the Sabutai's fuel bunker. What was left of the fighter was turned into a floating fireball headed off and away from the melee.
Mu reeled his gunbarrels in and changed course, hammering it to avoid an incoming streak of Naval PPC that was aimed more at the Archangel but was still not close enough to be a major concern to him or the ship. He lined up next on the Dropship that Tolle had torn an eighth out of after losing a leg to it, and lined up on the general area where Tolle had hit the ship once already. The enemy gunnery officer noticed the incoming contact a moment too late to preempt him, and all the crew of the ship cringed as the fire hammered the ship forward and to the sides. For Mu, it was the next best thing to a turkey shoot, as a Dropship is a whole helluva lot bigger than the GINN units he had trained for and fought over during his career. Mu's effort put all three of the Linear Gun slugs into the nose, each as powerful as Shiva on the Duel and at least as powerful as the Gauss Rifles carried by the Clanners, and most of the Gunbarrel fire into the forward or left side of the ship. The crew of that ship had just received a very harsh lesson: in less than ninety seconds, two enemy Mobile units had shredded a quarter of the nose armor of that one Dropship, and that was not their most powerful assets by far.
"You know, we might actually win this one if we can keep it up," Yzak says after he dodges around a Batu that had traversed real close to his Gundam. He was eying a Union C for some personal attention, but decided against since the fighters were really the greater threat than the slowpoke Dropships. His next 'victim' selected itself as it made a pass at the Duel with three Streak SRM packs and two LB-20X shotgun-style Autocannons. The pilot hit with all the SRMs that Yzak did not intercept with vulcans, but only one of the LBX cannons hit the Assault Shroud, and none of them managed to cause notable damage. Yzak had the answer de rigeur: a volley of LRM-15 and two taps of beam rifle combined with two Shiva slugs. One of the Shiva slugs missed, along with one round of beam rifle, but the remainder impacted the enemy machine square in the fuselage as it was pirouetting away from its attack run. The beam rifle and Shiva slug hit far enough back that it managed to impact the craft's engine nacelles and housing, reducing its ability to move drastically as well as maneuver. A subsequent two beam shots missed as the enemy maneuvered sharply to avoid.
"Alert, all units, Archangel is firing missile volley, repeat, Archangel is firing missile volley," Miriallia cautions to all friendly units, though it would be severely unnecessary as the Archangel FCS knew who were its allies and who were not. The LRM launchers on the starboard side all barked their full volley at nearby enemy fighters, the Helldarts targeted mid-range fighters, and the Sledgehammers sought out the heavier enemy fighters that were starting to get strung out and lagging behind the forward elements of the battle (ergo, Natarle's operational concept was working). A previously untouched Sulla found itself the subject of two LRM volleys, and after the impact the pilot found herself deprived of the ERPPC that was the main gun of her variant of the Sulla. A Batu careened through the three LRM 20 volleys from the rear starboard launchers and came away with a good chunk of its armor gone and missing a Medium Pulse Laser. The Helldarts did not lock on properly to four targets as Chandratta wanted, they locked onto two: a Visigoth that had taken an inordinate amount of abuse prior was reduced to flying chaff as the Helldarts shredded and re-shredded the venerable Clan Aerofighter, and a Kirghiz, the Clan's heaviest fighter in use that had firewalled his engines to get close to the ship, and paid for it with six Helldarts slamming his craft, three of which tore through his right wing and into the 'soft' innards of his craft. That pilot lived to tell the tale, as he punched out before the engine went critical.
The Sledgehammers were designed to take down a GINN unit with one hit, each missile carrying a large shape charge for blowing through the torso armor of the said mobile suit; this would prove to be a prescient feature when the Sledgehammers began striking the enemy fighters, who were heavy armored to the point of being able to take more abuse than a GINN. Of 24 missiles, 15 hit, resulting in another six fighters crippled or killed rather messily, including one that was lining up on Hikaru for a heavy attack run. "Oh hell yeah! Go Archangel!" Tolle shouts as the last of the missiles to detonate claims a Sabutai.
What celebration they had was severely short-lived.
- - - - -
"Conn, Sensors! Enemy Warships are splitting up at this time, they appear to be forming two sub-units and trying to flank and surround us, Captain," Sai says as he considers what they might be thinking.
"Concur, Captain," Natarle says as she switches one of her consoles over to the main sensors screen to verify.
"Conn, Helm, cease forward thrust, rotate the ship 180 degrees and center on the enemy smaller Warship. Weps, prepare to fire Gottfrieds, Lohengrins, Valiants, load all missile tubes with Wombats. Small Arms grid at your discretion, Chandratta," Murrue orders.
"Conn, Sensors, thermal bloom from enemy large Warship, she's firing!" Their maneuvering earlier had closed the gap between the ship significantly, and now the enemy Warships had a better shooting profile to the Archangel, especially since the enemy ship had momentarily turned broadside-on to the ship to fire most of its weapons arrays at the Archangel. 24 Heavy Naval PPC streaks joined 3 Naval Laser '55' and two large capital missiles, the latter targeted on Mobile Suits, the lasers similarly targeted, and the PPCs at the ship. The Archangel was just in the process of turning, so the hits came onto the rear of the ship without much in the way of interference, since Chandratta had not put up an anti-beam depth charge screen due to the interference it would cause with the point-defense weapons.
For the most part, the Laminated Armor did the work it was designed to marvelously. It absorbed the energy hits in stride, converting the thermal component of the attack into waste heat in the ship's coolant circuit and dealing with the rest of the attack effect in nominal fashion. That did not mean, however, that the attacks were soft enough that they caused armor-only damage. "Captain, severe damage to our rear and starboard quarter! Advise we change facing immediately!" Natarle shouts.
"Captain, we're down four of the engine nacelles!" Newman shouts. "Starboard thrusters have been damaged severely!"
"Damn!" Murrue slams her fist down on her console. She was relying on keeping the engines intact. "Newman, complete the hammerhead, Chandratta, weapons status?"
Before he could even answer: "Kira!" Miriallia shouts at her console.
"KIRA!" Athrun shouted on the open frequency. "DAMN THEM!" Murrue did not need to ask what Athrun was intending, his mind had become so bright in the background of the fight that she could sense his surface thoughts immediately. (4)
"Strike! No fucking way!" Yzak had watched as the capital missiles had tracked in on Kira, followed by the three Naval laser shots from the enemy warship. Kira had managed to dodge two, but a malfunction in the IWSP pack from prior damage had prevented him from dodging the third; the IWSP shield was definitely not suited to stopping a capital-grade beam incoming his unit, and the beam literally blitzed through the shield and obliterated his Gundam from mid-torso up. No arms, no head, half the body gone.
"Report!" Murrue orders curtly, her frustration and anger mounting.
"Signal lost to the Strike, Captain," Natarle replies for Miriallia, who was stunned silent.
"No...not Kira...not now..." Murrue says.
"No...wait, Kira's still alive! His cockpit's still intact, just heated up!" Miriallia shouts, then physically calms herself down for one important task: Fuu, can you recover what's left of the Strike? She asks telepathically, since Windam was close to the ship.
"Can do," Fuu replies through Windam over the radio channels.
"While you're at it, can you pick up my leg while you're in the area?" Tolle asks in a completely level voice.
"That has got to be the strangest thing I have ever heard over the radio," Sai says.
"I can't believe my boyfriend said that," Miriallia replies drolly.
"Miriallia, can Fuu recover the Strike?" Murrue asks.
"She's doing it right now," Miriallia replies. "As well as the stray leg of interest," she replies with a bit more cheer.
"Have Rayearth, Selesce, and Buster close with the enemy and engage at will," Murrue orders. "Natarle, cooling system status?"
"Almost all the heat from the enemy attacks have been dissipated. We are clear to fire all weps," Natarle replies.
"Chandratta, start doing the Dropships, take them out of the picture, but save the Lohengrins for the enemy Warships," Murrue orders.
"Roger that," Chandratta replies grimly.
Murrue had one of the external cameras slaved to the Strike's position, whereby it was spinning lazily as it drifted generally away from the enemy ship that had destroyed most of it. It was quite the wonder that the reactor in the Strike had not cooked off and destroyed what was left of the Gundam, though Murrue was going to count this blessing, not deride it. Even if the Strike was toast. Windam was just approaching the remnant of the Gundam, already carrying the severed leg of the Buster, and without much in the way of dignity grabbed an exposed armor panel and began hauling it toward the ship.
"Eat me!" Chandratta half-shouts as he slams the console, which fired off the Gottfrieds and Valiants at three separate Dropships.
It had been asked prior, and Murrue could not answer then, but now she could. The Gottfried beams will go through a Dropship the long way. It did reliably on the enemy Dropship that Chandratta had shot through, an Overlord C-class that was trying to close up on the Archangel in support of the enemy smaller Warship. The results of such were rather spectacular, as the beams had transited the fuel bunker the long way, converting the Dropship's propellant into a rapidly-expanding fireball that in turn converted the ship into a hail of shards headed radially away from where the fuel bunker was. The starboard turret missed its mark as the enemy pilot realized he was staring down the barrel of a Warship's beam cannons and dodged aside fast enough that the beam missed the starboard side of her ship by a matter of two meters. The Valiants were targeted on a Union C-class, the Valiants were more designed with the intent of immolating smaller targets than a Dropship but the 1.1 meter rail gun slugs were more than capable to the task; for that crew, seeing the two Rail Gun slugs slam into their ship and shear almost all their side armor off the ship in one fell stroke was enough to give them second thoughts about this campaign of extermination. The ship was not crippled or destroyed, per se, but it would not take more than a token effort to finish it off.
"Nicol! We're goin' in!" Yzak shouts as the Duel hammers it toward the enemy forces. Nicol knew now was a time to retaliate, since the enemy would be stunned by the immediate loss of one of their Dropships (the Archangel was renown for taking down one of ZAFT's land battleships in one good shot, so could it happen here, he figured), so he joined the advancing units in the assault advance as the Archangel started thrusting to meet the oncoming enemy as well.
"The Strike is recovered. Please, everyone, watch out and don't get caught in the ship's fire," Miriallia relays to the pilots.
Nicol had charged in with the intent of dragging his beam saber down the side of an enemy Dropship. To accomplish this, he had to get past the fighter screen, what the Archangel had not scared stiff with the capital missiles and point defense weapons.
"Aw, crap! Mu's hit!" Mu La Flaga says as he found himself on the wrong end of a Visigoth's lasers. "My weapons are out and my engine's down to damn near zero!"
"Commander, fall back! You're not accomplishing anything in there now!" Natarle orders.
"Roger that, Mu is RTB," Mu says as he feebly brings his craft around and starts back for the ship.
"Nicol, give me a hand covering the Commander," Tolle requests as he takes station in the slightly damaged Buster between the general melee and the Moebius Zero.
"Roger that," Nicol says as he takes station to the starboard, where there were more enemy fighters that appeared to be stacking up for an end-run on the Archangel. Some of those fighters broke off, headed back for the Warships, while others appeared to be headed in on their initial attack plan. "Tolle, give me a hand on these guys over here, I think they planning something," Nicol says as the first of them leads off...back toward the Warship as well.
"A piss break or something?" Tolle asks. As he traverses his viewpoint, more than a few of the enemy was headed back toward the ships. "Now I know we didn't scare them that bad, did they do something wrong?" He asks without really considering it.
"They are running out of fuel," Yzak says; "much as we are," he notes after a few moments. "Archangel, Duel, I am RTB for gas and ammo," he says with more than a trace of dissatisfied grumble.
"Duel, Archangel, bring it in," Miriallia says. "Anyone else low on fuel?"
"I am, now that someone mentions it," Tolle says.
"Ditto," Nicol notes.
"I could stand a pint of bitters right now," Athrun says. "And a few gallons of gas."
"Or is it a few gallons of bitters and a pint of gas?" Yzak asks in retort.
"Tough choice," Athrun replies with mock gravity.
"Hold on," Nicol says as he rattles all three Lancer Darts off at one of the Dropships that was holding position as picket guards for the larger Warships, then turns before he could see what happened with his shots. They headed back to the ship amid a cloud of return fire, before the undeclared cease-fire really took hold and the guns of both sides were silenced, at least temporarily.
"Windam, Rayearth, Selesce, you may land in the hangar deck or on the foredeck of the ship for a few minutes breather."
"Thank you, Captain," Hikaru replies. "I know...we haven't done much today, but—"
"This really isn't a normal battle for you three. Just do what you can and don't get killed. I don't want to explain what went wrong to your parents." Murrue's voice definitely held the hint of worry.
-x-x-x-
The undeclared mutual order to cease fire was short-lived, no more than ten minutes and apparently no longer than it took to maneuver the two Warships to a point where they could fire supporting broadsides on the Archangel, with the Dropships dead ahead of the Archangel to 'discourage' the smaller and far faster Warship from trying to blitz through the line and create a crossfire situation between the two Clan Warships. All the mobile forces of both sides had been recovered in that time as well, to take on basic repairs, fuel, ammo, and for the pilots to take a small breather. The Clan fighters would likely not be ready for launch again for another few minutes, but the Hangar Deck on the Archangel was versed in doing these things faster and better, to get the mobile units out and ready for battle as quickly as possible. They had had to do so for the battle with Zagato and Emeraude, lo those many months past, and would do it again when needed.
"They're trying to force the issue by opening the best of their arsenal to us," Natarle says as she watches them move on the sensor plotter.
"Conn, Sensors, thermal bloom in all ships at this time," Sai says, suddenly worried of what was coming down the pipe for them.
"Pay or play time," Murrue says. "Newman, you know how to get us out of this," Murrue says as Newman was already beginning his part of the plan.
With some creative maneuvering, Newman was planning on using the often-overlooked third dimension of space warfare, ducking under the enemy fire and coming up from below their ships, where the average ship had limited fire capabilities. The Dropships would have the ability and speed to counter his actions, though Chandratta had serious plans for the Dropships as soon as they cleared the enemy fire. To execute, he lowered the bow almost to straight vertical compared to the enemy advance and hammered the engines, what was left of them, though when stacked against the ship having lost a third of the engine speed of the Archangel still put it faster than the enemy ships.
"Hangar Deck, CIC, what is the status of the Gundams?"
"Two minutes, Commander, and Duel 'n' Aegis will be good to go," Murdoch replies almost immediately.
"Make it fast," Natarle says before she cringes at the incoming wall of enemy fire. The ship was jarred incredibly violently by the array of hits from the capital arsenals of both ships, but the armor held most of the damage at bay. All told, theArchangel had just calved more than three quarters of its forward armor in one stroke, and taken significant damage to both sides.
"Conn, Weps, we just lost the anti-beam depth charges to starboard fore," Chandratta notes.
"Then favor the starboard side after we fire our first Lohengrin shots," Murrue orders. "Newman, bring the nose up, they can't do much else to us until their guns recharge," What was left of their attacks were little more than capital missiles hardly a serious threat to the Archangel. "Chandratta, take down the smaller enemy ship, now," Murrue orders coldly.
"Firing Lohengrins, Gottfrieds, Valiants. Wombats have lock on enemy Dropships," Chandratta notes
"Stay the Wombats, we'll shake them to the core, see if Clanners can have second thoughts when we cut their ship down in one volley," Murrue replies coldly. She was not pleased with the necessity of killing off a whole Warship like this, but such was the necessity of the battle. And she still wanted to go home.
"Solid laser lock now, firing!" Newman had reoriented the ship fast enough that the Gottfrieds took a few moments to finish tracking in, but the Lohengrin cannons were on target almost immediately. The four emerald beams and the two scattering positron beams fired from the ship, immediately driving the cooling system to the max from the PPC hits it had just received, but the reengineered cooling system handled it with alacrity.
Chandratta would later come to regret his semi-bloodlust in this case, for he knew intrinsically that what he had done was bloody in no small fashion, and his hands had ended the lives of hundreds in that single stroke.. The Lohengrin beams swept from stern to bow across the keel of the ship, the Antimatter beams chopping through the solid armor material with far less hesitation than any weapon seen in the Inner Sphere prior (5, 6). One beam chopped through the main engine housing, the other chopped through the mostly-recharged K-F Drive, the positrons reacting with the gross excess of electrons in a hellish reaction that tore the ship into two chunks, the aft half itself detonating as the engines blew from damage themselves. The strikes of the Gottfrieds were pithy in comparison, and only added to the overall damage the ship took that would make it harder to glean anything useful from in salvage.
"Excellent shooting, Chandratta," Natarle says as the two halves of the Cameron-class separate violently.
"Yeah," Chandratta replies in rather a bit of a daze.
"Chandratta, it looks like they have blood in their eye, you're going to have to roughhouse the enemy Dropships," Murrue orders.
WRAAM. "They beat us to that thought," Natarle notes in a mutter. The Dropships had closed up to a range whereby they could bring their whole arsenals to bear against the ship, though since they were in standard-scale arms the ability of a Dropship to cause significant damage to the Archangel was rather limited. Not for want of trying, of course, as the volleys of Gauss Rifle, Pulse Laser, and LRMs proved.
"Minimal damage," Kuzzey reports; "mostly to the port-side forward, some to port-side rear."
"Armor breaches?"
"None at present, ma'am," Kuzzey immediately replies.
"I'm showing Gottfrieds up and ready, ma'am," Chandratta notes. "All weapons up except Lohengrins," he adds.
This fast? Murrue asks within the confines of her own mind; it had been barely more than thirty seconds and they were ready to fire again. "Full volley, knock down some of those Dropships," Murrue orders. "Newman, ease off the throttles, Chandratta put up a wall of Anti-Beam Depth Charges. They should stop PPCs," which appeared to be the main ranged weapon of the surviving enemy warship.
"Roger that," Chandratta replies as he dumps a full volley of Depth Charges to both sides. After those detonated, Chandratta began firing off the various non-beam weapon systems at the enemy Dropships, prioritizing the larger Overlord C ships over the Union ships. At the ever-shortening range between theArchangel and the enemy ships, he missed not once with the capital-scale missiles, though one of the Wombats was still too close to a preceding missile and was destroyed in the blast before it could get to the target. The four surviving Overlord C ships each received six Wombats apiece, two of the Union C ships received eight Helldarts apiece, and Chandratta spread the fire from the Valiants between two of the Overlords. After that dust settled (three seconds or thereabouts) he fired off all the ballistic and missile weapons in the point-defense grid that had a solid lock, taking care to barrage one of the Overlords that gave fair to getting in behind the Archangel. By the time that dust settled, one of the Union C ships was drifting, uncontrolled and without engine power, as the Gauss Rifles from the bow of the ship had blitzed into the center of the ship and destroyed the main supports around the enemy's engines and fusion reactor.
In ten seconds, the enemy ship lanced out with their weapons, though the energy weapons befell the screen of Anti-Beam Depth Charges and never got to the ship. The ballistic and missile fire raked across the ship as the Dropships all turned a different facing to the Archangel to being upon them fresh arsenal; the range was so grossly short that they could not have missed even firing manually. Two of the enemy ships did grossly miss their fire runs, however, as the Archangel had destroyed enough of their fire control systems that they could not target the Archangel even in manual mode. Most of the missiles and Gauss slugs went forward, on the foredeck and between the 'legs' of the ship, an area that was taking severe damage from the battle.
"Captain, we can't take much more abuse to the front or that's it for the hangar deck," Natarle says.
"I know, but we can't rotate too far or we present the rear of the ship to that battleship," Murrue replies.
Chandratta's arsenal spoke again, singling out two of the Overlord C ships, one each of the units that were now flanking the ship and made the mistake of passing right through the broadside arcs of the fire control system. Each ship got the full workup, including the Igelstellungs that he had more or less left unused except to intercept nearby capital missiles, which they did with fury. A Union C to the fore got the fury of his Gauss Rifles; enough damage to calve several more tons of armor off the ship, not enough to really cripple it further. To each side the ship hammered the enemy with ten LRM 20s, two Ultra-10 Autocannons, four Streak SRM-6 packs, and four Igelstellungs. To starboard, the enemy ship lost part of its weapon array; to port, the enemy ship started breaking up as the Igelstellungs and missiles tore into the frame of the ship and struck somewhat explosive internal components (like oxygen reserves).
"This is a strange time to feel weird," Murrue mutters to herself. "Chandratta, can we pop some rounds off at the enemy Warship?"
"Not yet, Captain," Chandratta replies. "Fifteen seconds," he adds after a moment.
"Conn, Sensors, enemy Warship is tracking us steady!"
"Brace for it!" Murrue shouts as the strange feeling increased a little more. This time, the fire was not all PPCs, it included ballistic autocannons as well. Very big ballistic cannons that hocked over a ton of ordinance in each volley. Thankfully, only one of those cannons actually hit the Archangel, the other two missed by a matter of meters, even through that one cannon—
"Captain, that cannon just chunked serious damage to the port-forward!" Kuzzey half-shouts.
"And those PPCs blitzed right through the Anti-beam Depth Charges," part of which energy had reached the ship and caused ever-increasing damage to the front of the ship.
"Calm down, they can't do anything for a minute, at least. Chandratta, since they relieved us of our port-side energy weapon protection, hit 'em with the Gottfrieds, Valiants, and Wombats. Discourage that Dropship with the Helldarts and rear point weapons. Then put up another Depth Charge screen."
"Captain, Windam and Blitz reporting ready to launch," Miriallia notes.
"Launch them fast," Natarle orders. "Have them focus on the Union dead ahead."
The ship shuddered from the catapult shots, but not from the firing of the main weapons. The sound of the 24 Wombats ripple-firing and the sight as they arced in on the enemy Warship was somewhat satisfying to Murrue, who was beginning to question if she would walk away from this battle; these Wolves had truly torn theArchangel three, four flavors of a new asshole, something that took four of ZAFT's best in her homeworld using four of the best Gundams in the said world to do it. It was slightly reassuring to Murrue to see all 24 missiles hit the enemy ship all across its side, and she could tell that the enemy's forward side was becoming a bit savaged, but the armor still held without issue. Moments later the Helldarts fired, centered on the Overlord C that had succeeded in getting behind the ship with a rough turning profile, and by the time the last missile impacted on it, the enemy ship was no more.
As soon as Nicol was clear of the Ship, he immediately targeted the requested ship off the bow of the Archangel and fired his beam rifle three times, followed by his three Lancer Darts, then he activated the Trikeros beam saber. "Fuu, follow me in and slash into that ship!" Nicol shouts as he charges it down after the last of his Lancer Darts detonates in the nose of the ship.
What happened next would forever be a blur to Fuu, though she did get the luxury of watching it in Tri-vid courtesy of Kira's 'unauthorized' ship mods. The enemy ship had changed target profiles from the Archangel to the Blitz, and opened up on it with everything that had not been destroyed in prior strikes. One of those happened to be a Pulse Laser bay, just the thing needed to hit when the Ship's FCS was three-quarters dead and not getting any better. The three Pulse Lasers all struck the torso of the Gundam and lanced inward, knocking out the coolant loop for the reactor. Without the coolant, the engine shut down as it could no longer generate power to contain the fusion reaction, much less power the rest of the Gundam. "Nicol!" Fuu shouts as she saw the lasers literally blow through the rear of his Gundam, followed by a volley of LRMs that impacted all over his Gundam, shearing the legs, the left arm, and the head clean off the Gundam as well as causing even more damage to the non-phase-shift protected Gundam's torso.
Some would say she was infuriated at how Nicol's Gundam had been violated. Others would say she tried her hardest to take the heat off him. Only Murrue and Miriallia really knew why she charged the ship down with Windam, her mind strangely clear and focused on the ship. Sword set; she ran the blade into the nose of the enemy ship and dragged it clear of the ship by slashing violently outward. This was accompanied by using Emerald Typhoon, targeted on the gash she had just created, which blew through what was left of the armor in the area an into the 'soft' innards of the ship and combat disabled it by taking out the bridge of the ship. When she came off the attack run, she was panting with exertion from the strike, though Windam had not taken any damage. "Nicol, are you all right?"
Fuu, he's badly injured. Get him into the hangar deck ASAP, Miriallia orders telepathically. Fuu could see where some of the missile pattern had struck around the cockpit of the Blitz, and she grabbed what was left of the torso to haul it into the deck as fast as possible.
"Chandratta, Lohengrin status?"
"Another fifty seconds," he replies. "Enemy will be ready to fire in ten, our mains ten after that."
That much was a cold, hard slap to Murrue's face. "Sorry, people, I don't think I was able to get you home." It went without saying that the next volley would decide the fate of theArchangel, and the said ship still had ten seconds beyond the enemy's fire turn before they could fire again, due to coolant system overload.
"Can't win 'em all," Natarle notes.
"Well I want to win 'em all and damn the consequences," Miriallia replies. She had no real idea how much that thought changed their fate.
"Thermal bloom, enemy ship is firing!" Sai shouts. They had closed up to a range whereby it was spitting distance for capital weapons, and all that was left was to see who survived after the smoke cleared. The shots were fired; once again, the Archangel got the horror of seeing the Anti-beam depth charges get blitzed through by the PPCs, a good portion of which hit the tail binder and front leg, followed by the pithy NL-55 bay on the enemy ship. What Murrue was really worried about was the Autocannons, and they did just as advertised to the Archangel; The three volleys seemed to lanced out and impact solely on the port-side 'leg' of the ship and immediately behind it, blitzing through what was left of the armor and into the internals of the ship behind the hangar deck.
"Damage report!" Murrue shouts. She was almost feeling just plain funky, despite the semi-depression that had come over her moments prior. She may yet live to see the next day...
"All weapons online, still charging! Five seconds!"
"Conn, Damage Control, we have a significant hull breach in the upper corridors just behind the hangar deck. The ZAFT Pilot's quarters are toast."
"FUCK!" Yzak shouts when he realizes what they meant.
"Conn, Hangar Deck, I can see out the port side to broad starlight," Murdoch says. "We lost about ten guys from shrapnel and one of those slugs blitzed in. What's left of the Blitz is gone."
"The pilot?" Natarle asks as Chandratta began typing up the next fire commands.
"He's clear, Fuu had him partway to the medbay before they shot," Murdoch replies with a hint of relief to voice.
"Chandratta, nail them."
"Gotcha, suckas," Chandratta says as he hits the 'execute' button. He was holding off on firing the missiles due to their heat flash compared to the Gottfrieds, and he wanted to save the heat available for the Lohengrins.
"All hangar crew take cover, they appear to be launching fighters again," Murrue orders, since the inside of the hangar was vulnerable she did not want them exposed. "Chandratta, Lohengrins?"
"Right now," Chandratta says. "Newman, give me an angle," he requests.
"Damn straight," Newman says as he uses the engines and the verniers to reposition the ship for a shot. It took just the time to deploy the cannons and finish charging to get lined up.
"Say hello to my little friends," Chandratta says as he finished entering the commands; though he had shoved it aside, even he was beginning to feel strange about his whole being. His hand hovered over the fire button for a moment, then he stabbed it.
The last thing any of the Archangel crew remembered was a sensation that combined being pulled in two directions with weightlessness with a bright white flash of some kind, similar to what one would see in the presence of a Flashbang..
-x-x-x-
"Aww shit, what the hell happened?" Murrue asks after she began stirring. She looked around and saw she was still in her seat on the bridge of the Archangel, as was everyone else. "Hey, Kuzzey, wake up," she says as she shakes his back. He was still warm to the touch, which meant he was not dead.
"Unh, I didn't do it, I swear," he replies blearily as he begins stirring.
"Holy crap, is this what a hangover feels like?" Miriallia asks as she begins levering herself out of her chair.
"Give me thirty more minutes," Natarle requests.
"Are we still alive?" Chandratta asks nobody in particular.
"If we're dead, I'm not objecting too loud," Kuzzey replies. "So long as the scenery improves."
"Uh, what the hell is that thing?" Murrue asks. Something was covering the forward window.
"It appears to be an octopus trying to suck on the window," Sai says as he gets a good look at it.
"We're underwater?" Murrue asks, then looks past the arms and body to see that they likely were underwater since it was almost pitch-black out there.
"Conn, Aegis, the hangar deck is flooded out right now, we may have lost more personnel. What's going on?"
"Aegis, Conn, we have an issue that we need taken care of if you can," Murrue requests.
"Go for Aegis," Athrun replies.
"We have an octopus trying to chew on the front window, can you clear him off?"
"Roger that, I'll just walk out the hole in the side of the ship," Athrun says. "Just what I need, scrape an octopus off the ship that's trying to give it a hickie. Where, oh where did my life go drastically wrong?"
"Deja Moo," Miriallia replies.
"Oh yes, we've all heard this bullshit before," Yzak replies. "Sort of."
Author's Chapter Afterword:
This is the destruction inherent to Battletech. Be afraid, kiddies, because it is possible that we'll be doing it again, only against worse foes.
I think I have little to say else about this battle, as the aftermath on the Wolves' side will be explained in a different fashion, but let us simply say that the Archangel just earned itself the 'badass' reputation for both space and ground battle. They tore serious chunk out of a McKenna-class ship and chopped a Cameron-class in half, not to mention immolated the Dropships and fighters, using only one ship and a scratch-up combination of mobile forces. If part of this sounded a bit mechanical, it was because I was actually using most of the Aerotech rules except the actual map tracking of locations. Random results are so much fun to work with.
The fate of the Strike and Blitz will be covered in the next chapter. Sorry, you'll have to wait to see if those Gundams survive.
All right, it's time for y'all to guess as to where
All righty, then, it's Review Reply Time:
TheGreenKnight63: Does this qualify as enough of a beat-down?
Chm01: Flay will get out of jail soon enough...then it's going to get real interesting real fast. As to Armored Core, I keep hearing about it but I am not versed in it. Sry.
Death Knight: Strangely enough, all those you just mentioned are on the list. And thank you for the compliment, comrade.
Arian: Thanks for the info, That I did not know.
FraserMage: You got that one right. Sorry about roasting up some Wolf, but they gave better than they got, it's just the Archangel really is hard to kill :P. Any word on my idea I messaged you?
Drakensis: You got that one right. I am a sniper/camper respecter IRL, so I'm always willing to throw the sharpshooters a bone.
The Baka Brigade: Macross is an old favorite, rest assured. That is a very strong possible at this time.
Knives91: Thanks for the review and cookie; does this count as more?
Gonging Apples: Okay that kinda weirded me out for a moment, but it does make sense...sort of. Yes, some people can do unexpected things when they try, Hikaru has a bad habit of that.
Archaon83: Warhammer 40K is not one I am familiar with. I may need to look into that. Thank you for the review, comrade.
Etienneofthewestwind: You know, that is a rather optimistic way to look at Yzak's fate, whom I should mention got away from this battle rather clean. It was Kira and Nicol that got beat down, not to mention the ship as a whole.
That's that, people. Keep them reviews coming, I look forward to the crazy ideas and commentary.
Next Up: Where the hell are we? Finding that out is going to be one big challenge, not to mention patching up the ship.
Footnotes:
(1): This fighter took severe damage to its Fire control system; he was basically dead-firing his weapons on manual in a beat-up fighter.
(2): If you are wondering why the Visigoth is taking so much abuse, this fighter is incredibly popular among the Clans; some of the Clans have as many as 1 in 4 of their fighter compliment as Visigoths.
(3): It is unlisted but assumed that the Gundams have a set of interface plugs in each hand, so this is a possible for the Aegis.
(4): This is my guess at what the act of going SEED would look like to a psionic.
(5): As there is no defense against Antimatter known except to not be hit by it, I am listing the damage of the Lohengrin and the ZAFT-equivalent Tannhauser as doubled against any target it hits, with some exceptions that will be declared and illustrated in story far later chapters.
(6): Official hit locations: aft, aft-left.
Archangel TRO (At this point in the story):
Class/Model/Name:
LCAM-01XA Archangel Class Mod 1
Tech:
Mixed Tech / 3067
Vessel Type:
Monitor (Non Transportable)
Rules:
Level 3, Standard design
Mass:
375,000 tons
Length:
440 meters
Power Plant:
Standard (C)
Safe Thrust: 6
Maximum Thrust: 9
Armor Type: Laminated Armor
Armament:
2 Lohengrin Cannon
4 Gauss Rifle
5 ER PPC
4 Gottfried Mark 71
24 MP Missile Tube
10 Medium Pulse Laser
20 LRM 20
18 Screen Launcher
2 Valiant Mark 8
8 Igelstellung
4 Ultra AC/10
8 Streak SRM 6
9 Large Pulse Laser
16 Helldart
2 ER Medium Laser
Overview:
This is the present status of the Archangel as of this chapter of the story. Granted it is going to need a paintjob and a shitload of screen doors after that battle, but such are simple details. To see the special rules for the Archangel equipment, please review the 'stock' Archangel TRO listed in Chapter 20, Flight of the Jokers Wild
Class/Model/Name:
LCAM-01XA Archangel Class Mod 1
Mass: 375,000 tons
Equipment (Mass)
Power Plant:
Standard (135,000.00)
Structural Integrity:
131 (49,125.00)
Safe Thrust: 6
Maximum Thrust: 9
Heat Sinks:
2,500 Double (1,936.00)
Fuel & Fuel Pumps:
7,500.00
Bridge & Controls:
938.00
Fire Control Computers:
91.00
Food & Water:
(150 days supply) (144.75)
Armor Factor:
1,552 Laminated Armor (C)
982.50
Armor Value
(Capital Scale)
Fore: 288
Fore Left / Right: 258 / 258
Aft Left / Right: 258 / 258
Aft: 232
Equipment & Options:
Cargo:
Bay 1:
Mobile Suits (1 1) (12) with 2 doors (2,400.00)
Bay 2:
Fighters (2) with 2 doors (300.00)
Bay 3:
Light Vehicles (to 50T) (5) with 1 door (250.00)
Bay 4:
Cargo (1) (15,292.75)
Grav Decks:
Grav Deck #1: 150-meter diameter (100)
Life Boats:
10 (7 tons each) (70)
Escape Pods:
2 (7 tons each) (14)
Crew and Passengers:
30 Officers (35 minimum)
50 Crew (90 minimum)
50 Gunners (78 minimum)
10 Steerage Passengers
53 Bay Personnel
Weapons & Equipment:
Loc, SRV, MRV, LRV, ERV
Heat, Mass
1 Lohengrin Cannon
Nose, 65, 65, 65, 65
1,000, 25,000.00
1 Lohengrin Cannon
Nose, 65, 65, 65, 65
1,000, 25,000.00
2 Gauss Rifle (C)(128 rounds)
Nose, 3(30), 3(30), 3(30), --
2, 40.00
2 Gauss Rifle (C)(128 rounds)
Nose, 3(30), 3(30), 3(30), --
2, 40.00
3 ER PPC (C)
Nose, 5(45), 5(45), 5(45), --
45, 18.00
2 Gottfried Mark 71 (C)
FL/R, 60, 60, 60, --
1,600, 20,000.00
6 MP Missile Tube (C)(60 msls)
FL/R, 30, 30, 30, 30
300, 3,000.00
4 Medium Pulse Laser (C)
FL/R, 3(28), 3(28), --, --
32, 16.00
2 LRM 20 (C)(72 rounds)
FL/R, 2(24), 2(24), 2(24), --
24, 44.00
2 LRM 20 (C)(72 rounds)
FL/R, 2(24), 2(24), 2(24), --
24, 44.00
4 Screen Launcher (IS)(60 scrns)
FL/R, --, --, --, --
80, 1,520.00
1 Valiant Mark 8 (C)(30 rounds)
L/RBS, 20, 20, 20, 20
30, 15,030.00
2 Igelstellung (C)(200 rounds)
L/RBS, 4(40), 4(40), 4(40)--
24, 60.00
4 Screen Launcher (IS)(60 scrns)
L/RBS, --, --, --, --
80, 1,520.00
1 Ultra AC/10 (C)(100 rounds)
L/RBS, 2(15), 2(15), --, --
12, 40.00
1 Ultra AC/10 (C)(100 rounds)
L/RBS, 2(15), 2(15), --, --
12, 40.00
4 Streak SRM 6 (C)(120 rounds)
L/RBS, 5(48), 5(48), --, --
32, 40.00
2 Igelstellung (C)(200 rounds)
AL/R, 4(40), 4(40), 4(40), --
24, 60.00
6 MP Missile Tube (C)(60 msls)
AL/R, 30, 30, 30, 30
300, 3,000.00
2 Large Pulse Laser (C)
AL/R, 2(20), 2(20), 2(20), --
40, 24.00
2 Large Pulse Laser (C)
AL/R, 2(20), 2(20), 2(20), --
40, 24.00
3 LRM 20 (C)(150 rounds)
AL/R, 4(36), 4(36), 4(36), --
36, 80.00
3 LRM 20 (C)(150 rounds)
AL/R, 4(36), 4(36), 4(36), --
36, 80.00
16 Helldart (C)(266 msls)
Aft, 40, 40, --, --
160, 1,332.00
2 Screen Launcher (IS)(30 scrns)
Aft, --, --, --, --
20, 380.00
2 ER PPC (C)
Aft, 3(30), 3(30), 3(30), --
30, 12.00
2 ER Medium Laser (C)
Aft, 1(14), 1(14), --, --
10, 2.00
1 Large Pulse Laser (C)
Aft, 2(24), 2(24), 1(10), --
10, 6.00
2 Medium Pulse Laser (C)
8, 4.00
1 Lot Spare Parts (5.00 percent), (18,750.00)
1 Levitator System
37,500.00
2 Turret Assemblies, Valiant
1,000.00
2 Turret Assemblies, Gottfried
2,000.00
1 Artificial Gravity Systems
3,750.00
1 Hot Springs
200.00
TOTALS:
Heat by weapons: 5,013
Total Ship Mass: 375,000.00
Tons Left: .00
Calculated Factors:
Total Cost: 1,485,460,000 C-Bills
Battle Value: 179,861
Cost per BV: 8,258.93
Weapon Value: 99,383 (Ratio .55)
Damage Factors: SRDmg 4,844; MRDmg 4,694; LRDmg 3,331; ERDmg 1,034
Maintenance Point Value: MPV 629,880 (200,123 Structure, 279,650 Life Support, 150,107 Weapons)
Support Points: SP 483,100 (77 of MPV)
BattleForce2: (Not applicable)