DR: It's easter time once more, and in the spirit of the holiday, I've decided to have a bumper update! First half today, the second on Easter Monday. And yes, this whole battle was modelled on the climax of Star Trek II.
Chapter 35: The Wrath of Achilles
For a few long, drawn out second Achilles feared that his ship was totally disabled. Then the emergency lights came on, and the panic that had begun to rise in the crews' guts began to subside. The consoles still worked, the systems checking out.
He turned to the major. "Damage?"
The major pressed his earpiece closer into his ear. "Chief reports one energiser down. We're running solely off Energiser One right now. Port forward laser is offline. Repair crews en-route to give detailed report."
Achilles nodded, sighing. Stepping back up onto the command podium he signalled the helmsman to turn after the Dreadnought.
Outside the gases closed in again, wrapping the battlecruiser in clouds and cloaking her damage, bright glows along her flanks. The once steady glow from her engines now spluttered, the overall glow dimmer than before. Barely able to make one-third speed, Thunderchild pushed onwards.
After a couple of minutes they emerged into a more sparsely packed area... and the Alliance dreadnought was directly ahead!
"All guns, fire at will!"
The gunners eagerly opened up, hurling their deadly bolts at the black monster ahead. From out of the gas clouds the larger blue-white bolts from the main turrets emerged.
Explosions dotted the starboard surfaces of the dreadnought as the turbolasers rained down on it. Chunks of thick armour whirled away under the onslaught. Some of the gunners on Thunderchild focused their fire on the pulse cannon turrets, going for the segmented cowlings. One detonated in a cloud of dark red liquid, ragged chucks of dark flesh flying away as the barrels whirled off.
Along the dreadnought's flank plasma billowed before spitting out in a hail of bolts. Achilles winced as many of them splashed across his ship's bow, causing armour to bubble away. He wasn't sure how much more she could take...
The Dreadnought slid behind another thicker region of ice and cloud, her sensor profile breaking up even more. She had the same sensor jamming systems as the Nightbringers had, but her sheer size and mass negated it somewhat. But in this region of heavy interference it vanished with alarming ease.
"Sorry sir, we've lost her."
Achilles nodded, breathing deeply. "Bring her around."
They swung around slowly, watching every wisp of gas, trying to see beyond the static on the screens. Throughout this Achilles remained in his chair, eyes fixed forwards. He no longer inquired about status reports on the wounded or the damage. He trusted his XO to attend to what needed to be done. Achilles' sole attention now was on the game of Cat & Mouse they were playing the Alliance vessel.
"Slow ahead..." He ordered as they nosed into a denser patch. Visibility dropped to almost nothing as they inched forwards.
The gases began to clear when the sensor crewman yelled out. "Contact! Bearing zero, zero, zero, range one micron!" As the words sunk in the view outside cleared... to reveal the Alliance Dreadnought bow on to them, and closing!
"Hard a port!" Achilles yelled. Thunderchild's prow swung to port sharply, rolling onto her port side as she did.
The Dreadnought opened fire, her forward beam slashing across Thunderchild's belly. Fortunately the gunners were too eager and left only a long gash in the armour. Three pulse cannon bolts streaked out, two hitting, one breaching the landing bay cross passage.
A hail of red darts stabbed back, savaging the upper prow armour of the Dreadnought. Another pulse cannon turret was blown apart, jets of black liquid spurting out from where it had sat. Armour crumpled under the furious bombardment, whole sections blown out. A pair of the spines that jutted out from the starboard bow were blasted off, sent spinning deeper into the nebula. One of the two light beam lasers on Thunderchild's flank had a shot, and it slashed up the side of the superstructure that rose up above the hull.
On the dreadnought's bridge the rumble of explosions grew to a fever pitch as consoles blew outwards. One of the crew who was sat near the front of the bridge was forcibly removed from their station, leaving parts of himself still connected as the rest of him was scattered over the deck. The person next to the unfortunate one didn't even flinch.
"Substantial damage to all decks." The XO intoned in a dead voice. "Fires across several sections. We're at forty-three percent combat capacity. Crew losses currently sixty-one percent."
"Damage to enemy?" The president asked, the eagerness and excitement clear in his tone.
"Unable to ascertain extent of damage, but her engines appear to be compromised." Through the window the sleek form of the Colonial ship slipped away, the murk hiding her once more.
"Bring us about. I want that ship..." The President ordered with malice.
X-X-X-X-X-X
Achilles frowned as he looked over the damage displays. Much of the outer hull was now shaded a light red, with some areas much brighter, indicating heavier damage. 'We can't take much more of this...' he thought to himself. So far the ship was holding together, but the continued plasma based assaults were wearing down even the tough Colonial alloys.
Turning his chair about, he stared out at the gases outside the ship. They had been exchanging fire with the dreadnought on a fairly even basis. At this rate, they'd cripple each other...
Achilles looked at his console, then began to rapidly type in commands. Using whatever data they had gathered over the course of the battle along with a psychological profile of the Alliance Leadership, the computer built up a profile of the battle, and plotted the movements of the ships. It had to extrapolate the movements of the Alliance ship, but maybe...
The sequence played out before him. He ran it again, this time from another angle. On the third viewing, a small smile began to form on his face.
The Alliance commander was aggressive and determined, but not experienced. All his manoeuvres had the hallmarks of two-dimensional thinking...
"All stop." He ordered. "Fire docking thrusters, take us down fifteen hundred metres, straight down."
He could see the confusion on the faces of his crew, but they carried out his orders.
Thunderchild came to a halt in a relatively clear area. Then slowly she began to sink downwards, the wisps of gases drifting over her form.
For a long minute nothing moved beyond the slow drifting of gas. Then a dark prow pushed its way through. It swelled out into an array of black spines, before leading into a scarred and mutated hull. It seemed to go on and on, before finally four engine arms branched from the rear end of the hull.
On the bridge of the Dreadnought the President leaned forwards as much as he could. "Where is she?" He asked quietly.
The dreadnought pushed forwards, sensors sweeping the area ahead of her.
They should have looked behind.
Thunderchild rose up, her bow swinging around to point at the dreadnoughts stern. Slowly she began to inch after the monster, following her.
On the bridge everyone was tense. They'd seen the Dreadnought pass over head on the scanners, but Achilles had ordered them to hold fire. He was looking for a killer blow.
Now the scanner was clouded again, but they could still see the wake in the gases that the dreadnought left.
"Look sharp..." He muttered, staring so hard it was if he was trying to burn the gases away with his mind.
Then the gases thinned, and the imposing bulk of the dreadnought emerged dead ahead. The sensors chimed with a hard lock.
"Fire!"
A hail of bolts rained down all over the back of the dreadnought, smashing armour and burning away organic material. The remaining heavy beam unit stabbed into the heart of one of the engines, burning right through. As fire erupted from the unit, more flames burst from various points on the main hull as the power grid was overloaded. A pulse cannon turret simply vanished as it was struck by a megalaser blast, while other bolts blasted deep into the monster. The beam stabbed out once more, first slicing right through one of the engine spars before carving into the hull where the starboard side plasma batteries were. The beam burned deep, carving through several plasma conduits. The released plasma greedily burned through the ship, creating a vast pressure wave that built until the entire side of the ship blew outwards. The forces generated caused the entire ship to twist, the keel bending under the pressure. On the port side hull plates were pulled apart as the ship flexed and bent, releasing the atmosphere within.
Within her hull the dark corridors and cabins were filled with light as fire tore throughout the ship, consuming everything in its path. Consoles exploded into lethal hails of shrapnel while crew were tossed about like rag dolls. Those who weren't burnt alive were often left gasping in the smoke filled air, or found themselves being sucked out of the ship via one of the many breaches that pockmarked the hull.
The dreadnought began to drift, her engines dimming to a faint glow. Flames jetted from all over her hull, and she was starting to tumble.
On the ruined bridge smoke hung thick in the air. The XO was crushed to a pulp, while the other crewmen were slumped in their chairs, or thrown bodily over their consoles. The Blue Sun Director stared down with lifeless eyes at a massive spar of rebar that emerged from his chest, slick with his blood, his mouth hanging open in a silent scream.
The President's chair was on its side. Empty.
Slowly a burnt hand reached up over a ruined console. It gripped shakily before the muscles in the arm tightened, dragging the man it was attached to up. The President's left arm was hanging loose, the bones clearly broken. The right rear quarter of his head was nothing but charred skin, the scarring wrapping around onto his cheek and forehead.
The comm crackled. "Attention Alliance Dreadnought. You are ordered to surrender your vessel, respond."
The president looked at one of the screens, then out the forward window, at what had held their attention until the attack. Then he turned his head, and began to drag himself towards a side console. Every movement was pained filled, and when he collapsed to the deck he nearly curled up and gave in.
"Come in Alliance dreadnought. You are ordered to surrender your vessel. Please respond."
The words spoken over the comm seemed to spur him on, and with a final effort he reached the console. Pausing to take deep, ragged breaths, he looked at the screen that displayed the Colonial ship that was idling behind his own.
"Oh no..." he rasped out. "...it's not over yet."
He faced the console before him; it was one of the few that were still intact. Reaching out, he gasped when his burnt fingers pushed down on the various switches and buttons. The screen flickered on, displaying the view backwards. Grasping the small yoke, he ignore the pain that shot through him as he panned the view until the bulk of the colonial ship filled the view, one of the rents in her armour lined up in the crosshairs. Gasping, he pulled the trigger.
Near the rear of the Dreadnought there was a blast of gas, and a heavy harpoon shot out, trailing a massively thick cable. It flew straight and true, slipping through a gap in Thunderchild's armour and digging deep within the battlecruiser.
X-X-X-X-X-X
"Report!" Achilles bellowed.
"They've fired a grappling harpoon into us. Looks like it went in through a breach in the armour."
A jolt ran through the ship as the cable went taunt. And then a transmission came through, laced with static.
"To the last... I grapple with thee..." The voice on the other end emitted a pain filled laugh, one of madness.
"Sir, we being dragged forwards. There's a powerful gravity well in the region..."
Achilles looked up, beyond the Dreadnought. "Oh frack..." he breathed.
Ahead he saw the answer to all the questions regarding this 'nebula'. Why it was so dense in regard to a normal nebula, why it had such an effect on their systems. And most critically, why no other ship had ever returned.
Lying in the centre of the Forlorn Nebula was an open region, marked only by a slowly spinning disk. The centre spun faster than the rim, the light becoming brighter the closer one got. And then at the centre... nothing. Total blackness.
A black hole.
Mal: (*swears in chinese*)
O'Neill: Ah crap!