Inside the Nieruie, Bra'tac watched as Paul Stevenson fired their entire complement of pesqua at the 97 ship fleet growing larger ahead of them as both the Alterran threesome of Columnars and the Wraith ships moved towards each other aggressively. This particular subgroup of the Wraith siege fleet contained four Hive ships, 88 cruisers, two supply ships, and three of the rare Wraith battleships, each about half the length of a Hive ship and tapered into a long, pointed needle of a profile.
Bra'tac held the lox generators ready as he sat in the Captain's chair and waited for the Wraith ships to come within range. The lightning field generators were a medium distance weapon, capable of delivering a large punch with a 32 second recharge time, but limited to a range of only a few dekmas. The generators had to have a target to transfer the charge to, which meant there had to be a temporary connection between the two ships, unlike the directed energy weapon housed along the ship's central spine.
Paul would have control of that weapon, as soon as the pesqua reached their targets, but Bra'tac could have fired it already over the ever decreasing gap between ships, effectively sniping them from afar…however, the targeting data coming from Atlantis had given specific orders regarding each and every one of the 718 ships besieging Atlantis. Many of them had been tagged as 'no-kills.'
Bra'tac knew that meant the Wraith had Human captives aboard. Those ships were to be disabled, not destroyed, which meant specifically targeting engines and weapons without hitting anything critical. Fortunately, the pesqua had been designed for just such a task.
Bra'tac saw both their pesqua swarms, as well as those from their two sister ships, quickly jump across the gap and begin to swirl around a third of the Wraith vessels as the enemy fired their blue plasma cannons in an attempt to shoot the glowing yellow missiles down...and partially succeeded.
However, there were so many being fired that the Wraith couldn't shield themselves from the onslaught. Their biological armor caused the pesqua to use up an extra ordinate amount of energy to cut through, but their speed of penetration didn't diminish. They looped about through the cruisers, puncturing energy conduits and exposing the inner hull to space before their energy reserves neared depletion and they detonated inside, causing further damage. The targeted cruisers didn't explode in the fireball typical of metal built ships…instead they burned from the inside, turning into bright silhouettes of destruction against the blackness of space.
Thirty four of the cruisers were killed by the pesqua wave within the fleet Bra'tac was engaging. The four Hive ships had been hit too, but only their hyperdrives and some of their weapons batteries had been targeted, as well as some of their thrust-based engines. They were damaged, but not destroyed, and definitely not out of the fight. The supply ships had only their hyperdrives targeted, while the four battleships had been split two and two. Two destroyed, two wounded, based on which had Humans aboard and which did not.
With one quick blow, the 97 ship fleet had been pared down to 61, two of which really weren't combat ships at all. That left 59 Wraith ships against three Columnars…now without even a single pesqua in reserve.
"Stand ready," Bra'tac announced to his crew as they closed to within plasma cannon range. In addition to his Master Builder, he had Lorne, Zelenka, and Cadman along with six other Lanteans that had come from the Pegasus galaxy. A few Humans were also manning the secondary control chairs on the bridge, bringing the ship's command compliment to 17. Bra'tac had spent the past three days running them through battle simulations against the ship's computer, and though they were far from skilled gunners, they had gelled sufficiently to coordinate their strikes and learned where and when to shoot…something that the ship's computer alone couldn't do as well. Still, it had been given control of shield and armor adjustments, which it would make automatically in response to battle conditions.
"Mind your targets," Paul reminded them as they closed to within range.
"Fire at will," Bra'tac said, releasing everyone with a clear shot to fire.
The Nieruie had her two sister ships trailing behind her in a single file line, so as to maximize their fields of fire as they dove into the sea of the Wraith ships. Their forward arcs were momentarily obscured, but Bra'tac's ship wasn't. The few plasma cannons on the front of the ship opened fire on the swiftly moving cruisers that had jumped out ahead of the limping Hive ships while Paul fired the ship's main weapon.
On the relatively flat front end of the Columnar was a small, half sphere in the center of the circular silhouette. It crackled with energy before spitting out a thin beam of brilliant green energy at one of the approaching cruisers. The beam was about the width of a puddle jumper and lasted .73 seconds, which accounted for only 11% of the weapon's charge. Two seconds after firing, the emitter sphere crackled with energy again as Paul readied the ship to fire another low power shot.
The first green lance hit the prow of the targeted cruiser and cored a shaft the entire length of the ship, then impacted a second cruiser behind it in the aft quarter, also cutting through its dense armor and exiting out the far side, where it winged a third cruiser behind it.
Meanwhile, the Kilosei, on the Nieruie's starboard side, fired her main weapon at full power…not at the fleet in front of them, but at the secondary fleet of 32 ships approaching from their flank.
The Kilosei's emitter crackled with small arcs of green lightning before firing off an identical cutting beam at the lone battleship in the second fleet…one that had been tagged as a 'kill' by Atlantis, meaning no humans onboard.
The beam continued to fire for more than a second…which stretched into two seconds, then two and a half. At 2.7 seconds the beam didn't abate…instead a large pulse of equally green energy blasted out from the columnar and traveled along the beam, which continued to fire for a total duration of 4.8 seconds. Designed as a shield penetrating weapon capable of pinpoint overloading uber-strong shields in order to get some amount of destructive energy through, the weapon worked equally well against the shield-less Wraith ships, even though it was a bit of overkill.
The battleship took the cutting mean on the port side, approximately halfway down her length, but at an angle. It cut into the ship and exited through her stern, running almost parallel to her length. When the pulse hit the ship it was already nearly cut in half, which resulted in the massive amount of energy entering through the long slash and burning/exploding away the formidable ship's interior.
This time the bio-matter construction DID explode, in a massive debris cloud that threw bits and pieces of the ship into the single Hive ship it had been escorting. The Hive lost several plasma cannons to the ballistic debris, but continued to rush forward at full speed to reinforce the fleet Bra'tac's Columnars were engaging.
Bra'tac noted the destruction of the battleship, along with the approach of two other smaller Wraith fleets. The combined ship count was about to crest 150…which meant the slugging match was about to begin.
Paul continued to spear Wraith cruisers with powered down shots from the Nieruie's primary weapon until he'd completely depleted the capacitor. As it began its 10 minute 17 second recharge period Paul grabbed control of a number of plasma cannons from the computer and began racking up hits on the nearest Hive ship's weapon batteries, which had just begun to pound the Columnar's shields.
Finally the Wraith ships, now all firing an insane mass of blue plasma at the three diverging Alterran vessels, came within range of the lox generators. Bra'tac targeted two cruisers with the forward pair and unleashed two simultaneous orange lightning strikes against the ships.
The lightning jumped from one of the two targets into a second Wraith cruiser, bringing the hit count to three as the cruisers suffered small internal explosions and began to list out of control, unpowered. He noted with pride as his gunners threw their own wave of blue/green plasma into the damaged ships, targeting the holes in their armor and breaking them apart into debris fragments, completing the kills.
With his forward lox generators recharging, Bra'tac waited until the Nieruie passed into the Wraith formation and his aft pair saw fresh targets. He knocked down two more of the pesky cruisers as he kept a close eye on the ship's shield status.
What had been fully charged shields when they entered the fight was now quickly draining down past 50%, with the ship's potentia pouring as much energy as it could back into the shields to recharge them. Despite the Alterra's superior technology, the sheer number of plasma cannons firing on the Columnars was too much for them to handle…yet every minute that passed by saw more and more of those enemy plasma cannons destroyed, thus decreasing the damage the enemy could throw their way.
But Bra'tac could do the math as easily as their computer. It wasn't a hard calculation to make…
The shields were going to go down, and go down soon. Perhaps within the next minute.
"Paul, launch the drones," the only Alterra with any real battle experience ordered.
"They won't last long against that," his brother noted.
"They will buy time," Bra'tac said, unloading the forward lox generators again.
Paul released his plasma cannons back into the computer's control and focused on the drones in the hangar bays. He activated the silvery cubes as the armor over the ship's aft face flowed toward the edges like waves in a pond, exposing several bay doors beneath. Three of them, including those of the main hangar, opened beneath the protection of the rapidly diminishing shields and released a swarm of the tiny cubes.
54 drones transformed as they left the ship under Paul's direction and headed for one of the three battleships pounding on the Columnar with its tightly packed cluster of forward plasma cannons, two of which had already been knocked out. Paul ordered them to attack those cannons then returned his attention to the ship's weapons, grabbing control of his own batteries back from the computer and targeting the rapidly diminishing number of cruisers. They were the easiest to kill and most of them had no humans onboard. Also, they were everywhere you looked. The Nieruie was engulfed in the Wraith fleet, with even her sister ships nearly obscured from view by the motley blue ships.
The combat drones, with their targets clearly declared, headed straight towards the Wraith battleship and launched their small red orbs towards the ship's 26 forward plasma cannons, four of which had now been disabled. Smaller in size than those on a hive ship by about 40%, the sheer number of them in the same firing arc made for an extremely dangerous torrent of plasma within a small area of impact. Though these ships were rare within the Wraith fleet, their battle prowess had resulted in the capture of several Lantean warships 10,000 years ago that had underestimated how much concentrated firepower they could deliver on target…and right now they were wreaking havoc with the Columnars shields.
Those forward plasma cannons were shielded by armor, with their destructive blue energy traveling down an interior conduit before it was released into space…which meant the only direct path to the cannons themselves was down the barrel of their weapons.
The drones couldn't target from that direction, so instead they began chewing into the armor over the cannons, along with sporadic fire from the Columnar's much stronger plasma cannons. The damage the drones added was minor, but not insignificant…which apparently the Wraith took note of. They didn't redirect any of their ship to ship weapons against the drones. No, they needed those to pound down the weakening shields of the Columnars. Their technology could read enemy shield strength well enough, and they knew that despite the grievous losses they were suffering they were about to get through their enemy's shields, so instead of wasting their big guns against the drones the now 7 Hive ships engaged in the fight opened their operational hangar bays and loosed a swarm of darts into the mix.
The darts headed away from the battle in a big arc around the circumference of the fur ball in order to avoid the mass of plasma fire being exchanged between the big ships, which had been the reason they weren't launched earlier. Once they found a relatively clear opening, they poured through it and in towards the battleship under attack, as well as a trio of cruisers that the drones from another Columnar were attacking.
The Wraith darts opened fire on the slowly circling drones a few seconds before the Nieruie's shields collapsed.
When Atlantis took off from Lantea's surface it had a choice to make. There were 18 Wraith fleets spaced around the planet and 5 groups of friendly ships engaging them at different places. The Wraith fleets were converging, and very soon the number of enemy ships was going to overpower the Columnars. There were three enemy fleets closest overhead, but the largest fleet was just a bit farther off westward, which was being engaged by the lone threesome of Alterran Columnars.
However, just as Atlantis passed out of the planet's atmosphere, it became clear that the major hot zone was not Bra'tac's battle, but Bret and Teyla's escalating battle as four smaller Wraith fleets combined into a 253 ship swarm…which was quickly pared down to 211 by the pesqua attack, but that still left the two Columnars more outgunned than the rest of the fleet, so Atlantis veered west and moved to join the battle just heating up some distance away.
Fortunately, they didn't have to wait to get inside Wraith weapons range before attacking. The city's Joktala were able to open fire two minutes prior to their arrival and began sniping Wraith ships from range, starting with a lone battleship that fortunately didn't have any humans aboard.
Unfortunately the 9 Hive ships did, and they couldn't be taken out so easily, nor could their cannons or hyperdrives be targeted from this range. Matt did his best to take out as many cruisers as he could, in addition to the one battleship kill, as Atlantis rushed towards the battle.
Unfortunately Bret's Columnar, the Ransaa, lost shields just before Atlantis came within lox range, which Andara promptly put to use against the nearest Wraith cruisers. Meanwhile Sheppard launched small waves of Pesqua, targeting the hyperdrives on the 'no-kill' targets that had been missed in the initial attack, as well as the big batteries on the Hive ships.
That accounted for the bulk of Atlantis's weaponry, but there were still a small number of point defense weapons spaced around Atlantis's many towers and the edges of the pylons, which fell to O'Neill's control. Not as powerful as the plasma cannons on the Columnars, these neutron beams were in fact particle weapons that chucked a slurry of energy and particles in short spurts at targets with similar range limitations to the lox generators…yet the recharge time on the neutron beams was nil, which meant O'Neill had some very fast firing 'squirt guns' at his disposal…with pinpoint accuracy.
As the Ransaa's replicator armor began to blow away like dirt from numerous small plasma impacts, it fired the last of its primary weapon's charge and holed a nearby cruiser, cutting all return fire from it. The Columnar maneuvered up alongside the cruiser to gain some cover, but seeing as how the Alterran ship was nearly half the length of a Hive ship, the cruiser didn't provide much in the way of a barrier…that was, until the Ransaa's tractor beams snagged another half/dead cruiser and moved it and several more pieces of debris into blocking positions around the ship.
The Wraith fired between the gaps though, but several of their favorite targets became obscured, allowing the ship's computer some time to shift replicator cells from the top layers of other portions of the ship across the surface of the hull to the heavily damaged areas of the armor and reinforce them. The 'sand' that was being blown away from the ship was refilling itself in the craters as the overall thickness of the ship's armor was gradually decreasing.
After twenty seconds of pounding, the Ransaa's shields came back up, minimally recharged within the ship and redeploying over the surface. The replicator armor smoothed out beneath them just in time to see the shields go down again, and the Wraith began to pot mark the now thinner sand-like armor all over again.
All across space a flurry of action raged out of control. There were too many ships and too much weapons fire to keep track of, and within minutes nearly half the Wraith fleet was destroyed, but all of the Columnars' shields had gone down and they were taking damage to their armor, but as of yet none of the enemy's weapons had managed to touch the true hull beneath the replicator blocks…though some shots had come dangerously close.
Three of the 18 Wraith fleets positioned at odd points along the perimeter of their siege line, and a long way from the Alterran ships, had time to study the battle before they could close the distance and join the fight…and in those few minutes they watched with horror as the battle unfolded.
Despite losing shields, the Ancient ships just wouldn't die, and they were tearing up their fellow Wraith with alarming efficiency. They calculated that once they joined the battle they would have enough firepower to finish off the elongated enemy ships, but only at great cost to themselves.
However, they noted Atlantis's rise to orbit and knew that with the loss of so many ships and the spread out nature of the battlefield that they wouldn't have the necessary firepower to contend with the flying city's shields, not to mention it's formidable firepower. Seeing the writing on the wall, so to speak, the three outlying fleets began to slow their approach and power down their siege generators.
In Atlantis's war room Ryan watched the battle unfold with a critical eye. He knew they were pressing close to the limits of the Columnars, but if they could hold out just a little longer the Wraith's numerical edge would diminish enough that they could sustain renewed shields…at which time any hope the Wraith had for victory would be over.
When the three groups of Wraith ships began to break off, Ryan tagged the location of the ships with humans onboard as priority one targets notified Sheppard.
"I see them," John said after the new targeting data got to him. They were a long ways away, but they couldn't jump to hyperspace just yet. They had to power down their own jamming fields, as well as get beyond the range of the other Hive ships' generators, who as of yet hadn't bothered to power them down.
Sheppard launched another batch of pesqua, which split into three smaller groups and jetted off towards the fleeing Wraith. He let them go on their merry way while he launched more against closer targets. When the traveling pesqua got closer he'd reassume control, but for right now there were two Columnars that needed assistance in a bad way…one of which was about to be rammed by a cruiser…
"Jereior, deflect that ship!" Teyla yelled at her ship's computer as she adjusted the helm controls to try and create a more favorable angle of impact when the kamikaze Wraith cruiser hit their ship. It was approaching at considerable speed from the outside of the Wraith formation, and without their shields it could do a significant amount of damage if it made contact. At the least they had to slow its momentum down.
"Tractor beam generators 2 and 3 disabled," the ship's male persona said dispassionately. "Assuming attitude control to bring 5 and 6 into range," it said as Teyla's control was queried for release.
She mentally relinquished helm control and fired the closest plasma cannons at the approaching ship, chewing away at its otherwise undamaged exterior. Those cannons quickly passed out of site as the Columnar rolled over on its side to bring the starboard and less damaged side of the ship into view.
Three tractor beams pushed out at the Wraith cruiser and deflected its course slightly as the Columnar moved as well to avoid the impact…but was not wholly successful. The cruiser passed by quickly, clipping the starboard/aft weapons pod, sheering half of it off as the Wraith ship disintegrated upon impact. The Jereior started to spin about from the impact, but the computer quickly nulled the list and began to pull replicator blocks from other parts of the ship over the surface to the partial weapons pod, covering it with a thin layer of protection so the Wraith didn't have too obvious of a target to tear into. Regardless, the lox generator in that pod had been destroyed by the impact, leaving the ship with only three remaining.
Those three had secondary shields covering them, which had yet to be breached, though with the main shields down and the armor thinning, several hull impacts had been scored by the Wraith, destroying 12 plasma cannons in addition to the two tractor beam generators.
The ship's main weapon was also under fire, and its secondary protective shield failed shortly after the kamikaze impact. Subsequent Wraith plasma fire destroyed the emitter, but thanks to the ship's design didn't cause a catastrophic feedback of power. The weapon's capacitor was sealed safely inside the ship's interior, and couldn't be reached without deep penetration into the hull.
The ship's shields came back up briefly for a third time, buying the ship four seconds of coverage and allowing a little more armor redistribution before failing again as Atlantis's bulk rose up from below and blocked Teyla's Columnar from a third of the remaining Wraith fleet, absorbing a good portion of their weapons fire in the process.
Inside the ship the shields began to recharge, even as two of the shield generators were destroyed as the armor protecting them was blow away by a pair of plasma cannons on a nearby Hive ship that had had all the rest of its weaponry disabled. However, even with two generators destroyed, the other 14 generators were sufficient to shield the ship, though at a slightly less efficient rate of power distribution.
Thank Bra'tac for insisting on redundancy in the Columnar design.
Forty seconds later, after taking half a dozen more hull penetrations, the Jereior redeployed its shields for the last time. The Wraith fleet was thinned enough that the power flow from the ship's potentia was now equal to the rapidly diminishing plasma fire coming from the surviving Wraith ships. With its remaining weapon systems, it helped Atlantis and its sister ship clean up the rest of the enemy ships as the three disengaged Wraith fleets made their jump to hyperspace…
Sheppard's pesqua reached the first of the three fleets just before they were clear to jump to hyperspace and knocked out the Hive ship's hyperdrive, as well as the single supply ship in the group and two cruisers that were displaying priority 'no-kill' tags. The few extra pesqua he had after accomplishing that task he used to 'poke out' two plasma cannons on the Hive. The rest of the cruiser hoard he didn't care about. They weren't going anywhere.
The second group of pesqua reached one of two Hive ships, knocking out its hyperdrive just as its twin, less than four dekmas away jumped to hyperspace along with its 35 cruiser escort…
…and disintegrated all 36 ships as they tried to enter unstable hyperspace windows, courtesy of Janus's Attero device.
Half of the cruisers of the first group broke ranks and made the fatal jump to hyperspace a few seconds earlier, leaving their wounded Hive ship behind with those ships loyal enough to their queen to face death alongside her. Ironically it was the traitors who died first, splashing their ships' debris across space in an almost pretty spray of blue sparks.
The third group detected the destruction of their fellow Wraith ships just in time to abort their own attempted escape. They held place, not knowing what to do as John's third group of pesqua reached them and disabled their Hive ships' hyperdrives, along with three cruisers and another supply ship. Quickly deducing their limited options, they burned for high orbit, hoping to run away elsewhere in the system…though they had nowhere to go.
When the revelation of the reactivated Attero device crossed over the Wraith hive mind to all their ships, they reacted in one of two ways.
Some scattered, running away from the planet in random directions, no two ships on the same heading…while the rest turned on the remaining Columnars and began making suicide runs. The Hive ships that hadn't released their darts did so now and added them to the kamikaze groups.
Four Columnars took hits, the worst of them being the Nieruie. Two cruisers hit her prow, tearing off the front end of the ship where her tractor beam 'buffers,' designed specifically to counter this type of attack, had been knocked out. Her primary weapon was destroyed, and the first of the two cruisers imbedded itself in the Columnar's hull. The forward third of the cruiser disappeared inside, with the back half sticking out at an ugly angle.
The other cruiser deflected off the front end, tearing a wicked gash in the top edge of the prow. It careened out of control for a few seconds before an orange lightning bolt finished it off from one of the Nieruie's sister ships. All the other suicide runs were successfully deflected, either by the targeted ship or with help from their escorts. Bra'tac's suggestion for pairing the ships up had paid off in several ways during the battle. Ryan was truly glad to have his battle experience added to the Alterra's talent pool. In fact, he was probably the most knowledgeable battlefield commander that the Alterra had had since the Qizzic wars.
Still in the war room, Ryan watched the Wraith ships scatter away from Lantea and the butt-whipping they'd just given them, but the battle was far from over, and he didn't just mean the disabled ships still showing weapons fire that even now Atlantis and the Columnars were 'declawing.' No, a whole other angle to this battle was about to begin. To that end he chose one of the Hive ships that had her realspace engines disabled as well as her hyperdrive.
Ryan contacted his ships and got status reports on their damage. All of them were still mobile and partially operational, even the Nieruie, which meant the next part of their battle plan could begin.
With a look at the holographic map of the rapidly expanding battlefield Ryan mentally tagged the chosen hive ship and assigned one of the less damaged Columnars to watch over it and make sure that it didn't regrow its damaged systems as the Alterra and their allies boarded the ship to rescue the Wraith's food stores...