Captain’s Log April 8th 005 SDE,

We are approaching a Valorian Military convoy, in preparation to raid the convoy for a stolen cloaking device that they are carrying. The council and I have agreed that the raid is worth the risks. The convoy itself is of no threat to the Enterprise. Neither the escorts, nor the freighters have shields strong enough to withstand our particle cannons, which normally struggle to penetrate shields. I’m confident that we can take the convoy before the local fleet base can respond. If not it is far enough away that we would have a full three hours to get what we want and vacate the area before they can reach us. Once we warp out of the area, I doubt the Valorians will chase us. Especially given how thinly their fleet is spread. They can’t risk losing to many ships to us, as it may threaten their position in this sector. Especially given the beating their twelfth fleet took three days ago, during the defense of their colony at Hemitar four.

The Enterprise came out of warp just ahead of the convoy and immediately generated a FTL disruption field and a jamming field as well.. Being common devices, it hadn’t taken much effort to obtain one to study. Which is why they had one aboard the Enterprise. Almost instantly the convoy dropped out of warp near the Enterprise.

“The convoy has dropped out of warp, sir,” reported Misaki.

“Kaori target the escorts, fire at will,” ordered Countryman. Immediately the beam arrays on the Enterprise glowed briefly before beams of light burst from the hull targeting the nearest escorts. The first escort was struck amidships from above, part of the beam went right through the shields and ripped into the shield generator. Knocking out the shields a couple seconds later and the ship explosively decompressed as the beam passed through the otherside of the ship. The next escort was hit on the port side towards the front of the ship. Her shields held longer since its generator wasn’t in the initial line of fire. The beam passed from the front, straight to the rear. Nearly bisecting the corvette.

Another corvette took a volley from a the Enterprise’s particle cannons. She had been attempting evasive maneuvers, but was unable to completely shake the weapons lock. She managed to avoid the worst of the fire, but several blue bolts slammed into her shields. Her shields held for the first few bolts, before buckling then a final bolt slammed into the hull and the ship broke apart. Then one of the corvettes opened fire followed by the others. The plasma pulses harmlessly striking the hull. At the same moment, the Merchantman freighters changed their course. Moving to get out of the area as quickly as possible. While also attempting to send a distress call. When that failed they launched a few beacons. At an angle away from the Enterprise. It would take a few minutes to clear the jamming field, but that was more than enough time for the Enterprise to deal with the escorts, and disable the freighter carrying the cloaking device.

The escorts almost fanatically tried to distract the Enterprise to allow the freighters the time they needed to escape. Unfortunately for the escorts, the freighters were to slow to clear the area fast enough. The Enterprise managed to destroy or disable all of the escorts in just under three minutes, then she made an immediate pursuit course for the freighters. As she entered weapons range of the freighters they opened fire with their aft guns, which were nothing more than useless pop guns. The pulses splashing harmlessly against her hull. Which wasn’t surprising since they were weaker than those mounted on the escort corvettes.

The Enterprise fired her cutting beams into the engine section of the rearmost freighter. Almost instantly the engines stalled and the ship lost thrust. Two more shots were fired into power grid, within seconds the freighter went dark. This freighter wasn’t the one with the cloaking device they were after, so they let it drift and chased after the other two. The second freighter was disabled the same way, but the third was disabled differently. As soon as they were in range they fired their Electro cannons the first shot collapsed the shields, and the second went right into the hull frying the freighters critical systems. As the ship started to drift, the Enterprise locked her mag tractors on it and brought it alongside.

Down in the lower decks, Tom and his squad of marines were along with several other squads were getting ready to storm the freighter. The ship had already been scanned and the cloaking device located. The Merchantmen class freighters have a crew of four thousand with a quarter of that typically being used for security. Who were used to dealing primarily with pirates. They were raiding the cargo bays which were mostly empty of people. Which meant they expected light resistance, the cloaking device was in a cargo bay to decks below their planned entry point. They were to make their way to the device, secure it and get out. The entire operation was expected to take ten minutes at most. Long before more than a squad or two of the security forces to arrive.

With the ship disabled the lift wasn’t expected to work, so they were going to make their own path. He double checked his XR-471 to make sure it was working. Like the ships guns, his rifle had been modified to the new standards. He rather enjoyed the increased punch and range the mod made to the rifle. The drop in fire rate made little difference in battle. He had just finished double checking his kit, including his side arm, grenades and breaching charges, when they were given the go ahead.

His squad entered the airlock, and waited a couple seconds for it to cycle, and then used a breaching charge to breach the hull. Once in they rushed down the corridor towards the lift shaft. They didn’t encounter anyone on the way, and met up with the other two squads. They breached the doors and made their way down two decks. One of the squads staying behind to guard the door. The lift wasn’t in the way so the easily made their way to the door to the target deck, and used another breaching charge to blow it open. As they were exiting the shaft they came into contact with two squads of Valorian security. The squads had taken cover behind some crates, and portable infantry cover shield generators. They generated a visible blue energy screen that served as portable cover for infantry.

Both marine squads dived into cover and returned fire. Tom fired a shot right into a security officer as he was coming out of the lift before diving into cover. His shot slammed right into the man's chest, killing him instantly. Popping out of cover for a short instant he fired another shot at a guard as he was firing. The shot struck the man in the arm. Charring the casing of the man’s rifle and reducing his arm to charred flesh. The man cried out, while another member of the squad tossed a stun pulse grenade.

The grenade landed in the middle of the formation. The security force dived away an instant before it exploded. A pulse of blue energy washed over the troops rendering them unconcious. Toms squad continued into the bay, while the other squad stayed by the lift shaft to guard the exit, and help install their impromptu cargo lift. Which was a net and manuel pulley they brought with them.

It didn’t take Tom’s squad long to locate the crate they were after. They were halfway back to the lift, when additional resistance broke into the bay. Tom and a buddy laid down cover fire while the other two dragged the crate back to the lift. Tom fired on those coming from the upper walkway to the left. While his buddy fired on the squad coming from the walkway on the right. Their personal shields being of limited help to a good hit. After about a minute the squad had reached the lift and the local security squads were either dead or suppressed. It took barely any time with improbtu lift to raise the cloaking device, and only a couple minutes more to climb back up the shaft and exit the craft.

Around the same time they were boarding the Enterprise, three new ships entered the engagement zone. All three ships were of a class unknown to the Enterprise and faster than any previously identified Valorian ship class. They were also a fair bit larger than previously encountered ships.

“Scan those ships, I want to know what we are dealing with. Also I want to know how they got here so fast, that distress signal was only sent twenty minutes ago,” barked Countryman.

“They were part of another convoy about three lightyears from our position. My scan reveals heavy energy shields with an unusual matrix, and multiple heavy weapon banks on all levels. All of those of the new design the Toral sent us. Each one has three thousand banks of concussion pulse plasma cannons and four hundred heavy plasma torpedo banks. These are clearly a new type of Valorian Dreadnought,” said Misaki. Countryman did a quick mental calculation and noted that the three ships must have exceeded warp eight to reach them as quickly as they had. He figured they would not be able to go to warp so quickly after pushing the engines that high. Even if it had only been a few minutes.

“Is our assault team aboard?” said Countryman.

“Yes, sir they just got back on board, the airlocks are cycling now,” reported Misaki.

“Helm, get us out of here maximum warp,” ordered Countryman not wanting to stick around or test how well the armor would hold up against those new guns of theirs. Almost instantly he heard the familiar hum of the warp engines powering up as the ship accelerated rapidly towards lightspeed. Mere seconds before the ship was about to transition to warp speed the ship shuddered violently and the hum vanished.

“Hull breach port side nacelle sections 43 through 117, primary and backup port warp engines disabled. All sub engines in those sections have been disabled,” reported the engineer at the damage display console. Countryman thought, “guess we are fighting after all.”

“Full power to hull plating, bring us about to bearing four nine mark two six three. Load all forward torpedo tubes. Target the lead dreadnought,” ordered Countryman.

The Enterprise came about, several volley of heavy weapons fire flying towards her position. Several shots impacting the hull, a few being absorbed and others punching through the plating. Then the Enterprise opened fire with her forward torpedo launchers. Dozens of blue streaks zipped across the void. Slamming into the energy screens of the Valorian dreadnought, with less than half the normal amount penetrating the shields. The remaining torpedoes slammed into the hull dealing significant structural damage. However the dreadnought proved to be better built than most Valorian ships. As she withstood the barrage. Half her weapon banks were destroyed, her hangers which were wide open and launching fighter craft were ripped apart. Her forward shield generators destroyed and half of her decks were ripped open to space as thousand were forcible blown out into space.

The Enterprise zipped past her, as maneuvered to avoid the worst of the incoming fire. Several fighters strafing her hull, while the Enterprise returned fire on them with her anti fighter missile banks. Less than half made it out of their run on the ship. As she zipped by she fired a quick volley from her main guns into the dreadnought. Her damaged forward shields failing to absorb enough of the volley. Several bolts tearing through the hull slammed into the antimatter fuel storage pods. Almost instantly the antimatter began to violently interact with hull, the resulting secondary explosions tore the dreadnought to pieces and severally cooked any ship unfortunate enough to be to close to the ship. Nearly a thousand fighters launched from the ship had been destroyed by the resulting blast.

The Enterprise came about, with a roll and a few extra maneuvers before locking her torpedoes on the second dreadnought. The maneuvers helping keep the worst of the fire off the ship, but like the corvettes she had been fighting earlier she could not evade all of it. Bolts of angry red plasma continued to slam into the hull. The Enterprise shuddered under each hit, ever other hit breaching the hull only to be stopped by internal plating and reinforced bulkheads. Several of the hits, damaging conduits and internal systems. Several weapon banks along the starboard ventral went offline moments before the Enterprise got a bead on the second dreadnought. While the third attempted to get on her tail.

The Enterprise unleashed a full volley from both groups of launchers, and changed course and speed to throw them from her tail. Both dreadnoughts managed to escape significant damage, while their fighters chased the Enterprise braving the heavy screen of missiles to unleash their payloads on to the Enterprise. A few of the fighter bombers managed to score a few penetrating hits on the Enterprise knocking out two more weapon banks. Countryman had damage control parties dispatched to bring the weapons back online.

The surviving fighters broke of from their attack to return to their motherships for rearming as the Enterprise charged for a pulse detonation. The ship rapidly accelerated towards dreadnought three and unleashed everything she had on the ship. Multiple lightning like blasts and blue bolts slammed into the dreadnoughts hull. Tearing through bulkheads and people alike. The Electro cannons frying the systems they hit, having disabled the shields in the opening volleys. At the same time the dreadnought fired everything she could keep online at the Enterprise. Bolts and torpedoes slammed into the Enterprise multiple sections of the port dorsal buckled under the barrage. The Dreadnought fared worse, barely managing to escape the barrage. Her hull integrity severely compromised, her shield and weapon systems destroyed. Her fighter bays reduced to scrap metal.

At the same moment a massive energy wave appeared on the sensors of the combatants. The second dreadnought detected the wave and recognized it for what it was. She immediately attempted to warp out. In the process she revealed a design flaw in her design. The moment she transferred power to the warp engines her shields failed for a few seconds. Countryman took advantage of this and fired into her engines disabling her warp and sublight drives. During the short period she was vulnerable. At the same moment Countryman had the ship turn into the wave.

The wave slammed into the ships, a few seconds later while almost unnoticed a single escort that had merely been disable warped out at the last second. As for the freighters two of them were still in the area trying to repair their engines when the wave hit. Being fragile ships, they were ripped apart by the wave, the other freighter had left a couple minutes earlier. The wave hit the Enterprise hard, the ship shook heavily as the dampers strained to keep internal gs to bearable levels. Entire sections of the outer hull buckled most severely near the breaches inflicted by the Valorian dreadnoughts. Still the Enterprise was built tough and she held up against the brutal shockwaves. When the wave passed the ship found herself surrounded by vast clouds of ionized gases. The ship being tossed by the occasional jolt from the storm. Powerful currents pushed the gases around them forming the occasional eddy.

“Report!” barked Countryman.

“Heavy damage to the outer hull. Remaining hull plating is at 23%, Multiple hull breaches to the forward sections, on decks 21-92 and smaller breaches on decks twelve, forty two, seventy nine, one hundred four, one hundred twelve, and one hundred fifty eight. Multiple breaches to the secondary hull on decks A-K, O, T, V, and Y. Emergency bulkheads are in place and holding. The entire forward weapons array is offline, the damage to our port nacelle is quite severe. Our number four engine is not responding, and my engineers report that the port side main warp engine is completely shot. The backup is salvageable, but barely. With current materials and resources we are looking at two weeks to repair the hull damage possibly longer if this storm doesn’t dissipate soon as it will make repairs difficult,” reported Richards.

“Get started and I want a casualty list on my desk by tomorrow morning,” said Countryman.

“Sir, I’m picking up the last dreadnought, bearing four six mark nine. Distance 4300 kilometers. The readings are erratic however,” reported Misaki.

“Send a flight of 1205s and two squadrons of 1204s to investigate and if need be sink her,” ordered Countryman.

Thirty seven hours later the flight reached the dreadnought. The storm currents having slowed the flight in reaching the ship, and even forcing them to take a roundabout path to reach it safely. When the dreadnought came into view the damage she had taken was visually apparent. Half of her hulking frame was simply gone, vast rips in her hull left huge sections of the ship vented to the storm. A quick scan revealed that a section of the ship was still pressurized with nearly three hundred life signs across two decks. That was three hundred out of a crew of fourteen thousand. Near the pressurized section was a shuttlebay her doors torn open. The atmospheric containment shields were still intact, according to the scan, but there was no power to the system.

Tom was the senior marine on the flight, and had his pilot hail the Enterprise for his orders. After a brief contact, he was ordered to salvage what he could and rescue as many survivors as he could and get out. His shuttle was the first of the flight to land on the damaged deck. While other shuttles were landing, two of his engineers went to look at the containment field to see if they could fix it. Fortunately the problem turned out to be one the knew how to fix. A simple severed power conduit, something that only took a few minutes to patch. By the time the shield was restored all twelve shuttles in the flight had landed. The shuttles hadn’t been loaded to capacity with troops, since they had been hoping to be able to bring back some salvage from this mission.

As soon as the shield was repaired, he relayed the captains orders and assigned his squads to search as much space as possible in the time they had available. The scans indicated that the ship’s structural integrity was failing. His squad engineers predicted they had an hour at the most before the ship began to break up. Which is why he gave the search squads orders to get back here in forty five minutes. That was the most time they could afford to spend here based on his engineers calculations. He had two squads stay to guard the shuttles, while he led his own squad to search the ship.

Leaving the shuttle bay he found the corridors weren’t much better than the bay with blown panels and collapsed bulkheads blocking some routes. He took his squad left weaving past a collapsed bulkhead, ahead of another squad tasked with finding things they could salvage. After awhile of walking past empty and damaged corridors, one of his men picked up some lifesigns behind a collapsed bulkhead. It took only a couple of minutes using a plasma cutter and their armor enhanced strength to move the bulkhead out of the way. Revealing a small control room, with five people in it. A damaged conduit in the ceiling was leaking a toxic gas into the room. One of them, a man nearest the leak was already dead. Another man was nearby with a piece of debris in his stomach and bleeding severely. Laying next to the console was a woman with severe burns. A quick scan of these two revealed they were beyond help. They could be saved if they were gotten to a hospital ward quickly enough, but even with first aid they would be dead before they reached the Enterprise. The remaining two Valorians a couple of young girls with markings of the Valorian equivalent to ensign were in much better condition.

A quick injection containing a general antitoxin, and a nanite injection were all that was needed to stabilize them. He picked one up, while a squad man picked up the other and carried them back to the shuttle. Once placed on the shuttle he and his squad went back to look for more survivors. They couldn’t go very far thanks to the time constraints and he only found one more survivor a middle aged Valorian woman, who’s legs had been crushed by a collapsing bulkhead, before pulling back to the shuttles. The other squads also had some success in locating survivors, along with some interesting pieces of salvage. Including a Valorian force field generator completely intact. They had collected nearly a third of the survivors they had detected on their way in. Tom settled into a seat at the rear of the shuttle and watched the medic tend to the survivors loaded onto his shuttle, the two girls he had found, the woman, and a man with severe bleeding. In his case the wound was small enough to be sealed with a dermal regeneration laser, although apparently his internal injuries were the real concern. They were four others also on the shuttle all in stable condition. The only reason they weren’t awake was mostly due to oxygen deprivation. They had apparently been found trapped in a compartment that was leaking out into the storm.

The other shuttles had more Valorians on them, that had been rescued. The shuttles lifted off the damaged deck with ease, and slipped out of the bay into the storm. Each one passed through the field with little resistance. As they were moving away from the dreadnought one of the Valorians on Tom’s shuttle stirred. At first she seemed to look around in a daze for a couple of minutes before the fact that she wasn’t on a Valorian ship registered. She immediately backed against the nearest wall, looking panicked.

“Calm down, we aren’t going to hurt you,” said Tom.

“Where am I?” asked the girl.

“You’re on my shuttle on route to the Enterprise. I’m Tom and you are?” said Tom.

“Arla, are we your prisoners?” replied the girl Arla.

“That depends on you, we rescued you from your ship. If you go through that port behind you, you can see your ship breaking up,” said Tom. She looked behind her and saw a small door, which she opened. Revealing an unmanned turret, the controls were offline and code locked, so she couldn’t even use them. The turret contained an active virtual viewport though, that as Tom said gave her a view of her ship breaking up.

“You bastards sunk her!” said Arla.

“This storm did that. We already had what we wanted and were retreating. It was your people that forced us to fight,” said Tom. Arla was quite for a moment before her eyes locked on the injured man, the medic was treating.

“Is he going to live?” asked Arla.

“I can’t say. I have done almost everything I can to stabilize him, honestly we need to get him to the Enterprise. Nano injectors can only do so much about internal injuries,” said the medic.

“Will he last long enough to get to your ship?” asked Arla.

“It will be close, but yes” said the medic. Just at the shuttle was suddenly jolted, and everything went dark for a moment. The air of the shuttle was then filled with a strange charge, as hair began to float as if in a static field.