“Sir, main deflector shields failing!” shouted a crewman from a nearby console. The ship groaned and screamed as an alien beam ripped into the hull. Several fires could be seen broken out in the room. Emergency crews doing their best to eliminate them.

“Auxiliary power to shields, helm new course one seven six mark three. Fire all missiles at that ship,” said the commander. The crew rushing to carry out the new tasks. The ship shuddered as the missiles launched from their ports. The commander was hoping they would hit something critical, but they all knew they wouldn’t last much longer. Not against three destroyers and their fighters. The other ships protecting the planet weren’t doing much better. Of the thirty ships that had been protecting the system just an hour before only eight were still alive. As for the attackers, they had lost a number of fighters, and they had lost one destroyer and that was from a concentrated missile barrage.

The missiles slammed into the nearest enemy destroyer. Her shields buckled under the barrage, and a number got through. Doing massive damage to her outer hull, and a fair amount of internal damage. Her guns quickly fell silent. “Direct hit, target disabled!” yelled out the tactical officer, clearly excited.

Suddenly, the other two destroyers fell back and changed course. A move he did not expect, but was welcome to the commander nonetheless. “The other two destroyers are breaking off, moving into empty space,” reported an officer.

“Put them on screen, I want to see what happens. Tactical fire all batteries on the disabled destroyer,” ordered the commander. Moments later, the forward viewscreen refocused to show the two destroyers moving off into empty space. He didn’t think they would just break off for no reason and he was quickly rewarded. Three bright flashes lit up the screen, in the area the destroyers were heading for. He knew what those lights meant, warp out. Ships had just entered the system. It took a moment longer for them to register.

Their distinctive hulls appeared on the screen, and he recognized them instantly. He had already seen a few reports on these aliens, and the news broadcast about their arrival in Mydorious. These were refuge ships, specifically a refuge cruiser and two refuge destroyers. They immediately engaged the destroyers, their particle cannons tearing into their escorting fighters and making short work of them while the cruiser started launching her own fighters. The Cylovan and Refuge destroyers seemed to be evenly matched.

“Looks like the Refuge sent us some help. Make the most of it. Helm put some distance between us and the combatants, and then set course for the nearest civilian fleet,” said the commander. The civilian fleets were all attempting to escape the system, but they were being harassed by enemy fighters. His fellow patrol ships engaging the destroyers had helped distract the fighters from the transports and freighters, but some were still being attacked. At least they had some light guns, so they weren’t entirely helpless. Didn’t mean they could fight off the attackers however. It did help them keep the fighters off them however.

“That armor the Refuge ships are using is quite impressive. They are easily absorbing hits our deflectors would struggle with,” commented a crewman.

“It is quite impressive. Let’s just hope they can keep the Cylovans occupied long enough to get the civilians out of the sector,” said the commander as their ship left firing range of the destroyer they had disabled. His maser batteries had dealt some additional damage, but the ship was still there, though not for long.

Just as his crewman was reporting that they had failed to destroy the disabled ship the Refuge cruiser fired a volley into the disabled hulk before it got out of range. A stream of blue energy bolts zipped across space and slammed into the battered hull. They tore through it like tissue paper. Entire decks were reduced to drifting scrap metal in a matter of seconds. A few of the shots must have hit something critical as their were a few explosions following the barrage. When the dust cleared, the ship was cloud of debris. The captain actually felt a surge of jealousy. Weapons that could rip through duranium like tissue paper were rare. Mostly due to the cost of manufacture, but he really wished he had some on his boat. They would have helped with fighting off the destroyers earlier. The action however drew the attention of the rest of the Cylovan fleet and they broke off from their other engagements, and set courses to engage the Refuge taskforce.

Shiro watched the screens from her command chair carefully. She was quite happy to see the other destroyers heading her way. She was currently holding back in the engagement, as she didn’t want to use her cards too early. Her torpedoes could easily deal with these destroyers as their hull armor was not as resilient as capital ship armor. Especially given their shield penetrating ability. The main problem was that they were a trump card too valuable to use here. Afterall the more she used them, the more likely the Cylovans were to come up with a countermeasure. Fortunately she had other trump cards, but she wanted to see if she even needed them against this foe.

“Target hostile two, all batteries maximum firepower,” ordered Shiro.

“Aye, sir. Locking all batteries, and activating superchargers,” responded her tactical officer as he immediately went about directing her batteries to target the ship. A few seconds later the batteries unleashed a volley upon the ship. Instead of the normal blue bolts the cannons unleashed violet fury upon the target. The Cylovan shields quickly started glowing a pale blue, and rapidly transitioned through the spectrum to a brilliant purple. However they held against the volley unleashed against.

“Target shields are weakening, sir,” reported the tactical officer, and she gave orders for the destroyers to focus on hostile two. They immediately focused their beam arrays and heavy cannon on the ship, while their flak guns continued to focus on the Cylovan fighters. Her own fighters were also engaging hostile fighter squadrons, and keeping them off her ships.

The Destroyer’s weakened shields struggled to protect the ship against the barrage. Blue energy beams pierced the weakened shields and tore into the hull of the ship. Cutting deep into the superstructure, and damaging internal components. Before her guns could finish recharging after unleashing a supercharger enhanced volley, the weakened shields of the destroyer collapsed and her Sabers reduced it to a cloud of debris. It shields being its only real protection against her guns and those of her escorts, it stood no chance once they had failed.

As soon as her guns finished recharge and cooling cycle, she gave the order to fire on the other destroyer. Another barrage of deadly violet energy rippled across space and slammed into the shields of a Cylovan destroyer. The supercharged bolts tore into the shields, and they quickly began to glow a brilliant purple in response as they attempted to radiate the harmful energy into space. This time however, the shields were unable to take the barrage and failed. A few dozen violet energy bolts tore into the hull. The outer hull plating was torn asunder. A fuel pod was hit, and the energy ignited the volatile fluid within, and streams of fire erupted from the hull. As a series of explosions tore the ship apart. Huge chunks of the ship were torn from the superstructure as it broke apart.

A crewman reported that the target was destroyed, but there was no time to celebrate as the remaining sixteen Cylovan Destroyers jumped into weapons range and opened fire. Deadly green beams of destruction raked over the hull of the SFS Battlehawk. Her hull began to glow as energy rippled over the hull, but the plating was holding, at least for now. These destroyers had guns far weaker than those on a cruiser, and it showed in their inability to truly tax her hull plating. Even so the AIF was weakening at an appreciable rate. Which meant that, if they did nothing the ships would eventually break through the tough outer hull.

She gave the order to return fire on the nearest destroyer, once again she chose maximum firepower. Sure, using the superchargers meant she couldn’t fire the guns as fast as normal, but in this case the boost to yield was helping a great deal with punching through their energy shields. Her new target had full shields, and the deadly barrage of violet failed to punch through them. The shields were glowing a brilliant blue on the verge of turning purple when her guns depleted, and had to recharge.

At the same moment another destroyer on the other side of the formation exploded. A small group of fighters having sent a few bombs into it fighterbay as it was deploying its fighter craft into the field. The explosion drew the attention of the Cylovans, and all of their fighters that were harassing other ships were pulled back, and started heading this way. At the same moment, their fighters which had been trying to engage the Refuge ships pulled back and began to more heavily engage their fighters. Which had now been deemed as a bigger threat than they had been moments before. Her escorts followed orders and focused their main guns on the destroyer that had just been hit. Her shields however were just strong enough to hold against the assault.

This time her cutting beams, and those from her destroyer escort weren’t penetrating the weakened shield. That didn’t mean they weren’t having an effect though, as they were preventing the shields from being able to dump the energy they had just absorbed. The Cylovans clearly realizing that they would lose another ship if they didn’t get out of range before the Battlehawk finished cycling her guns, attempted to retreat.

Shiro ordered a full pursuit to keep them in range, and took full advantage of the fact that her ships were faster on sublight. While employing an FTL jammer to keep them from warping out. After about a minute of chasing them, while beams continually raked her hull slowly draining her AIF, the guns finished cycling. The enemy destroyer’s shields had just turned purple, so she had her gunners fire a normal volley. Quickly followed by a second, before switching targets for a supercharged volley.

Two volleys of blue bolts slammed into the weakened shields. The first was barely absorbed by the weakening shields, and a few even got through as the shield flickered out. The hull was beginning to buckle when the second volley hit the ship. They tore through the ship as if it were made of tissue paper. The hull crumpled as sections of the ship erupted into flames. Before long, the ship was reduced to a burning cloud of debris. That quickly put itself out in the cold of space.

The new target found itself to be too close, when she opened fire upon it. It had moved closer to inflict more damage against the Battlehawk’s hull. Unfortunately that proved to be a double edged sword. A deadly barrage of purple tore through its shields in an instant, and reduced the hull to swiss cheese. Everything on board went dark, as the ship lost power. It either had a self-destruct or something critical had been hit, because about a minute after it lost power the husk of a ship exploded when the main reactor lost containment.

“Sir, hull plating has just fallen below sixty percent,” reported a crewman from the engineering station. She wasn’t too worried, yet. They wouldn’t be able to do any real damage with their weapons until the plating fell below ten percent. She told the crewman to keep an eye on it, and report back when it fell below twenty. After that they would have to pull back, and let the AIF regenerate or risk taking damage in this fight. The AIF was the only part of the armor keeping those disruptor beams from tearing the ship apart.

Meanwhile the Union captain watched as a convoy of twenty civilian ships jumped away. The ships were small transports, but their escape meant that a couple thousand people were no longer in the firing line. He was glad that the number of fighters harassing them had diminished drastically. It seemed the Refuge taskforce had drawn most of the Cylovan attention in the system.

“How’s the Refuge taskforce holding up?” asked the captain.

“Their cruiser seems to have drawn most of the attention. Given its superior ability to destroy Cylovan ships that isn’t all that surprising. They have lost a couple of fighters, but between their fighters and the destroyers. They have eliminated nearly sixty percent of the Cylovan fighter craft,” reported an officer. Another young officer than spoke up.

“I’m not sure how much longer their cruiser can take the punishment it is taking. Their plating has an energy field enhancing it. That field has dropped by roughly forty percent since the battle began,” said the young officer.

“Looks like we have time than. We need to focus on getting the civilians out of the combat area first. Helm, set a course for the next civilian convoy,” said the captain. He figured the Refuge force would be fine without aid for a while longer, and besides he was out of missiles. Which were his only real weapon against Cylovan ships. Their shields were too strong for anything else. Looking at the tactical plot he saw another destroyer blink out to be replaced by debris.

“How many does that make?” he asked.

“That would be the eighth ship they have sunk in this battle, sir. No ninth,” said a female officer as another ship vanished to a fighter run. That meant that half the Cylovan fleet had already been lost. Normally at this point the Cylovan fleet would have retreated, and would later return with increased numbers and revised tactics. His first officer commented on that, and asked why they had not retreated. The female officer at the station answered the question, “They can’t sir. Sensors indicate the Refuge ships are generating a warp disruption field. No ship inside the field can jump to warp as long as it is active. In addition. the Refuge ships are faster on sublight by a fair margin which makes escaping the fields range difficult.”

On the tactical screen, one of the Cylovan ships suddenly accelerated full throttle at the cruiser. It was clearly intent on ramming the vessel, but the cruiser in a maneuver the captain would have thought impossible evaded the ramming attempt and opened fire. The ship then blinked out indicating another kill for the Refuge taskforce. This time he wasn’t quite sure what happened as the cruisers main guns were still cycling. The readings indicated a single energy discharge then a massive EMP, and suddenly the ship was just gone. It was quite clear at that point that the Refuge was holding cards in reserve that they had yet to use, and they had used the opportunity of the ramming attempt to play one of them.

The guns fired again, the familiar whine reverberating through the ship as they unleashed a wave of violet destruction against another destroyer. The last few minutes had gone well, and only eight scratch that seven destroyers were left, and her destroyers were mopping up the last of the enemy fighters. While her own fighters were docking. She had managed to keep the enemy off the port hanger, which gave her ships space to land. Of her ninety six fighters she had lost twenty of them in the fight. Fortunately the pilots were synthetics so they could be replaced easily enough, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

“Sir, hull plating is at twenty percent,” reported a crewman at the engineering consoles. The same crewman from earlier. She had to admit that she was impressed with the alien beam weapons. While her own cutting beams would have already punched through her hull plating they were specifically designed to carve through armor. These disrupters were clearly more multipurpose. They had actually done remarkably well at draining her defenses.

“Helm back us off, and Engineering divert auxiliary power to the hull plating,” ordered Shiro. The crew acknowledged her orders, and then she gave her Sabers an order to close. This engagement had given her a lot of data on Cylovan capabilities, and tactics. It was time to use another card and finish them before they could escape. All but a handful of Cylovan Swarmer fighters had been sunk.

Which meant the Sabers were free to engage on their own. The Cylovans respond by shifting targets to the Katana. Her plating drained rapidly from the concentrated barrage. The two ships quickly got into range and opened up with their electro cannons, and then used their heavy cannon to rip the enemy ships apart as soon as their shields failed. The ships went down one after the other, and she watched the Katana’s hull plating start to crack moments before the last ship broke up.

“What is the status of the Katana?”

“She took some minor hull damage, but it is superficial easily repaired,” responded her operations officer. Her science officer came up, and gave her own observations.

“The Cylovans were clearly learning our armor during the battle. They actually remodulated the beam to be more effective against our armor. Otherwise those beams wouldn’t have drained our plating as quickly as they did,” said the woman, a gleam in her eye. The kind scientists always got when they found something intriguing.

“Send what data you got on that back to the fleet. We may need a few countermeasures to prevent them from doing that again. Then I want you to conduct a high intensity scan of the system, no need to be subtle about it. Use as much energy as you need, the fleet wants to know what was so interesting about this system to prompt an attack,” said Shiro. Clearly excited the woman ran to her station, and sent the data to ops so they could send it, before bringing the sensors online.

The captain saw the last Cylovan vanish from his screens just moments after the last of the civilian ships in his area of responsibility warped away. There were still a few fighters in the area, but they weren’t a threat without their motherships. He could easily mop up the few stragglers.

“Sir, we are detecting an unusual energy buildup from the Refuge cruiser,” said his operations officer.

“Define unusual,” said the captain.

“I have never seen anything like it. Wait, they are doing something. I think they are scanning the system. Wait,they are definitely scanning the system, but I have never seen a sensor array so powerful,” said the operations officer. Normally he would have to interpret a high intensity scan as a hostile act, and respond accordingly. In this case however that would be stupid. He did have to wonder what they were looking for to be scanning the entire system. He did not have to wait long to get an idea however.

“Their scan is focusing on the colony now, sir. Specifically, the southwestern region of the southern continent,” said his operations officer.

“What is special about that location?” asked the captain. None of his officers had any idea, but the computer gave a clue.

“According to the computer, the only thing of interest in that area are the alien ruins that dot the landscape. However the computer says almost nothing on them, just a passing note that they exist,” said the operations officer. The captain found that lack of data on them to be odd to say the least, and suspected that the ruins were in fact drawing the interest of the aliens to this system.